Articles

Students’ Perceptions of Note-taking as a Listening Comprehension Strategy: A Mixed-methods Study of Vietnamese EFL Majors

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Note-taking is widely regarded as a critical strategy for supporting second-language listening comprehension, yet little is known about how Vietnamese English-major students themselves perceive its value and difficulty. This article investigated the perceptions of 150 third-year English majors at the Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City (IUH) regarding the benefits and challenges of note-taking during English listening tasks. A mixed-methods design that combined a structured questionnaire with semi-structured interviews with 5 students was used thoroughly. Descriptive statistics showed that note-taking is a near-universal habit (83% of students reported taking notes “always” or “often”), predominantly practised with pen and paper (62%) rather than digital devices. Students overwhelmingly perceived note-taking as beneficial for comprehension, memory retention, information organisation, inferencing, test performance and sustained attention with agreement rates ranging from 84% to 93% across the measured benefits. At the same time, a substantial minority reported difficulties related to fast speech rate, unfamiliar vocabulary, divided attention and messy handwriting, particularly regarding missing subsequent information (29% agreement) and message overload at high speech rates (31% agreement). Interview data illuminated the cognitive and strategic mechanisms behind these patterns including code-switching, selective attention to discourse markers and compensatory strategies such as momentarily abandoning notes to preserve comprehension. The findings are interpreted through established learning theories, and practical implications for explicit note-taking instruction in EFL listening classrooms are discussed.

Exploring challenges of online learning in the context of Ba Ria – Vung Tau University by English Major students

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This study aims to find out challenges of English major students in conducting online learning at Ba Ria – Vung Tau University (BVU). The research results were found by analyzing quantitative data by introducing survey to 160 English major students; the qualitative data was summarized by 15 English major students and 10 teachers from the interview. The results revealed many difficulties by the evaluation and perception of both students and teachers. The aspect of support is the highest while the lowest belonged to the challenges in aspect of the environment. Meanwhile, the challenges in aspect of collaboration were at the second position and the third position is about students’ attitude towards online learning. About challenges relating to equipment, the result was at the fourth position. Additionally, further discussions and recommendations on challenges that English major students encountered during online learning were also proposed.