awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.3, 2014An Investigation of Top-down Listening Processing Skills TaughtHammadTable2. Frequencies and percentages of top-down listening skills included in English forPalestine 11Subskill Unit1Unit2Unit3Unit4Unit5Unit6Unit7Unit8Unit9Unit10Unit11Unit12TotalFrequencyTotalPercentage1.Listening for 1 1 1 2 2 2 - 1 2 2 2 2main ideas18 40%2.Listeningsupportingdetailsfor2212134122222453.3%3.makingpredictions----1-------12.2%4.Sequencinginformationeventsor--------------5.Drawinginferences6. Summarizing-----------------------------7.Makingsuggestions----1--1----24.5%8.Generatingquestions--------------9. .Recognizinga point of view--------------Total33245543444445100Table 2 shows that the top-down listening skills included in English for Palestine 11 are'listening for main ideas', 'listening for supporting details', making predictions', 'makingsuggestions'. Where as 'listening for supporting details' got the highest score, 'makingpredictions' fell into the lowest.It is clear that both English for Palestine 11 and English for Palestine 12 do not paymuch attention to top-down listening processing skills. According to Vargas (2009), whenmoving from the beginning level classes, students need to practice top-down listening strategiessince such strategies contribute to the students' comprehension of the texts. Batova (2013) alsoviews that top-down processes enable students to extract meanings from messages, and enrichwhat they hear.Arab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org262