Rethinking Teaching Listening Skills: A Case Study

Abstract

This study explores EAP teachers’ views of underlying problems in teaching listening skills and the strategies adopted by them to overcome problems at the tertiary level in EFL contexts. The study is based on the theoretical assumption of listening perception processes and its role in language development as hypothesised by Richards (2008). In this instrumental case study, one EAP teacher was purposively interviewed to identify their understanding of the investigated issue. The generated data were analysed following the basic qualitative analysis method. The findings demonstrate that in teaching listening skills both the top-down and bottom-up approaches should be adopted to integrate process-based listening skills teaching, which promotes target language acquisition in and out of the classroom. The findings may make the EAP practitioners reconsider incorporating the bottom-up approach to improve the existing strategies of teaching listening skills at the tertiary level.