Difficulties in learning listening skill of non-English major students at Sai Gon University and suggested solutions to develop their listening autonomy

Listening Comprehension is believed to be the most difficult by most of non-major students in Asia generally and in Vietnam particularly. Researchers have found two main factors that influence Listening skill, including linguistic and non-linguistic ones. A survey was conducted among 500 non-English major students of Saigon University currently following the compulsory English program equivalent to levels from A1 to B1. The questionnaire was designed into three contextual aspects: student perceptions of listening, students" listening strategies, and students" listening autonomy in and out classroom. Also, those participants compulsorily took a mid-term test with four skills at the 12th week. Of four skills, the result of students" listening part could be used to test their listening achievement. As a result, those students agreed that their Listening scores are often low due to the lack of either Listening autonomy or encountering problems such as poor vocabulary, pronunciation practice and grammatical structures or inappropriate listening strategies. On the other hand, they also admitted that background knowledge, topic familiarity and listening anxiety are some other factors somehow affecting their Listening results. The paper with the effort to improve teaching and learning Listening skill, attempts to investigate whether theoretical frameworks of listening difficulties in Asian context discussed by many linguistics could fit the context of non-English major students of Sai Gon University. The study then puts forward some recommendations for non-English major students to recognize their weaknesses in listening skill and develop their listening autonomy by setting their own objectives and following strategies with the intervention of teachers and other tools in a classroom environment and extend beyond it.