Exploring students comprehension of speaker intention in part a of the TOEFL listening section

Abstract EN

This paper attempts to explore students comprehension of speakers intention in Part A of the TOEFL listening section.

To accomplish this aim a pre-test questionnaire, a TOEFL test, and a post-test questionnaire are conducted.

The findings indicate that, although fourth year students of English admitted that listening skills are difficult in mastering, they express their preference in learning them than reading and writing.

Whereas the test reveals that students face difficulty in determining the speakers' intentions when listening to the short recorded conversations which lead to confusing in selecting correct choices.

This miscomprehension is justified by the students through a post-test questionnaire that is conducted two days after the test, which reveal that the students are over whelmed by the talking speed of the people in the conversations, the speakers' intentions, and the difficulty in understanding the choices.

These results raise interesting issues related to the consideration and need of using different listening techniques in the foreign language classroom in order to improve students' aural competence which facilitates the development of students' communicative competence.