Investigating EFL Teachers’ Views on Listening Difficulties Among Their Learners: The Case of Iranian Context

Listening has long been recognized as a challenging skill for teachers, students, and researchers working within the English as a Second Language (ESL)/English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. Moreover, up until the recent past, it was the least researched of the four language skills in second language acquisition studies. One of the issues regarding the skill that has not been sufficiently investigated is EFL teachers’ views on listening difficulties their students face. This study, therefore, investigates 208 teachers’ views on listening difficulties among Iranian EFL learners. A mixed-methods approach, integrating a questionnaire and an interview, was employed. Results from the questionnaire suggested that the top 10 identified difficulties ranged from practical issues such as poor-quality audio materials to content-based impediments such as unfamiliar topics. Furthermore, analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests revealed that there was no significant relationship between either the teachers’ educational or professional background and the gravity of the difficulties they reported. Among different components of the questionnaire, the input and process components were highly correlated, indicating that learners’ problems with input perception could lead to problems in listening comprehension. Moreover, based on the results of the interviews, it was concluded that the teachers believed that the learners’ listening difficulties belonged to three categories, namely, pronunciation-based, individual characteristics–based , and content-based difficulties. This study suggests that overcoming listening difficulties without listening strategies, though not impossible, seems to be much more time consuming. Therefore, there are many benefits to both students and teachers if some class time is dedicated to acquaint learners with the strategies.