INVESTIGATING FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ VIEWPOINTS ON DIFFICULTIES DEVELOPING LISTENING SKILLS IN BUSINESS COURSE

Abstract

When mentioning teaching and learning English at all levels of education in countries where English is classified as English as a Foreign Language, four principal skills – listening, speaking, reading, and writing – have been widely researched. Listening has long been recognized as a challenging skill for teachers, students, and researchers in non-English native language contexts. This cross-sectional study investigated the perspectives of sixty first year students at Academy of Development and Policy regarding challenges they experienced while learning to improve their listening skills regarding the contexts in English for specific purposes during the second term of the academic year 2023-2024. The findings from the researcher-made questionnaires indicate that the participants confronted the challenges of improving their English listening skills for specific purposes, particularly business English. Moreover, they had the same opinions of having difficulty developing their listening texts; thus, there is no need to consider implementing particular listening policies applied to the students. The study supplies a new outlook for more studies in the future relating to improving listening skills of English for specific purposes.