FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEMS EFL ...

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and she suggests that classroom practice should usually incorporate such characteristic of real life listening. However, the listening exercises in many of the English textbooks of Ethiopia for primary and secondary schools are not accompanied with recordings which contain the authentic feature of the language. Instead, most of the listening passages in the textbooks are made up of passages originally composed as written texts (extracts from novels, newspaper articles, and other textbooks of horizontal disciplines e.g. biology, geography, and so on). Despite this gives a certain type of practice, it may not provide any realistic preparation for real life listening. It may be partly due to such reason that the students who enroll in the first year of English in the universities are not familiar to the authentic features of the language. Therefore, when they are engaged in real life listening (that is similar to the listening activities in the listening course), they may face difficulties that are difficult to cope with. The above point was concerned with the natural speech of the native speakers which in the case of the target listening course are mostly available in recordings. In ‘live’ conversation (as in that of a lecture), on the other hand, writers advise that a speaker should be aware of the needs of his audience and should make sure that his message is clear and effective, especially when he/she communicates with nonnative audiences. To communicate effectively, in this regard, the speaker should be aware of not only the needs of the listener but also the other factors which influence comprehension, including the amount of information a listener has on a topic, the educational and intellectual level of the listener, the listener's interest in the discussion topic, and momentary fluctuations in attention, because these cautions help the speaker to decide the type of words to use as well as the rate of information to deliver. If these are inappropriate for the needs of the listener, however, comprehension will suffer. Samuels has clearly put the key questions that a speaker should consider before having a ‘live’ conversation (1984:184). Has the speaker correctly judged the level of background knowledge of the listener? Is there an appropriate match between information presented by the speaker and the listener's background knowledge? Does the speaker make appropriate adjustments for the listener's background in terms of examples 19
given, rate, and pacing of information presented? Is the speaker aware of the need to modulate the loudness of the voice according to the distance between the speaker, the listener, and acoustic properties of the room? Is the vocabulary appropriate? Is the sentence structure too complex for the listener? If the speaker fails to address the above important points that are key for comprehension of the listener, it can be difficult for the listeners to understand what the speaker is saying. 2.3.3 Listener Characteristic Listener characteristic appear to have considerable impact on an individual's listening comprehension. Some researchers have sought to identify the listener factors that influence L1 listening comprehension in positive and negative ways. Carroll (1977) and Watson & Smeltzer (1984), for example, highlight some factors that can hinder native language listening comprehension, including the listener's (a) degree of motivation to comprehend and learn the information contained in the message and the amount of interest in the topic of discussion; (b) ability to perceive relations among elements of the discourse, and ability to focus attention on the discourse and ignore distractions in the environment. Samuels (1984) also claims that background knowledge is one of the more important variables that can influence listening comprehension while Wolvin and Coakley (1988) mention the influence of culture on the listener's participation in the communication process. We will try to see each of these variables in the following sections. 2.3.3.1 Background knowledge Background knowledge, also called “world knowledge” or “schemata”, has an impact on understanding a subject that a student is going to learn. Learners construct meaning during the comprehension process by segmenting and chunking input (i.e., from which they hear or read) into meaningful units, actively matching the intake, with their existing linguistic and world knowledge, and filling in the gaps with logical guesses. Leinhardt as cited by Block (1997:192) indicates, “….the kind of knowledge learners have before learning a new topic affects how they make sense of the new information.” From this one can understand that students having varying levels of prior knowledge about a subject are very likely to understand, 20
Page 1 and 2: ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF
Page 3 and 4: ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF
Page 5 and 6: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to exp
Page 7 and 8: 3. Methods of the Study------------
Page 9 and 10: LIST OF TABLES Table-1: Factors rel
Page 11 and 12: ABSTRACT This study explores the fa
Page 13 and 14: laboratories of the university. The
Page 15 and 16: same course to different groups. Fu
Page 17 and 18: speakers speak, not being able to g
Page 19 and 20: Chapter Two: Review of Related Lite
Page 21 and 22: descriptions concerning the influen
Page 23 and 24: years (Penny Ur, Mary Underwood, Fa
Page 25 and 26: From the above points it seems reas
Page 27 and 28: of main clause and subordinate clau
Page 29: problem. She says that perception o
Page 33 and 34: It is obvious that students will fi
Page 35 and 36: sounds that are unusual to the L2 l
Page 37 and 38: epetitions and other elaborations a
Page 39 and 40: part of the speech.” This tells t
Page 41 and 42: These factors are important not onl
Page 43 and 44: Samuels, 1994; Ur, 1984; Underwood,
Page 45 and 46: statements arranged, on the basis o
Page 47 and 48: is the cognitive complexity of the
Page 49 and 50: However, to make the analysis easil
Page 51 and 52: Item No. partly due to the structur
Page 53 and 54: particular, unfamiliar words, compl
Page 55 and 56: Item No. Table-2b shows that the ma
Page 57 and 58: Item No. Students’ No. Never Stud
Page 59 and 60: Item No. students. In the Ethiopian
Page 61 and 62: grammar, its vocabulary, all the pi
Page 63 and 64: organized into four categories acco
Page 65 and 66: The target students were asked to i
Page 67 and 68: Q2: After you joined a university,
Page 69 and 70: also reported, “What I have learn
Page 71 and 72: input, activating related schemata,
Page 73 and 74: from his poor listening ability: "I
Page 75 and 76: of delivery of the native speakers.
Page 77 and 78: egarding his approach in the teachi
Page 79 and 80: necessary skills and knowledge of E
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headphones for each student, and th
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4.6.1 The Listening Materials As sh
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for the teaching of listening and t
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5. The listening material introduce
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Strength of the module 1. The modul
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the skills and the strategies again
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4.6.2.2 Achievement scores in ‘Co
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Chapter Five Summary, Conclusion an
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Speaker 21. the pronunciation of na
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which pose the most difficulty for
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context of the discourse before ask
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Bibliography Asher, J. (1969) 'The
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Oxford, Rebecca (1993) Research Upd
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APPENDIX-A Questionnaire Dear stude
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APPENDIX-B Students Interview Guide
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Item No. APPENDIX-D Observation che
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