EFL High School Teachers’ Perceptions on Teaching Listening Online

Abstract

In recent years, research on teaching listening skills online has addressed its role and positive impact on students’ listening learning and improved teacher teaching methods. Therefore, this study carried out a descriptive study aimed at understanding the perception of English teachers about the advantages and challenges as well as demands of teaching listening online. The study was designed as a mixed-method study, a questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews were used as collecting data instruments. 44 EFL teachers in various high schools in Can Tho city responded to the questionnaires. Then 6 of them were invited to participate in the interviews. The study found the following main results. Online listening teaching brings significant benefits to both teachers and students in English. For teachers, they pointed out that teaching online listening will give teachers flexibility in time and location in sending listening materials, assigning homework or online tests. Besides, due to online tools, online listening teaching helps teachers save time and effort in preparation. For students, they preferred online listening classes and gained confidence when learning online listening lessons. Some of the challenges that English teachers in high schools face in online listening classes. First, teachers have difficulty in interacting with their students. Second, students are not focused when learning listening online. The next difficulties are the limitation of the teacher’s observation through the platforms and students are not aware of the importance of listen lessons. Besides, some internal and external factors influence on teaching listening online. External factors for online listening classes include technology and the environment. Internal factors include teaching methods and proper guidance or training for online listening lessons and learner autonomy. The results revealed that EFL teachers had positive views about teaching online listening.