FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEMS EFL ...

Item No.
Table-1c reveals that the majority of the students, i.e., 102 (68%) out of 149
students have responded that a long spoken text (sometimes, often, always)
interfered with their listening comprehension. This result clearly shows that the
length of the text can be one major factor that negatively affects the learners’
listening comprehension. This confirms Ur’s assertion (1984) which justifies that
the difficulty in listening comprehension is partly due to the length of the listening
text itself which bore listeners and distract their concentration. Therefore, it is
possible to infer that long spoken texts interfere with the learners’ listening
comprehension.
Table-1d: Learners’ responses that refer to listening problems related to unfamiliar
topic
Students’ No.
Never
Students’ %
Students’ No.
Seldom Total
positive
Students’ %
Students’ No.
Table-1d shows that 124 (83%) of the students have responded that
unfamiliar topic (sometimes, often, always) interfered with their listening
comprehension. More than half of the students (63%) have also responded that
unfamiliar topic often or always interfered with their listening comprehension.
From the above result, therefore, it seems reasonable to generalize that
unfamiliar topic hinders the listening comprehension of the majority of the students.
This is also consistent with Nuttall’s declaration (1996) which shows that a more
interesting requirement to understand a text is that the learner should share certain
assumptions about the subject to the fact that students construct their
understanding of the subject they listen on the basis of their experiences; problems
arise, therefore, when there is a mismatch between the subject and the previous
experience of the learner.
Students’ %
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY
Sometimes Often Always Total
negative
Students’ No.
Students’ %
6 6 4.02 19 12.75 25 16.77 30 20.13 46 30.87 48 32.21 124 83.21
In general, Table-1a, Table-1b, Table-1c, and Table-1d indicate that the
listening text itself can be the main source of listening comprehension problems. In
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Students’ No.
Students’ %
Students’ No.
Students’ %
Students’ No.
Students’ %