Students’ difficulties when learning the skills of listening and speaking in an EFL context: An Ecuadorian case study.

Abstract

The current case study is focused on finding listening and speaking difficulties, factors affecting these skills, and methodology used for teaching them. The participants included 47 students and an English teacher from the second year of a senior public high school in the city of Loja, Ecuador. This study was conducted using quantitative and qualitative methods. Students’ questionnaire, a teacher’s interview and observations sheets were used as instruments to collect data. The results reveal that most learners face listening difficulties such as trouble with sounds, understanding every word of the message, fast and natural native speech, necessity of hearing things more than once, maintaining the rhythm while listening, cultural differences, and the presence of outside noises in the classroom. On the other hand, inhibition, low-uneven participation, and mother tongue use were identified as speaking difficulties. For these reasons, an intervention process was carried out through activities or strategies to overcome these difficulties in an experimental group for four weeks. The effectiveness of this process was measured with a pre-test and post-test.