Perception of Saudi EFL Learners and Teachers towards the Use of Listening Transcript in the Listening Lessons

Abstract

Undergraduate learners learning English in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia often complain that they face problems in understanding audios played in their listening skills' classroom. Audio materials are recorded by native English speakers at a speedy pace with challenging linguistic or content input in unfamiliar or less familiar contexts or situations. As it is observed in classes of listening skills, listening materials are more focused on teaching test instead of teaching listening acquisition. Teachers play the audios, students do a variety of exercises and activities (fill-in-theblanks, multiple-choice, short writing questions, matching and pronunciation practice), and conclude the lesson with 'right/wrong' feedbacks or shift to teaching another skill. In both cases, listening lessons provide insufficient internalization of comprehensible input. The present study explored perceptions of Saudi English as a Foreign Language (EFL) undergraduates and EFL teachers towards the use of 'Listening Transcript' (LT) in lessons of listening skills. It investigates if LT help students in overcoming the difficulties that they face in bottom-up processing and topdown processing and what EFL teachers think about the pedagogical value of LT and ways of using it in the lessons of listening skills. It is a mixed method of research. It employs survey to collect quantitative data in the form of a 15-item questionnaire of 60 female Saudi undergraduates and a semi-structured interview of 10 EFL teachers in King Khalid University (KKU), Abha, Saudi Arabia to gather qualitative data. The result of the study shows that LT plays a more decisive role in developing bottom-up skills like identifying segmental suprasegmental features of speech, recognizing words, recalling information, relating with real life, selecting words, restating and explaining the content than developing top-down skills (high order skills) like distinguishing information, comparing and contrasting, judging, and formulating your learning. The study finds there is a need for designing strategies to use LT more creatively and powerfully.

Improving Listening Skills of Saudi EFL Learners

“…So, the meaning of a good listener varies among individual and among English language teachers. Yet, most of the English language teachers think that a good listener is the one who receives high scores in listening tasks and exams (Akhter, 2020;Al-khresheh, 2020;Altuwairesh, 2016;Jamal et al, 2020). However, we may arise a simple question regarding the validity of those given listening tasks and exams, are they valid, reliable, and practical?…”

Factors Underlying Current Saudi EFL Teachers’ Approaches to Teaching the Four Macro and Micro Language Skills

“…To teach specific, isolated listening skills, they select inputs, design and sequence listening activities, determine tasks, and decide what constitutes a correct response. However, Saudi teachers focus more on testing students' listening abilities than on helping them to cultivate their listening skills by teaching them effective listening-comprehension strategies (Jamal et al, 2020). In this case, typical listening instruction goes through the following cycle: students listen to a text, they answer questions based on the text, and the teacher shares the correct answers.…”

“…Thus, there is a virtual exclusion of teaching listening skills. Jamal et al (2020) stated that teaching of listening skills in Saudi English classrooms is limited to completing assessment activities, without providing sufficient exposure to comprehensible input.…”