FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEMS EFL ...

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1.2 With regard to fast speech, instructors should encourage students to listen to authentic texts of English so that they gain more chances to be acquainted with the real life <strong>EFL</strong> listening and to be familiar with the natural feature of the spoken English. The other way of tackling the above problems is through encouraging independent listening out side class. English songs, movies, videos, and other English language broadcasts including the satellite TV and the widely available radio programmes provide learners with opportunities to listen to English outside the classroom. 2. These days listening is incorporated in the English syllabuses of primary, secondary, and preparatory levels of the Ethiopian education system. As it has been found out in the study, however, many students didn’t have pre-college exposure to the real life listening. 2.1 For lower level students, therefore, it is advisable to make use of every situation out side classes, like tuning into various radio programs of the English broadcasts, listening to English music and to be engaged in watching Hollywood movies to improve their ability of understanding the authentic spoken English. 2.2 For teachers at these levels, the first thing is, using recordings (e.g. of authentic radio program), i.e., the teacher should let his/her students practice listening to real life texts. In addition, the teacher should be aware of the fact that only classroom exposure to non-authentic materials is insufficient. Therefore, responsible teachers are advised to initiate students to engage in real life listening, such as, listening to the BBC, VOA and other English broadcasts in order to make them familiar with the authentic speech of the native speakers. 3. As far as background knowledge is concerned, instructors should note its significant role in the interpretation of discourse. In the classroom, therefore, before asking students to listen, instructors should particularly take care about establishing common semantic fields between the listening topics and the listeners, especially when the topics demand cultural backgrounds that differ from that of the student. Instructors must ensure that students understand the 89
context of the discourse before asking that they listen to a dialogue, joke, story, or any other spoken message. In order to activate the students’ schemata, teachers could do the following: 3.1 Before students actually start listening, they should be given some information about the Content, Situation, and Speaker(s) of the listening text. This arouses expectation and helps to familiarize the Topic. 3.2 Before students actually start listening, students should be told what they are going to do based on the listening text in which the listener is required to give some kind of overt response in what has been said (heard). Besides activating the learners’ schemata, this helps to create purpose. 4. The study showed that inability to predict what a speaker is going to say was one difficulty. In real life when we go for a job interview we usually know what the interviewer is going to talk about; this is something we can predict as we often have some background information about the job and the subject which is going to be discussed. Similarly, in order to help our learners predict what speakers are going to say we should provide them with enough information before we give them a listening comprehension exercise. Preliminary elicitations such as ‘What do you know about this topic?’, ‘What could the passage be about?’ are helpful for learners to make predictions. 5. The study indicated that text and environmental factors were part of the problems which affected the learners’ listening comprehension. Defects of the listening materials and the laboratory equipments were some of these factors. The concerned bodies in the institution should find solutions to tackle the problems. As far as the language lab is concerned, for example, there should be a regular maintenance and a timely repairing of the equipment. Changes should be made to accommodate the large number of students (e.g. increasing the number of seats and headphones are important actions to be implemented). As far as the course module is concerned, revising is an option, or preparing/selecting another material is a better solution. 6. The study revealed that most of the subjects achieved very low scores in successive listening tests. The low score may indicate the weakness of the learners; above all the low score could affect the learners’ motivation and 90
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ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF
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ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to exp
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3. Methods of the Study------------
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LIST OF TABLES Table-1: Factors rel
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ABSTRACT This study explores the fa
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laboratories of the university. The
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same course to different groups. Fu
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speakers speak, not being able to g
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Chapter Two: Review of Related Lite
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descriptions concerning the influen
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years (Penny Ur, Mary Underwood, Fa
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From the above points it seems reas
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of main clause and subordinate clau
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problem. She says that perception o
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given, rate, and pacing of informat
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It is obvious that students will fi
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sounds that are unusual to the L2 l
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epetitions and other elaborations a
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part of the speech.” This tells t
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These factors are important not onl
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Samuels, 1994; Ur, 1984; Underwood,
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statements arranged, on the basis o
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is the cognitive complexity of the
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Page 55 and 56: Item No. Table-2b shows that the ma
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Page 59 and 60: Item No. students. In the Ethiopian
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Page 67 and 68: Q2: After you joined a university,
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Page 93 and 94: 4.6.2.2 Achievement scores in ‘Co
Page 95 and 96: Chapter Five Summary, Conclusion an
Page 97 and 98: Speaker 21. the pronunciation of na
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Page 103 and 104: Bibliography Asher, J. (1969) 'The
Page 105 and 106: Oxford, Rebecca (1993) Research Upd
Page 107 and 108: APPENDIX-A Questionnaire Dear stude
Page 109 and 110: APPENDIX-B Students Interview Guide
Page 111 and 112: Item No. APPENDIX-D Observation che
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FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEMS EFL ...

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