EFL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LEARNING ENGAGEMENT AND PROBLEMS IN ENGLISH LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Abstract

Listening is considered one of the most challenging language skills, so most of EFL learners find it difficult to get engaged in learning it. Various obstacles have been reported causing challenges for EFL learners in English listening comprehension. This study, therefore, aimed to explore EFL students’ learning engagement and their problems in English listening comprehension. The research was conducted at a high school in Ca Mau province, Vietnam with the participation of 180 tenth grade EFL students in answering the questionnaires. The collected quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS software. The findings revealed that EFL students got engaged in listening comprehension emotionally and agentically rather than behaviorally and cognitively, and their emotional engagement tended to be the most influential. It was also found out that EFL students sometimes faced different types of difficulties (perception problems, parsing problems and utilization problems) in their English listening comprehension.