FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEMS EFL ...

2.3.1 Text Characteristic
One of the major factors that is believed to affect listening comprehension is
text characteristics. According to Carroll (1977) and Sheils (1988), the density and
explicitness of information contained in the speech; length and conceptual difficulty
of the text; and the degree of attractiveness of the message influence the success
or failure of listening comprehension. That is, as soon as the text becomes less
explicit or less attractive or conceptually more difficult, comprehension suffers. The
details are presented as follows.
2.3.1.1. Length and density of the text
In learning a foreign language, listening and interpreting unfamiliar sounds,
lexis and syntax for long stretches of time are tiring. This happens to the fact that
many learners seem to work much harder than necessary aiming for accurate
perception and interpretation of every word/point they hear. In a long EFL listening
comprehension exercise a learner’s grasp of the message is much better at the
beginning and gets progressively worse as he/she goes on. This may be partly due
to fatigue. The listener may run out of the energy necessary to absorb and interpret
the strange sounds. It seems for this reason that many writers prescribe a short
listening text. For example, Atkins et al (1995) assert that a short listening text
reduces the complexity of comprehension by reducing tiredness and lapse of
concentration. Indeed, EFL learners find short simple passages with the minimum
of necessary information easier to follow; this gives them more opportunity to grasp
the information.
With regard to the density of the message, many writers (Ur, 1984;
Underwood, 1989; McDonough & Shaw, 1993) claim that information is packed
less densely in the spoken language than in the written language. If a written
discourse is transformed to a spoken discourse and if used for the teaching of
listening comprehension, it sounds unnatural and becomes difficult to understand.
According to Carroll (1977), when a message contains more information that can
not be stored easily in memory, special listening skills and extra effort are required
to understand and recall this information. In this case, therefore, if the listener does
not possess or use the skills, he/she may fail to understand the information.
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