AN INVESTIGATION OF THE PRACTICES AND CHALLENGES OF TEACHING LISTENING SKILL: THE CASE OF GRADE 10 ROBE DIDEA HIGH SCHOOL

 This study was conducted to investigate the practices and challenges of teaching listening skills in grade 10 at Robe High School. Qualitative as well as Quantitative approach and descriptive

research design was used in this study.Questionnaires,Interview and classroom observation

were used as data collecting tools. Questionnaires were administered to 80 students, who were selected using systematic random sampling. To cross check the information given by students, classroom observation was conducted by the researcher during the listening lesson. Four teachers were selected comprehensively and each of them was interviewed to get deep information and more to concrete the information collected by questionnaires from students. The 21 listening lessons in the text book were also reviewed. The data gathered using the tools was quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed using frequencies and percentages. The findings showed that the practices of teaching listening weren’t managed properly because of dominating use of teacher fronted approach, having inadequate time for doing tasks, and large number of students.In addition to this, teachers didn’t employ the techniques of listening skills and the teachers’ ways of teaching weren’t match with the designed procedures in the course book. The Major Challenges of teaching listening skills were: lack of interest, lack of motivation, and lack of background experience. Furthermore, the students d idn’t understand the text, and catch the speed of the speaker, the ability of the students towards liste ning to TV/Radio had problems; due to large number of students in the classroom,checking was challenging; reluctance to do all the activities from the side of students, and because texts for listening was attached at the end pages of text book, the students easily copied the answer which would upgrade the listening skills of students weren’t provided for students. Finally, it has been recommended that the Univercities ,collegesand the teacher themselves should make effert to provide provide different techniques of teaching listening skills.Students should not only be provided with text book but also supporting materials that would help them to develop their listening skills. Audio-visual materials enable students to attend non-verbal aspects of communication. 5