Analysis of the Design of Grade 9 Listening Lessons in the Student’s Book and Teacher's Guide of English for Ethiopia

Abstract

The study was conducted to examine the design of the listening lessons in the Grade 9 English for Ethiopia. The objective of the study was to see how the listening lessons were presented to identify if there were problems related to the design. The study employed a descriptive research design using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. It used content analysis as data gathering tool, where both the Student Textbook and the Teacher's Guide were analyzed based on the checklist adapted from NCLRC (2004) and Lingzhu (2008). The findings of the study have shown that the three stages of listening were not properly addressed in the materials evaluated, with the exclusion of the pre-listening activities in the majority of the listening lessons and the post-listening stage was missing in the majority of cases. The finding also showed that the input sources and the text types were not proportionally treated in the Textbook evaluated and the activities are comprehension exercises dominated, giving little attention to the other listening sub- skills. Hence, the study recommended that if the listening skill has to be taught effectively and the listening proficiency has to be properly addressed, the design of the listening lessons have to be reconsidered.