The Neglected Skill of Listening among EFL Learners of the Second Year in Al-Gedaref State Secondary Schools

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to explore the problems that face second year students in Al-Gedaref secondary schools in learning listening comprehension. The main objectives of the study are to find out the reasons of the insufficiency of the student’s competence and abilities in listening skills and to evaluate the authenticity of the texts and the materials included in the curriculum to find ways to help students improve their listening ability. The significance of the research lies on the fact that listening is a main and a very important skill and plays a vital role in the acquisition of English as a foreign language. The main questions addressed in the study were whether listening comprehension has been taken seriously in SPINE 5 and if the students practice effective listening during their classrooms. The researcher has adopted the experimental method. An experiment was conducted among the students of the second year at secondary schools in Al-Gedaref State. The investigation shows that listening is deteriorating among the students of the second year at the secondary school due to the weakness of students’ ability in listening skill as well as teachers’ competence and the techniques they use in teaching listening comprehension. The results also showed the curriculum to some extend helps in teaching and learning listening comprehension. Based the on the results obtained, the researcher recommended that training courses on listening techniques should be provided to teachers to know how to make the best use of the course materials. Also, teachers should expose their students to a variety of audio visual aids such as cassette, broadcasting programmes, video tapes, films ...etc.