BOTTOM-UP LISTENING SKILLS: EFL TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS AND CLASSROOM PRACTICES

Mohammed El Moussaoui, Abdelhamid Belhaj

Abstract


Research suggests that in many EFL classrooms, teachers give scant attention to the teaching of bottom-up listening skills while emphasizing top-down strategies. The purpose of this study is to address this imbalance by investigating EFL teachers’ perceptions of bottom-up listening skills and their teaching practices. A primarily quantitative mixed-methods approach was employed to collect data from 25 Moroccan EFL secondary school teachers via an online questionnaire. Quantitative data were analyzed to examine teachers’ beliefs regarding bottom-up listening and their reported classroom practices, with comparative analysis by years of teaching experience. A thematic analysis of the open-ended responses was utilized to gain deeper insights into teachers' perceptions. The findings reveal that teachers recognize the role of bottom-up skills in listening comprehension. However, most of them reported that in practice, they prioritize top-down activities over explicit bottom-up listening instruction. Many teachers indicated that time constraints, curricular demands, and lack of training or materials discourage intensive focus on bottom-up skills. These results align with prior research showing that listening instruction tends to focus on comprehension questions and overall understanding. The implication is that a more balanced approach to teaching listening is required to better facilitate comprehensive listening development.

 

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Keywords


bottom-up listening; top-down listening; EFL listening instruction; teacher perceptions; classroom practices

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejfl.v9i2.5936

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