FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEMS EFL ...

statements arranged, on the basis of the five-point scale (never, seldom,
sometimes, often, always) and by providing open-ended responses to add other
different listening problems if there are any that were not addressed in the close-
ended questions. Oral instructions and explanations were given (in English and in
Amharic) to the respondents by the researcher himself to avoid any
misunderstanding. Finally, the data obtained from the questionnaire was
presented, and frequencies and percentages were calculated.
The interviews
As far as the students’ interview is concerned, a semi-structured interview
was conducted in mid May 2008, i.e., three weeks after the data obtained through
the questionnaire was analyzed. Thirty students volunteered to be interviewed.
Each participant was interviewed in the laboratory of the English department at
BDU. The participants were allowed to respond in Amharic so that they could
speak freely what was on their mind. Each interview lasted for 10-20 minutes. At
the interview, the students responded to four open-ended questions, which the
researcher had prepared, regarding the students’ past experience of L2 listening,
their learning process of L2 listening, their use of listening strategies and the
listening difficulties they encountered in the EFL listening. At the time of the
interview, the researcher encouraged the learners to talk about specific EFL
listening experiences. The researcher asked the students to describe in detail the
problem they had faced and asked them why they thought these difficulties
emerged. Whenever someone reported situations in which they had encountered
difficulties, the researcher would probe further and ask them what they thought had
made them encounter the listening difficulties. The researcher used the same type
of probes when they reported success with comprehension. After the interview was
completed, the data were transcribed and analyzed. In the analysis, a numerical
system was applied to identify each data entry. The code for each account
indicated the learner ID which is assigned by the researcher. For instance, "S3"
stands for the student which was interviewed thirdly.
In addition, the instructor was interviewed after the students’ interview was
completed. The interview was conducted at his office and it was a structured type.
At the interview, he responded to seven open-ended questions which were
34