awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.3, 2014An Investigation of Top-down Listening Processing Skills TaughtHammaddown listening strategies since such strategies contribute to the students' comprehension of thetexts. Batova (2013) also views that top-down processes enable students to extract meaningsfrom messages, and enrich what they hear. Based on that, the study suggests that EFL textbookdesigners in Palestine should incorporate more top-down listening activities (i.e., predicting,sequencing events, generating questions, summarizing, drawing inferences, and makingsuggestions) in English materials, so as to improve students' listening comprehension.Additionally, the open-question questionnaire data showed that the participantsexperienced problems when attempting to teach top-down listening skills. Such problemsincluded lack of teachers' and students' external motivation, students' poor linguistic competence,irrelevance of the listening materials to students' background knowledge, listening as a difficultskill, lack of in-service training programs, and inadequacy of time devoted to teaching Englishlistening materials. The first problem teachers had was lack of teachers' and students' externalmotivation. It was reported that while Palestinian Ministry of Education final exams did notinclude any listening exercises, they placed too much emphasis on only vocabulary items andgrammatical rules included in the listening materials. In fact, Palestinian EFL test designers needto considerably endorse listening exercises in the final exams so that eleventh and twelfth gradersin Gaza high schools could value listening activities. In this context, Nichols and Dawson (2012)note that summative exams affect students' efforts and goals. Additionally, Murray (2011)provides that tests can pressure students in language learning.A second problem reported by Gaza high school EFL supervisors was lack of teachers'internal motivation. It was indicated that some EFL teachers hated their specialization , i.e.,English language teaching. In this context Kailani and Muquattash (1995) state that EFL teachershould be genially interested in what s/he is trying to teach, and enthusiast enough to delivercurricula successfully. Hence, EFL university instructors are advised to help EFL pre-serviceteachers enjoy English language teaching through using a variety of strategies, i.e., discussions,micro-teaching, role play, debates, and problem solving.A third problem was students' deficient linguistic competence. According to mostparticipants, students transferred from elementary school to high school with poor languageabilities due to the huge amounts of key vocabulary and structures they received at all stages ofEnglish language acquisition. This result may go along with Hammad (2014b) that indicated thatthe EFL textbooks of the first three grades of elementary school were perceived by Palestinianteachers to include a large number of key vocabulary items and pronunciation practice. Similarto Hammad (2014b), the present study strongly recommends that Palestinian EFL textbookdesigners should decrease the number of the language items included in English for Palestineseries.Another important factor contributing to students' poor listening comprehension levelwas the difference between the teachers' speech and recording voice. A majority of the teachersprovided that the students found a difficulty in understanding the recording materials, andtherefore hardly grasp the explicit meaning of the text. As shown by the interviews, the reasonwhy the students found a difference between the teachers' speech and the voice from recordingwas that such teachers did not have much exposure to English spoken discourses. For teachersand students in Gaza high schools to get familiar with English speakers' accents, they shouldpractice listening to English TV shows and radio programs. According to Flowerdew and Miller(2005), exposure to broadcast and radio programs can develop listening comprehension.Furthermore, Richards and Lockhart (1996) view that it is through listening to native speakers,learners can acquire language successfully.Arab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org267