Abstract:
The purpose of this thesis study was to investigate EFL teachers’ perception and practice of
assessing listening skill assessment, and the challenges they face: secondary schools in west
Jimma in focus. To achieve this objective, descriptive research design was used. The target
population was from eleven secondary schools included in the study. There were totally 122 EFL
teachers in those secondary schools and hundred percent of them participated in this study.
From those EFL teachers, 100 of them selected for questionnaire through Purposive sampling
while 15 for interview and 7 for classroom observation selected through available and simple
random sampling techniques, respectively. In such descriptive research design, it was required
to collect data from large number of respondents so that questionnaire was used as the main
instrument to gather data. Besides, semi structured interview and classroom observation were
also used to achieve the methodological triangulation. The statistical tools were used to
determine the percentage, average, and variation of responses by using SPSS software v-23.
Mixed approach which was the combination of both quantitative and qualitative data analysis
method was used to analyze the collected data. The quantitative analyzed data presented in
tabular form to show the result and the qualitative data were analyzed thematically in
statements. The combined result of the questionnaire and semi-structured interview showed that
EFL teachers perceived assessing listening skill as important but boring and time consuming
task that is difficult to implement it in a listening period, students did not interested to learn it at
all, especially in a large class size. It also indicates that sound disturbance, shortage of time,
large number of students, less attention given to listening skills, complex grammatical structure,
lack of experience and background knowledge of the EFL teacher, and lack of audio-visual
materials with their quality were challenges face EFL teachers to implement listening skills
assessment in listening classrooms. Similarly, the result of classroom observation and the
questionnaire showed that most of EFL teachers also practice the listening skill activities poorly
in the listening classrooms. These major findings of the study suggested that EFL teachers
perceived as listening skill of students can be improved through improvement of the other skills
in EFL. Hence, listening skill assessment was ignored by the EFL teachers; and due to this,
students were also not motivated to learn it at all. Based on the conclusion drown, EFL teachers
were recommended to implement listening skill assessment in similar to assessment of other
skills for integrated improvement of students’ EFL skill. As media of instruction, the pedagogical
implication of implementing listening skill assessment was suggested, especially for EFL
teachers. Finally, some suggestions were recommended for a future research on listening skill
assessment.
