Institute Of Educational Studies

DEPT.OF CURRICULUM & INSTRUCTION

The Effectiveness of a Suggested Strategy in Developing

the Listening and Speaking Skills of the TEFL
Industrial Secondary School Students

A Thesis
Submitted for the PhD. Degree in Education
(Teaching English as a Foreign Language)
By

Elham Sweilam Ahmad Desouky

Teacher of English at Shiblanga industrial secondary school

Supervised By

Dr. Ali Ahmad Madkour Dr. Abdel Rehim Saad

El Din
Ex. Dean of Institute of Professor of Curriculum and
Educational Studies, Professor Instruction, Al Azhar University
of Curriculum and Instruction,
Institute of Educational Studies Institute of Educational Studies
Cairo University Cairo University
1433 a.h. - 2012a.d.
The Effectiveness of a Suggested Strategy in Developing the
Listening and Speaking Skills of the TEFL Industrial Secondary
School Students
By
Elham Sweilam Ahmad Desouky

Abstract
The main concern of this research was to
examine the effectiveness of a suggested strategy in
developing the listening and speaking skills of the TEFL in
industrial secondary school students.
Sample: The sample, totaling 80, was selected from
Shiblanga industrial Secondary school, in Qualiobia
governorate. Three tools were used; listening and speaking
checklist, pre-post test and teacher’s guide. The results
revealed that using the suggested strategy (graphic
organizers and discussion method) had a positive effect on
developing listening and speaking skills in English
language for first year industrial secondary stage students.
The experimental group was superior to the control group
after applying and using the suggest strategy. It is
recommended that using graphic organizers and discussion
method provides opportunity for discussion between
teacher and students, and students to students.

Key words: Listening – Speaking – Industrial schools

 Acknowledgements
I am grateful to God Almighty for helping me, and giving me the
strength to go on during hard times.

I would like to express my sincere appreciation and warm thanks to

Dr. Ali Ahmad Madkour Professor of curriculum and instruction, and
ex -dean of the Institute of Educational Studies, Cairo University. It is an
honour for me to work under the supervision of such a great educationalist. I
pray to God to bless him for his help for all researchers.
I would like to express my deep gratitude and appreciation to my
supervisor Dr.Abdel Rehim Saad ElDin Abdel Rehim professor of
(TEFL) at the faculty of Education Al Azhar University, the most caring
person I have ever met. I have learnt a lot from him not only in academia,
but also in social and human relationships. I thank him so much for offering
his time and sincere efforts. No words are enough to give him what he
deserves.
I would like to express my deep gratitude and appreciation to Dr.
Zainab ElNaggar professor of (TEFL) at the faculty of Education at
Ain Shams University.
Words fail to express my deepest love and gratitude to my beloved ones
who has been always there for me.
Thanks are also due to my dear family, my mother, my father, my sister
Sawsan, my brothers Ahmad and Mohammad for all their sincere prayers
and moral support. My deepest thanks and love go to my daughters: Sama,
Habeba and the most beautiful girl Sandy.
Finally, I like to gratefully send my sincere thanks and gratitude to all
the people who helped, advised and encouraged me during the study.
 Table of Contents

CONTENTS Page
- Abstract
- Acknowledgements
- Table of contents
І-Chapter one The problem of the study 1-6
Introduction 1
Context of the study 2
- Statement of the problem 4
- Research Questions 4
- Hypotheses of the study 4
- Purpose of the study 4
- Delimitations of the study 5
- Significance of the study 5
- Definition of terms: 5

ІІ-Chapter Two Review of literature 7-32

- Definition and the importance of listening skills 7
8
- Listening as an active process

- Listening skills 9
-The principles of teaching listening skills 11
-Problem of teaching listening 12
-Communicative language teaching (CLT) and speaking: 13
-Communicative activities and speaking 14
-Speaking processes 16
-Importance of developing speaking skills in 17
the classroom
- Developing speaking skills needs good and effectiv 18
instruction
-Difficulties of speaking in the classroom 19
- Techniques of assessing speaking 21
-The importance and purpose of graphic organizers 22
for industrial students
- Construction of graphic organizers 23
-A applications and uses of graphic organizers 25
- Discussion method 25
- Hints for guiding successful classroom discussion 27
-Discussion skills 28
- Types of discussion 29
- Problems with discussion 31
- Conclusion 32
ІІІ- Chapter three Review of related studies 33-44
1- Introduction 33
2- Previous studies related to developing listening 33
and speaking skills
3- Previous studies related to using graphic organizers 36
- Previous studies related to using discussion method 38
IV- Chapter four Method &procedures 45-54
- Introduction 45
- Design of the study 45
- Subjects of the study 45
- Tools of the study 45

- The listening checklist 46

-Jury members’ comments on items of the listening checklist 46
- The speaking checklist 47
- Jury members’ comments on items of the 48
speaking checklist
- Designing an instructional strategy for industrial students 48
- Objective of the strategy 49
- Types of graphic organizers suggested for the strategy 50
- Designing of the pre-post test 50
- Description of the test 50
- The test stages 51
-Test validity 51
-Piloting the test 51
- Test time 52
- Test suitability 52
- Test reliability 52
- Test site factors 52
- The pre-test 53
V- Chapter five Results and Interpretation 55-63
- Statistical tests used 55
-Results in terms of the study hypothesis 55
- Discussion of results 61
- Conclusion 63
- Recommendations 63
- Suggestions for further studies 63
References 64-72
Appendices 73-112
- Appendix1The pilot study 73
-Appendix2 listening checklist 76
- Appendix 3 The final list of listening skills 80
-Appendix4 The initial form of the speaking skills 81
-Appendix5 The final list of speaking skills 82
-Appendix6 The pre-post test 83
-The pre-post test 84
-Appendix 7 The teacher’s manual 89
-Appendix8 The list of jury 111
 Chapter One
The Problem of the
Study
Introduction

Language is one of the fundamental features of human community.

It is a symbolic tool for transmitting information, ideas and thoughts. Hence,
it is a vehicle for establishing relationships among individuals of within one
or more societies. (Lumana 2006: p.1) defines language as “a system of
finite arbitrary symbols combined according to rules of grammar for the
purpose of communication”. With the fast-paced changes brought by
globalization and technical development, English has become the language
of most international communications. (Zhang 2003:p.1) asserts that “the
world’s stock markets, international banks, most transactional corporations,
and multilateral and transactional organization conduct their affairs and
transactions in English”.

The global extending of English users among the world has imposed
some educational implications regarding the foreign language teaching and
learning. One of these implications is the growing prominence towards the
integration of English foreign language (EFL) teaching into the national
educational programs and applications. Another remarkable trend is the
arising shift towards communicative language teaching (CLT) that involves
the use of transactional and problem- solving activities that resemble every
day oral interactions (Warchawer, 2000:p20 &Wallace, 2001:p.27).

In line with the increasingly global EFL educational trends, English

language teaching was given an outstanding priority in Egyptian educational
system. Therefore, it has been assigned recently to the first year primary in
the governmental schools. Furthermore, in light of the communicative
approach, a new syllabus has been introduced to all stages, namely; (Hello,
1-8) series. As for EFL industrial secondary stage, English language teaching
(ELT) aims at preparing students to use English communicatively, as a
means of international communication, through the development of students’
four language skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing. (Ministry of
Education, 2010-2011)

˺
 Within the framework of the communicative view of EFL teaching
and learning, oral communication has been greatly emphasized. Oral
language is thought to be essential for providing successful language
development (McMaculloch 2005:p.21). Such emphasis highlights
developing the oral interactive skills which constitute the core-dimension of
an oral interaction, i.e., listening and speaking skills. (Miszkiewicz
2005:p.30) confirms that developing the oral competence should be the
fundamental aim of the ELT. The reason for that can be related to the main
purpose underlying EFL learning process which is developing the learner’s
ability to be understood.

In the EFL context, listening and speaking are very important

skills to develop as people who know a language are referred to as users of
that language (Helena 2005:p.9). Such vitality can be ascribed to the
interactive nature of the listening and speaking skills. Listening and speaking
are basically used to achieve either transactional or interpersonal goals. In
other words, a person listens and speaks to either exchange a meaning or
build relationships with others. Hence both functions meet the EFL learners’
different aims and varied interest in learning a foreign language.
Furthermore, (Reginia 1993:p.31) maintains that the development of EFL
listening and speaking skills is much related with the acquisition of different
components of language learning. Listening and speaking enhance the
learners’ ability to learn new concepts, develop vocabulary and perceive
structure.

Moreover, promoting EFL listening and speaking skills are

embedded in providing learners with opportunities to use the target language
contextually. Through listening and speaking activities or games, learners
will be exposed to the communicative use of the spoken language. Such
exposure, in turn, would enhance their listening and speaking skills
(Roikrong 1998: p.44). Also the definite relationship between listening,
speaking and language skills has been tackled. (Dannels 2002:p.20) argues
for the probability of adjusting listening and speaking activities to support a
writing course. Furthermore, (Chen 2004: p.7) assert using listening and
speaking activities to reinforce reading and writing skills.

Context of the Study

In spite of being considered as essential EFL skills, listening and
speaking are much neglected in industrial classrooms procedures resulting in
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the first year industrial secondary school students’ inability to use English or
express themselves orally. This neglect can be attributed to some constrains
such as the classroom limited time, the huge number of students and the low
level of the industrial students.(El-Gameel,1982; Ghanem,1983; El Elki,
1999; Al khuli, 2000; Abdallah,2007; Amin,2007).

Accordingly, the problem of the study was supported by the

previously mentioned studies, which emphasized that developing EFL
listening and speaking skills within the industrial secondary classes was
encountering several problems due to the following reasons:
1-The low level of the industrial secondary school students.
2-Teachers do not offer opportunities for practicing different listening and
speaking sub-skills.
3-Teachers do not encourage shy students to participate within oral
interactions.
4-Teachers do not give students sufficient feedback on their oral
performance.
5-Teachers and students pay less attention to the development of listening
and speaking skills since the final evaluation is conducted through written
exams.
In the light of the researcher’s observations and experience in the
field of English language teaching at industrial secondary school students,
she noticed the little attention given to listening and speaking skills by
teachers and students and the unsuitable strategies followed in classes, also
the low level of the students in learning listening and speaking skills.
In addition, the questionnaire,(see Appendix1) which was
conducted on 20 English language teachers (who teach English for industrial
secondary school students in two different schools ) showed that students
still need more activities to develop their listening and speaking skills. The
teachers also called for adopting new strategies that give more attention to
the process of listening and speaking skills.
Graphic organizers and discussion method help learners to overcome
many of linguistic problems during listening and speaking. This is a way of
compensating for the listener’s and the speaker’s inadequate linguistic
knowledge in order to avoid communication breakdowns. The usage of this
strategy usually enables listeners and speakers to reconstruct the same
intended meaning without the need for the unknown lexis that caused the
linguistic problem.

˼
 That is to say, graphic organizers and discussion method enable
listeners and speakers to use their linguistic knowledge efficiently through
offering them a wide range of alternatives for modifying their utterance to
be more comprehensible and communicative.

Statement of the problem:

The problem of the study could be stated in the low level of the
industrial school students in listening and speaking skills in EFL. They
receive no adequate training in listening and speaking skills that may help
them express themselves orally and follow oral input.

Research Questions:
The present study attempted to answer the following main question:
-What is the effectiveness of a suggested strategy in developing the listening
and speaking skills of the EFL industrial secondary school students?
Four questions were derived from this main question:
What are the listening skills needed for industrial secondary school students
in EFL?
2-What are the speaking skills needed for industrial secondary school
students in EFL?
3-What is the effectiveness of using graphic organizers on developing
listening and speaking skills for industrial secondary school students in
EFL?
4- What is the effectiveness of using discussion method on developing
listening and speaking skills for industrial secondary school students in
EFL?

Hypotheses of the study:

1-There is statistically significant difference at 0.05 between the mean scores
of the experimental group on the sub skills of the pre-test and post-test in
favour of the post-test scores.
2-There is a statistically significant difference at 0.05 between the mean
scores of the experimental and control groups on the post-test in all listening
and speaking skills in favour of the experimental group.

Purpose of the study:

1-Identifying the listening skills that suit industrial secondary school
students in EFL.

˽
2-Identifying the speaking skills that are needed for industrial secondary
school students in EFL.
3-Developing industrial secondary school students’ listening and speaking
skills in EFL.
4-Measuring the effectiveness of the suggested strategy on developing
industrial secondary school students’ listening and speaking skills.

Delimitations of the study:

-The study was confined to developing ten sub skills of listening and
speaking in EFL.
- The study was confined to using graphic organizers and discussion method.
- The study was confined to two classes of first year industrial secondary
school students' (one class for the experimental group and the other one for
the control group).
- The study was conducted in the second term of the scholastic year 2009-
2010 one semester, three periods per week.

Significance of the study:

1-The study may provide EFL supervisors and curriculum designers with an
updated list of EFL listening and speaking skills necessary for industrial
secondary school students.
2-As for the teachers the study may help them to adopt suitable strategies to
develop industrial secondary school students’ listening and speaking skills in
EFL.
3-As for the students the study may develop their listening and speaking
skills.
4-As for researchers the study may pave the way for other researchers to
conduct further studies on developing industrial secondary school students’
listening and speaking skills.

Definition of terms:
Strategy:
Ghoneim (2001:p226) defined strategy as “a mental operation used to
solve a listening problem”.
Shehata &El Naggar (2003:p39) defined the strategy as “a set of
measures practices that the teacher follows in the classroom to reach outputs
in the light of the aim s/he puts includes collection of techniques, means,
activities and evaluation style.

˾
 In this study, strategy means “an organization based on a set of
principles and using various activities to develop first year industrial
secondary stage students’ listening and speaking skills”.

Graphic organizers:
Fishers (1995:p20) defined graphic organizers as “a specific instructional
organization tool available to teachers, this tool have proven to be successful for
all students in inclusive classrooms. Visually displaying key content ideas can
benefit learners who have difficulty organizing information”.
Acheycutts, (2001:p.2) defined graphic organizers as a tool that provides
a visual of facts, ideas, and concepts. This visual allows the mind to see
relationships and patterns.
In this study, graphic organizers mean a visual organizational system
used in classroom to promote thinking and language development.

Discussion method:
Gulley (2002:p.357) defined discussion method as one of the most
widely used and valuable methods. It represents a type of teamwork, based
on the principle that the knowledge, ideas, and feelings of several members
have great merit than those of a single individual.
Wagner(2004:p.4) defined discussion method as a forum in which
students can practice expressing themselves clearly and accurately.
In this study discussion method is one in which the students and the
teacher exchange their ideas in order to get a better understanding of a topic
it can be a whole period or be a part of a lesson.

˿
 Chapter two
Review of literature

This chapter is divided into four main sections: The first section deals
with listening skills. The second section deals with speaking skills. The third
section deals with graphic organizers. The fourth section deals with
discussion method.

Definition and the importance of listening skills

Listening is arguably the most important skill required for obtaining
comprehensible input in one's first and any subsequent languages. It is a
pervasive communicative event: we listen considerably more than we read,
write, or speak (Hyslop & Tone, 1988:p.3 as cited in Omar, 2008:p.20).
(Underwood as cited in Rost,2001:p.15) discussed the importance
of listening and how English learners need to listen to English in different
situations and for different purposes in their real life, depending on each
situation. (Pierce 1998:p.15) stated that listening as an interactive, not
passive process that the students need to make much effort and practice. In
order to do well in listening, the listeners must have sufficient knowledge of
the language. The listening is not a passive skill but an interactive process,
which requires learners to have adequate knowledge of the language to
decode the message, and the ability to apply different strategies.
Listening in language learning has undergone several important stages,
from being assumed acquisition through exposure but not really taught to be
viewed as a primary vehicle for language learning. (Richards 2002:p.20)
During the decades, developments in education, linguistics and sociology
have led to the powerful theories of the nature of language comprehension
and the active interest in the role of listening comprehension in second
language acquisition. The following discussion elaborates on the topic from
two aspects, namely, the relationship between listening and other language
skills, and the practice of comprehensible input theory in listening. (Rost
2001:p.18)
In daily communication, listening plays an important role.
Research has demonstrated that adults spend 40-50% of communication with
listening, 25-30% speaking, 11-16% reading, and about 9% writing
(Vandergrift 1999:p.6). Listening, the most widely used language skill, is
often used in conjunction with the other skills of speaking, reading and
writing. It is not only a skill area in language performance, but also a critical
means of acquiring a second language. Listening provides opportunities to
̀
hear voices other than the teachers', enables students to acquire good
speaking habits as a result of the spoken English they have absorbed, and
helps to improve their pronunciation. Listening texts often provide excellent
examples of functions such as apologizing, inviting and refusing. The
process of listening, especially the bottom-up and top-down model, and
schema-building activities are also applicable to reading. In the late 1960%
and early 1970s, applied linguistics recognized that listening was the primary
channel by which the learner gained access to L2 data, and that it therefore
served as the trigger for acquisition (Rost 2001:p.20).

Listening as an active process

It is important to look through the listening process, and know how
listeners react when they are listening to a listening text. This importance is
due to the fact that listeners are not tape recorders (Anderson &
Lynch1988:p.30) But they are supposed to be active participants who process
and create meaning by comparing the listening input to their prior linguistic
and non linguistic knowledge (Rost2001:p.20).
Anderson, as cited in Omar, 2008:p.25) highlighted that
listening has three broad sets of processes as follows:
1-Perception of aural stimuli that refers to the physiological aspects of
listening. It is a necessary aspect of listening comprehension, but it can not
be equated with it.
2- Attending to aural stimulus that involves active concentration by the
listener. The listener must concentrate on the aural stimuli and must select
what to pay attention to and what to disregard. Like perception, attending to
stimuli is a necessary aspect of listening but, by itself, not a sufficient one.
3- Assigning meaning to aural stimuli is an interpretative act that involves
personal, cultural, and linguistic matters interacting in complex ways.
Assigning meaning to aural stimuli can also involve the construction of
meaning, even though something specific was not said and this is called
inference.
Also, listening process can be divided into 'bottom-up and 'top-down'
processing. 'Bottom-up' means interpreting the lowest-level units first, and
then proceeding to an interpretation of the rank above, and so on upwards.
Here, one relies on his knowledge of grammar, syntax, and lexis in order to
achieve comprehension. On the other hand, 'top-down' means interpreting
discourse starting with general units first, and then moving downwards. In
this process the listener uses his background knowledge to understand the
meaning of the message. This background knowledge may be previous
́
knowledge about the topic, situational or contextual knowledge, or
knowledge stored in long-term memory about the overall structure of events
and the relationships between them. (Wolvin 1988:p.25)
According to (Madkour1991:p.71), Using the two processes of top
down and 'bottom-up' associated with speaking includes these three levels as
follows: The first level involves these skills:
1. To combine all the separate pieces of information so as to understand the
whole message.
2. To make inferences.
3. To understand the main idea and the organization of the speech.
The second level involves these skills:
1. To understand the meaning of individual pieces of information in the text.
2. To understand the meaning of particular grammatical structures in the text.
3. To understand the meaning of the vocabulary used in the text.
The third level involves these skills:
1- To recognize the words.
2- To distinguish and recognize the sounds correctly.

Listening skills
The word "skill" refers to the way language is used, and is
traditionally conceived as consisting of reading, writing, listening, and
speaking (Richard&Platt: I992 , p.14). Listening skills vary according to the
purpose of listening, the listener and the context. However, one can put one's
hand on the outstanding classifications of these skills. The literature is full of
lists of listening skills that go around and orbit the same core.
(Tinkler,1980:p.33) said that the general comprehension skill is
made up of a number of sub skills:-
a) Distinguishing phonemes,b) Recognizing words,
Identifying stress, intonation, and syntactic rules,
Keeping in mind chosen and summarized parts of what is heard,
Anticipating the development of the speaker's utterances,
Understanding the communicative intentions of the speaker.
(Rixon,1986:p.29) pointed out that in order to understand the message
students may need to be able to do the following:
To hear all the words the speaker says;
Understand the plain sense of the information;
Deduce the meaning of unknown words and phrases by using the context;
Understand what is implied but not stated in so many words;
Recognize a speaker's mood or attitude;
̂
f) Recognize the degree of formality with which the speaker is talking.
(Anderson and Lynch 1988:p.30) showed that there are three main
skills in listening as follows:
1-The skills of recognizing the topic of the conversation.
2-The skills of making predictions about likely developments of the topic to
which he will have to respond.
3-The skills of recognizing and signaling when s/he has not understood
enough of the input to make a prediction or a response.
A according to (Abdel-karem,1995:P.29), there are ten sub- listening
skills, these skills are:
1-Following and understanding instructions and oral directions given by
native speakers in informal situations;
2- Selecting the gist of the spoken language "getting the main idea".
3-Selecting and ignoring information: in other words, to search for
purposeful information
4-Drawing inferences: this can be shown through paraphrasing given
information in the listening text.
5- Guessing information.
6- Identifying the purpose of the speaker.
7- Extracting specific ideas.
8-Understanding the communicative functions of the target language.
9-Predicting outcomes and what might come next;
10- Interpreting given information.
(Cindy,1997:P.40) reported that there are six receptive skills;
A) Predictive skill; the efficient listener predicts what he is going to hear.
Extracting specific information; very often the listener is involved in the use
of receptive skills for the sole purpose of extracting specific information.
Getting the general picture; listeners listen to something because they want to
get the general picture or the main idea.
d) Inferring opinion and attitude; listeners have to be able to work out what
the speaker's opinions and attitudes are, particularly since they are not always
directly stated.
e) Deducing meaning from the context; especially when the listener is
confronted by worked that s/he does not know their meaning.
f) Recognizing patterns and markers; recognizing discourse markers is an
important part of understanding how a text is constructed. It is important to
know which sentence is generalization and be able to recognize devices for
cohesion and understand how a text is coherently organized.

˺˹
(Abdel-latif, 2003:p.28) indicated that critical listening is a mental skill that
includes a number of sub-skills such as:
-Selecting from listening,
-Analyzing and interpreting the speaker's purpose,
-Identifying emotion (students listen to identify the mood of certain
speakers),
-Discriminating between facts, imagination and opinion,
- Recognizing the speaker's view,
- Guessing unknown meanings from the context,
-Being able to generalize, summarize, classify, and arrange ideas
systematically,
-Extracting inferences and similarities,
-Evaluating what the ones listens,
-Inferring information and knowledge,
-Expecting and predicting ideas,
-Discussing and expressing opinion,
-Relating background knowledge to the present,
-Diagnosing weaknesses and strengths of what the ones listens,
-Analyzing the message, adapting listening according to the speaker,
recognizing contrasts, expressing feelings after listening.
According to (Omar, 2008:p.40), listening skills can be divided into
two categories; general listening skills and critical listening skills. The
former includes detecting and remembering significant facts and details,
following a sequence in narrative or argument, following oral directions,
selecting the main idea, summarizing and paraphrasing, understanding
meanings in the context, making inferences and predicting. The critical
listening skills include identifying the purpose of the speaker and the
message, identifying and categorizing facts and opinions and judging validity
and adequacy of ideas and arguments
Finally, good students need to be able to use a combination of all skills
simultaneously when processing the listening text. Using certain skills
depends on the kind of the text they are listening to, and their reasons for
listening to it.

The Principles of Teaching Listening Skills

“It is important to train students to listen effectively rather than to
test their listening skills”. This can be done in various ways that are
outlined below: (Thompson, 2004:p.228).

˺˺
- The texts that learners listen to should be authentic to have features of
spontaneous speech
- Texts can be graded in a way that ensures that they are appropriate for the
learners.
- Learners can be given a purpose for listening.
- Learners can be encouraged to make predictions about what they are
going to hear.
- Learners can be given various kinds of support for listening teachers
should actively teach micro-skills or sub skills and strategies.
- Similarly, we should actively encourage learners to employ successful
strategies, ways of coping when they couldn’t understand everything
- Teachers should also be aware themselves of the features of natural
speech such as weak forms and assimilation, elision, redundancy, noise,
colloquial language and be ready to help learners with it.
- Teachers should also be aware of learners' difficulties as opposed to native
speakers' ways of listening.
Student's participation is an important principle in teaching. In the
classroom students should be encouraged to develop their sense of
anticipation and prediction in order to prepare for using the language in the
real world. This can be done by stopping the tape in the mid-flow and
asking the students to guess what is coming next.

Problems of teaching listening

According to (Ali, 2000:p.137), learners often complain that
listening is the most difficult to acquire for many reasons:
-Different speakers produce the same sounds in different ways, e.g. dialects,
accent, stress, rhythms, intonations and mispronunciations, etc;
-The listener has little/ no control over the speed of the input of the spoken
material;
-The spoken material is often heard only once;
-The listener cannot pause to work out the meaning ;
-Speech is more likely to be distorted by background or the media that transmit
sounds;
-The listener sometimes has to deal simultaneously with another task while
listening e.g. note- taking, etc.

˺˻
 Sometimes students feel frustrated because they find listening
difficult to acquire (Omar,2008:p.40) provided many reasons for that:
-Students are trying to understand every word.
-Students go back trying to understand what a previous word means.
-Students can’t know the most important words.
-Students can’t recognize the words they know.
-Students have problems with different accents.
-Students get tired.
-Students have mental block.
-Students are distracted.
-Students cannot cope without images.
As Ali claimed, listening is the most difficult linguistic task to
acquire, so teachers has to stress their work on acquiring this task to
face student’s listening problems.

Communicative language teaching (CLT) and speaking

CLT is an approach to the teaching of foreign language (FL) that
places great emphasis on communication as both the means and the ultimate
aim of learning a language. (Savignon, 2002:p.1) states that “CLT refers to
both processes and goals in classroom learning”. The main focus of CLT is
developing FL learner’s ability to communicate in the target language
though a variety of communicative classroom practices. (Razmjoo & Riazi,
2006: p.345) introduce a number of features that characterize the CLT
classroom as follows:
-An emphasis on language use rather on language knowledge.
-Greater emphasis on fluency and appropriateness in the use of the target
language rather on structural correctness.
-Minimal focus on form with corresponding low emphasis on error
correction and explicit instruction on language rules or grammar.
-Classroom tasks and exercises that depend on spontaneity and student trial
and error as well as negotiation of meaning among students and between
students and teacher.
-An environment that is interactive not excessively formal which encourages
risk taking and promotes student autonomy.
-Teachers serving more as facilitators and participants rather than taking the
traditional didactic role.

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