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Listening Skill Problems by Students of English

Term Paper

13 Pages

Ahmad Almahdi Shteiwi (Author)

Excerpt

Abstract

By:

Ahmad Almahdi Shteiwi

Mona Anihome

Listening is a creative skill that demands active involvement. The listeners share their knowledge from both linguistic and non-linguistic sources. The process of listening comprehension tasks is always accompanied with anxiety. Listening anxiety not only affects the results of listening comprehension, but also listening ability. Some research shows that in low-anxiety classroom environment, listeners participate actively and effectively. In order to help learners to be successful in English listening class, it is necessary to create a favorable atmosphere in the classroom. This paper has been conducted in 2020, it tries to find out some factors that affect learners listening anxiety in EFL classrooms and to put forward some suggestions to improve the condition.

The results of this study showed that most of the participants didn’t get enough listening activities during secondary school classes, and many of them admitted that they get lack of listening understanding when they had practiced the listening tasks. Many students faced a difficulty in understanding the speech if the used dialect in the recorder was unfamiliar to them which could be considered as the main reason of anxiety.

Chapter One

Introductory

1.1 Introduction

Listening is a receptive skill through ears. It involves identifying the sound patterns. When one listens, he uses his audio systems to receive individual sounds (letters, stress, rhythm and pauses), and he uses his brain to convert these sounds into meaningful messages which convey ideas and thoughts.

Young (1992) stated that problems of listening comprehension can be considered as results of many factors such as insufficient emphasis on listening in appropriate teaching methodologies, inactive listening strategies and the lack of student vocabulary, but the major obstacle which is important role for receiving the information can provoke anxiety. Macintyre & Gardner (1994:10) define language anxiety as “The feeling of tension and apprehension specifically associated with second language contexts,” including speaking, listening, and learning.

In English as a Foreign Language learning, listening may be the most difficult one among the four language skills. Some researches claimed that in order to be successful listener and perceiver, learners must be able to participate actively and strategically in the listening process within a low-anxiety in listening process (Xu, 2011).

This paper aims to identify the causes of listening anxiety and to provide several recommendations that may help the students to overcome or cop with these problems which sometimes encounter them. The researcher will check some listening support strategies such as the input to see whether they are effective to reduce students listening anxiety. " Anxious students are likely to experience mental block, negative self which affects their ability to process information in -talk and ruminate over a poor performance language learning contexts" (Macintyre and Gardner (1991: 87

1.2 Aim of the study:

This study aims to determine the causes of listening comprehension anxiety and to help the students avoid and reduce some of the reasons of this problem. It is an attempt to answer the following questions,

1.What are the main causes of anxiety and how can they be reduced?
2.Why are EFL learners poor in listening skill and how can they improve their listening skills?
3. What are the strategies that can be used to enhance students ability in listening activities?

1.3 Hypotheses of the study

It is hypothesized that:

1.Most EFL students have poor listening skills.
2- Anxiety causes students weakness in listening skill activities.
3.Some listening strategies are not effective enough to help students prove their listening skills.
4.Inactive involvement strategies are the main causes of anxiety in most EFL classrooms.

1.4 Significance of the study.

This study gains its significance from the fact of the importance of avoiding students anxiety during dealing with listening skill activities to develop their level in English Department at faculty of Education and to highlight the helpful techniques used by the staff members for carrying out the required activities in this skill.

Chapter Two

Literature Review

1. The definition of anxiety and classification:

Anxiety can appear in every person’s life. Early in the nineteenth century, Freud (1836, cited in Spiel Berger, 1983) the pioneer who firstly proposed that anxiety was a kind of unpleasant feeling associated with experience, physiology, and behaviors. Later in the twentieth century, psychologists described anxiety as “a state of apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly associated with an object” (Hilgard, Atkinson & Atkinson, 1971, cited in Scovel, 1978: 134). Anxiety has been classified into three types: “ state anxiety, trait anxiety and situation-specific anxiety” (Ellis, 2008: 691). Spiel Berger (1983) defined state anxiety as an experience of apprehension at particular time in a particular situation. Scovel (1978) stated that trait anxiety is a long-lasting tendency to feel anxious. Situation-specific anxiety only occurs in a certain situation (Ellis, 2008). Some psychologists added that “achievement anxiety and facilitative-debilitative anxiety” from other perspectives as well (Horwitz, 2010: 154).

Numerous empirical studies have shown that anxiety exists in almost every aspect of second /foreign language learning (cf. Hilleson, 1996, et al., 1986 Jackson,2002, Kitano, 2001, Phillips, 1992, Price, 1991, Young, 1991). Speaking publicly in the target languages has been found to be particularly anxiety provoking, even for learners who feel little stress in other aspects of language learning (Horwitz, 1995, Macintyre & Gardne: 1989). The speech of anxious students is often accompanied by blushing, trembling hands, a pounding heart, and headaches (Cohen & Norst, 1989). Anxious students are less likely to volunteer answers or participate in oral classroom activities (Ely, 1986). Some students with high levels of language anxiety may even have a mental block (Tobias, 1979). They also display avoidance behaviors such as skipping classes and postponing their homework (Argaman & Abu-Rabia, 2002).

2.The sources of listening anxiety:

There are various sources and factors that cause students’ learning anxiety. Horwitz and Cope (1986:127) proposed three sources of language learning anxiety, “communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation”. Communication apprehension refers to people who are too shy to communicate. People who suffer from test anxiety feel afraid of failure. Fear of negative evaluation means people try to avoid any situations of being evaluated by other people. Besides, based on the analysis of learners’ diaries, Bailey (1983) found that peer pressure could be considered as another very important factor to cause anxiety in learning, which happened after the comparison with high-proficiency students’ in classes. Teachers can also be a source of anxiety as their questions often put students in an embarrassing situation when they fail to answer exactly (Ellis & Rathbone, 1987).

3.language learning strategies:

Listening can be considered as a prerequisite issue for oral proficiency. Speaking does not constitute communication unless what is said is comprehended by others. In our daily life, listening is used far more than someone reads, and five times more than anyone writes (Rivers,1981). Understanding how learners apprehend the meaning of what is said in front of them will contribute to develop teaching methods as well as to enhance learners' listening skills. Proposed six groups of language learning strategies that can be applied to the four language skills. These groups of strategies are divided into broad categories: direct and indirect strategies. Direct strategies include cognitive strategies which are highly helpful for understanding and recalling the language material, memory-related strategies which enable learners to connect one language item or concept with another, and compensation strategies that help learners to overcome knowledge gaps and continue to communicate naturally. Indirect strategies consist of metacognitive strategies which help learners in regulating and managing the learning process overall, affective strategies which help learners to develop the self-confidence and perseverance necessary for learners to involve actively in language learning , and social strategies which help in increasing interaction and understanding the target culture (Oxford, 1990). The direct strategies function effectively when they are backed up by the indirect strategies(ibid). Alternative categories have been suggested by O’Malley and Chamot (1990), that the types of strategy learners use vary depending on the learner’s different factors, such as degree of awareness, stage of learning, age, gender, ethnicity, learning style, personality traits, motivation, purpose for learning a language. Of all the variables, learner’s language proficiency is received considerable attention by numerous studies and is considered one of the primary ones which most affect the relationship between learner’s strategy use and their success in mastering a second and foreign language (Rubin,1987). Most studies indicate that students at a higher proficiency level have a tendency to use various strategies more efficiently than those at a lower level (Green & Oxford, 1995, Lan & Oxford, 2003, Oxford,1993).

4. language learning anxiety

Until the years of 1980ˢ learner’s anxiety has been known as one of the most important affective variables which influence foreign language learning. Foreign language anxiety had been considered as a very complex construct that can be defined in a number of ways before. Horwitz, and Cope (1986) proposed a specified theory about second language learning anxiety. They claimed that foreign language anxiety is composed of not only other anxieties such as communication, apprehension, and social evaluative anxiety, but a complex of self –perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning process (ibid, 1986). More recently proposed a specific definition to language anxiety as the feeling of tension and apprehension specifically related to second language contexts, including listening and learning in language learning. A number of studies have had an attempt to investigate the effect of anxiety on foreign language learning. The cognitive psychologists have also tried to examine the anxiety effect based on an information processing model and found that foreign language learning is interfered by a high level of anxiety (cf. Gardner & Macɪntyre, 1991, Madsen, Brown & Jones, 1991).