DefinePK

Abstract

This study is aimed to investigate the challenges faced by teachers to enhance listening skills in English at the high income and low income schools in Lahore using interpretivism. Interpretivism as a paradigm assumes that reality is subjective and can differ considering different individuals. (Alharahsheh, 2019) To achieve the objective of this study, this paper elaborates the importance of the challenges faced by teachers using two instruments: a questionnaire for teachers and informal interviews. The questionnaire was intended to explore the challenges that teachers face in teaching listening skills, the acquisition and importance of syntactic knowledge of teachers, engaging a new model and incorporating top-down processing skills. 5-6 teachers from each type of school were requested to fill it. Another convenient option planned was through informal interviews of volunteer teachers, ideally 2-3 from each type of school. The results derived from the questionnaire revealed details from three targeted domains. The questionnaire was filled by high and low income school teachers with 5-12 years of experience. The interview funneled it down to the issue of how parental support and improvement of teachers own syntactic knowledge can support the purpose. Applying the interpretivist approach in this qualitative study would help in gaining the in-depth knowledge regarding the challenges. Qualitative research is aimed to attain deep understanding of a specific issue to enable finding quality responses throughout the research (Creswell, 2002; Easterby et al., 2008; Biggam, 2008). The findings of the study will benefit teaching practice and curriculum development for listening skills.