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-the-blanks, 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 top-down 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.