Adelheid Marie Bwire

Learner Competence in English Listening Comprehension:: the Kenyan Case Adelheid Marie Bwire

Teaching and assessment of listening as an integral part of ELT has been ignored for long in Kenya. Listening has been assumed to be innate. It was not until 2006 that Kenya made efforts to integrate its teaching. This book is the product of a study to measure learners' listening comprehension competence. The study tested learners' listening proficiency, listening materials and teaching strategies used. Data was drawn from students and teachers through audio test, questionnaire,and content analysis. Statistics used were, means, ANOVA,correlations and the t- test. Course books were found to be deficient in listening materials,teachers were not deliberately trained on teaching listening skills and students performed poorly in listening. They scored better on explicit items than on inferential items. Urban school students had an edge over the rural students and those in boarding schools performed better on the Listening Comprehension Test (LCT) than those in day schools. There was no consistent relationship between girls' and boys' performance. It was concluded that gender did not make a difference in performance in LCT.