The difficulties that secondary school students may face in listening skills and how they can improve them

This study aims to explain the importance of listening skills in teaching and learning the English language, which is the most important skill of all the skills in language, and it is a fundamental skill for speaking. It also explores the importance of listening skills for learning English. Teaching listening skills in secondary schools presents significant challenges for teachers. This study examines the difficulties teachers face, including time constraints, noise, and limited access to appropriate teaching resources. Additionally, there is a lack of awareness of the importance of this skill and a lack of technological resources. The study focuses on strategies for overcoming these obstacles, such as providing listening skills teaching tools and using audio devices. The findings emphasize the importance of teacher development programs that raise awareness of the importance of this skill and administrative support for improving the teaching of listening skills. By effectively addressing these challenges, teachers can enhance students' ability to comprehend spoken language, which is an essential part of language acquisition. This study was conducted in secondary schools in the Al-Dawon district of Tarhuna during the 2024/2025 academic year. The sample consisted of 14 male and female secondary school students. The researchers used a descriptive questionnaire in the study. It is also maintained that listening is not a passive skill but an active process in language learning process of constructing meaning from a stream of sounds. This study has also tried to give a brief introduction of what is essential to know about listening skills with opinions from various scholars. The common difficulties that EFL students face are figured out and highlighted in some strategies that are suggested by the researchers to help EFL students to improve their English listening skills. The researcher aimed to make some recommendations according to these constraints and difficulties in order to minimize these difficulties in the future.