Listening Assessment Strategies Employed by Libyan EFL University Teachers A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Art in Applied Linguistics

Abstract

Listening has been one of the neglected skills in teaching English as a foreign language in the Libyan context. However, teaching and assessing listening skills play important roles in the process of language teaching and learning. Therefore, EFL teachers should play effective roles in enhancing students’ achievements in listening skills by using different teaching strategies and various types of assessment. This research investigates the listening assessment strategies that EFL teachers’ use with undergraduate level at Zawia university. Moreover, it explores the challenges that teachers might encounter whenever they assess their students in listening classes. For this purpose, both quantitative and qualitative research methods were utilized in this research. Two sampling techniques were employed to select the research sample, namely simple random sampling and purposive sampling. To collect the research data, a structured questionnaire was used to identify the teachers’ background knowledge and their use of assessment strategies in listening classes. In order to probe deeper and explore the challenges that teachers might encounter during listening assessment, six teachers who teach listening skills at Zawia university were interviewed in a semi-structured way. SPSS Software Program was used to analyse the quantitative data and Thematic Analysis Method was employed to analyse the qualitative data.

The quantitative findings revealed that teachers use meta-cognitive, cognitive and socio-affective strategies when they assess students’ listening performance in different frequencies. For example, the results showed that the majority of the teachers always set goals for listening tasks, while it is evidenced that most of them rarely clarify the objectives of the anticipated listening tasks to the students. It was also found that most of the teachers neglected using cognitive strategies and socio-affective strategies when they assess their students in listening classes. Moreover, the qualitative findings showed that the teachers encounter different challenges, such as, limited background knowledge about using listening assessment strategies in class, choosing appropriate listening texts, setting listening tasks, scoring listening tests, teachers’ limited experience about assessing listening skills, lack of teaching listening resources and lack of training sessions. Finally, a number of interesting implications and recommendations are provided in this study.