English Abstract
ABSTRACT:
Listening is a vital skill in language learning as it facilitates communication in general and the
acquisition of the other skills (reading, writing and speaking) in particular. However, EFL
learners face some difficulty understanding spoken English. Therefore, it was the purpose of the
study to explore some of the areas of difficulty that Bahraini EFL learners encounter in listening
comprehension as well as the sources that exercise influence on learners' listening
comprehension. The sample selected for this work was a group of 34 English majors studying
advanced level English courses at the Department of English Language and Literature at the
University of Bahrain (UoB). Four data collection methods are used: a TOEFL listening test, a
questionnaire, an interview with the subjects and an interview with the teachers of the language
development courses. The findings obtained from the TOEFL listening test reveal that the
students have varying degrees of difficulty in using the following listening comprehension
skills: identifying speaker's purpose, identifying speaker's attitude, grasping main ideas,
making inferences, understanding details, and making predictions. Further, the findings gained
from the other instruments show six major categories of the sources of areas of difficulty in
listening comprehension: task sources (insufficient time for processing, impossibility of note-
taking, type of questions asked, lack of repetition and lack of clarification); training sources
(insufficient listening practice); text factors (type of input, length of listening text); speaker
sources (accent and rate of delivery); listener sources (insufficient non-linguistic knowledge,
insufficient non-linguistic knowledge and psychological state) and situation sources (lack of eye
contact and noise). The study ends up with pedagogical recommendations that are considered
helpful in enhancing EFL learners' competency in listening comprehension.
