awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.3, 2014An Investigation of Top-down Listening Processing Skills TaughtHammadAs shown by the interviews, the main problem Gaza high school EFL teachersencountered when teaching listening processing skills including top-down skills was lack offacilities:Participant T. 2 (a 9-year experience female supervisor): I think that most teachers do not teachEnglish listening sub skills including top-down skills, because they do not have the cassettesrequired for teaching English listening besides that the electricity in Gaza schools is sometimesunavailable.A second problem reported by two interviewees was lack of teachers' exposure to Englishspoken discourses. In the interviewees views, due to lack of teachers' practice of Englishlistening, there was a difference between the teachers' speech and the voice from recordings.Participant T. 1 (a 5-year experience male supervisor): Our teachers do not practice anyEnglish listening outside classrooms. I know that they can hardly meet native speakers ofEnglish in Gaza, but at least they can develop their English listening through watchingEnglish TV shows and listening to radio programs. Due such lack of practice g, there is adifference between the teachers' speech and the voice from recording.Additionally, three supervisors reported that both teachers and students neglected Englishlistening, because the final exams did not include any listening exercises. According to suchsupervisors, testing English listening needed time and effort, and they had neither audiomaterialsnor time for employing any listening tests.Furthermore, two supervisors indicated that some teachers did not have any real desirefor teaching in general. It was indicated that such teachers hated their specialization (i.e., Englishlanguage teaching) and they were not interested in what they were trying to teach.Participant T. 4 (a 8-year experience female supervisor): Some EFL teachers have hatedtheir specialization , i.e., English language teaching since they were university students.Such teachers sometimes expressed their dislike for their specialization throughstatements such as: "I hate teaching in general", "I specialized in ELT teaching just tohave a job", I did not like any one from those taught us ELT courses in the university",this specialization is very boring" etc.A final problem reported by all interviewees was that most EFL Gaza high schoolteachers complained that the textbooks were overcrowded of vocabulary items and the number ofclass periods devoted to teaching such items was inadequate.Participant T. 2 (a 9-year experience female supervisor): Teachers always complain thatthey can not teach all items included in the textbooks. They spent much time on teachingsuch keywords at the expense of teaching English listening sub skills including top-downskills.In short, the semi-structured interviews data showed Gaza EFL high school teachers'problems of teaching top-down-listening processing skills as perceived by their supervisors.Such problems included lack of facilities, lack of teachers' exposure to English spokendiscourses, lack of EFL listening assessment, lack of teachers' internal motivation for teaching,and inadequacy of time devoted to teaching English listening materials.Discussion and ImplicationsResults reported that English for Palestine 11 &12 neglected top-down listening skills. Theevaluation checklists analyses in this study revealed that such materials focused on no top-downlistening skills other than listening for a gist and listening for supporting details. According toVargas (2009), when moving from the beginning level classes, students need to practice top-Arab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org266