FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEMS EFL ...

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includes activities that let the students practice deciding whether information in a section of a talk is important, identifying where a section of a talk begins and ends, and explaining how the various parts of the talk are related. This part also includes transition markers (words and phrases). Unit 4 contains the issues involved in recycling, i.e., in reformulation and in repetition. This part includes activities that let the students take note of main points they missed in a lecture when the points are recycled. This is believed to help the students practice listening less intensively whenever a main point that they already understood is recycled. Unit 5 contains activities that let the learners apply strategies which help them to identify cause/effect relationships in arguments which are developed by a speaker. This part emphasizes markers of cause/effect relationship that usually appear in a spoken language. Unit 6 contains activities that let the learners practice identifying a contrast relationship of ideas developed by a speaker. This part also includes background reading, contrast markers (words and phrases), note taking, and prediction practice. Each unit focuses on discussing issues related to developing the learners’ listening skill. The issues are presented in the form of activities which enable the learners to develop concepts related to the given listening skills. Similarly, each unit (except the first unit) has also a corresponding audio-cassette with a total of one hour long. The stories in the audio-cassette (that accompany the module) are narrated by two native speakers of English (with US accent), a man and a woman, who were a staff member of the English department of Bahir Dar University. After the practices of all the activities of the module, it is assumed the students will be able to make use of the knowledge and skills they gained in the course in various real life listening situations. As far as the topics are concerned, the major listening topics of the module are: (1) Urbanization, (2) Tourism, (3) Preventive Medicine, (4) Food Supply, and (5) Microchip Technology. There are also sub-topics under each of the above major topics. The listening activities of the module are based on each sub-topic. 77
Strength of the module 1. The module provides the learners with the opportunity to hear and practice <strong>EFL</strong> listening comprehension. 2. The module gives the learners the opportunity to practice the skills and strategies of listening, such as, understanding the setting or context, understanding the central idea, predicting, understanding the structural organization of a text, ignoring unknown or irrelevant words or details, understanding implied meaning, and listening for specific information or details 3. The narrators in the listening material are native speakers of English. This helps to familiarize the learners with the spoken feature of the native speakers’ English. 4. The number of speaker involved in the talk is one, and the seaker presents the talk in the form of narration. This does not confuse the learners to identify the speaker unlike those listening activities in which two or more speakers are involved. Weakness of the module 1. The listening passage of the module was taken from written discourse so that the listening activities are almost similar to those of the ‘reading aloud’ (i.e., saying words as they are written). As a result of this, the material lost the natural feature (quality) of spoken English which is characterized by colloquial language, informal and spontaneously produced conversation. This artificial nature of the language doesn’t give real life listening practice that must make the learners familiar to the natural feature of the spoken language. 2. Transforming the written discourse to spoken discourse has also another disadvantage. (a) With regard to density, the information in the written English is packed densely when compared with that of the spoken English (Ur, 1984; Underwood, 1989; McDonough & Shaw, 1993). The density of the information can interfere with the learners’ listening comprehension. (b) When the two are compared in reference to syntax: while the spoken language is syntactically simpler, the written language is relatively complex (Brown & Yule, 1983). Such complexity can also interfere with the learners’ listening comprehension. 78
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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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