Ignorance of Listening Skills at Tertiary Level

Abstract

The private universities of Bangladesh have enough facilities to teach English language (Rahman, 1999) because they have invested heavily to develop their resource facilities (Miyan, 2009). In order to improve the learners’ communicative competence and proficiency in English these universities organize compulsory courses in English (Rahman, 1999). While listening skill plays a vital role in the English language classroom, in most of the language courses listening skill is never taught (Saha, 2008). This study examined the extent of ignorance of listening skills at the private universities and also sought to find out the strategies for the development of listening skills at the tertiary level. Data was collected from 15 private universities from Dhaka. For the investigation both close and open-ended questionnaire was provided to 295 undergraduate students of service courses and 30 teachers were interviewed. Theoretical framework was based on Krashen’s input theory (1981 and 1985), Ausuble’s meaningful learning theory (1978) and Morley’s model of interactive listening (1991 and 1995). From the findings of the study it was identified that most of the English language courses are completed without practicing listening skill, due to inappropriate syllabus and insufficient logistic support from the universities. The findings suggest that fewer numbers of students in the English language class would be more convenient for the teachers to teach the listening skill. Furthermore, specific syllabus and mark allocation is necessary for teaching listening.