Challenges Faced by Students in Listening to Teachers in University

This essay discusses the challenges faced by students in listening to their teachers in university. The challenges include accent, remembering information, duration of lecture, grasping ability of listener, vocabulary, tiredness, speed of speaker, semantic barrier, intra-culture, work load, and noise barrier. The essay also suggests ways to develop active listening ability within themselves, such as listening material, visualizing learning, short duration lectures, training and monitoring, absence of mind, other activities, minimizing distraction, reducing noise, and asking questions.

Assessment 2
Individual essay

INTRODUCTION
Listening is the soft skills which means that the receiver is able to understand the
message which is being conveyed by the sender to the receiver (Eveland Jr and et. al., 2020). For
having an effective communication it is important to listen what other person wants to
communicate. This essay includes the challenges faced by the students while listening to their
teachers. Their are numerous reasons why the students lost their focus and absence of mind in
between the lecture. Either due to the language barrier or culture barrier, sometimes the students
feel frustrated due to some person reasons this also leads in loosing the presence of mind. So to
overcome from these challenges various measures were also discussed in this essay. By which
the students can develop and improve there learning skills.
MAIN BODY
Describe some important challenges faced by the students at listening in the university.
 Accent – County to county the accent for speaking same language differs. Most of the
countries use English language for communication, but there accent is totally different
(Diamond, 2021). The other person know to speak in English but due to accent they will
lack behind. It's difficult for a person speaking in American accent to communicate with
a person speaking in Indian accent. The listener learners by listening words from the
speaker. The words used by the teachers should be easy to understand by the students in
order to have an effective communication. The students of other countries face this
challenges while leaving their native country.
 Remembering information – The students feels boring in listening things and they lost
their absence of mind (Perramon and Ugarte, 2020). The flow of communication and the
message which the teacher wants to deliver to the students breaks. This results in not
recalling the things what is being taught in the classes. By not listening the things
properly the students are not able to remember the part taught by their faculty. The
remembering capacity of the students starts declining when the students doesn't pay
attention during the lectures.
 Duration of lecture - The duration of lectures are long enough in the universities, with
this the students lost their energy and stamina. At the starting of the lecture they pays
attention to there teachers very actively, but by the end of the lecture they don't remember

anything. The longer duration makes the lecture boring and the students starts loosing
there interest towards the subject. This affects there listening skills as well as their
learning capacity, to avoid this the duration of the lectures could be shorten.
 Grasping ability of listener – Each and every student have different capacity to
understand things (Kuru Gönen, 2019). Some students learn things quickly while the
other student takes a lot of time in understanding thing. This all depends on the ability of
students and their grasping power. The lectures given by the faculty of the university is
same for every student. The student having good catching power will learn things quickly
as compared to the student having less ability to understand things. This is the major
challenge faced by average and below average students in a class. The confidence of the
students goes down when they are unable to answer the questions asked by their teachers.
 Vocabulary – When the students listen to the words which are easy and known by them,
then it develops the interest of the students to communicate with others. On the other
hand, if it is difficult for the students to understand the words used at the time of
communication then they lose their interest from the subject. They start feeling boring as
the things taught to them are difficult for them to understand. Selection of the words by
the teachers should be as convenient as possible so that the students develops interest in
their classes and improves their focus.
 Tired – The students not able to focus on the work properly when they feels tiered so
they feel diverted and their listen ability reduces. Due to laziness and in-activeness of
mind students may find it difficult to pay their attention in the class. The students having
more energy and stamina are trends to focus towards the studies more comfortability as
compare to the students having less energy.
 Speed of speaker – In case, the speed of the speaker is very fast then it would be difficult
for the students to understand the things their faculty wants to communicate with them.
The speed of the teachers should not be so fast and should not be so slow. The teachers
speaking with low speed will leads in boring lecture and the faculty speaking in a rapid
speed will leads in difficult for the students to understand concepts.
 Semantic barrier – The similar words have the different meaning in different countries.
When the students belongs to different countries they faces this problem of understanding
the meaning of the words (Hao and et. al., 2019). This is how the students

misinterpretation the meaning of the word which there teachers wants to communicate
with the students. Even if the student is listening to the teacher with full attention it will
be difficult for the students to understand the correct meaning of the words spoken by
their teachers. This is the big challenge faces by the students because due to this wrong
message is being delivered to the students.
 Intra-culture – The students belonging to different countries follows different cultures.
It is difficult for the students to understand the culture where they are living, apart from
the their native countries culture. The students will finds difficulty in understanding the
things which are being elaborated by their teachers. Teachers should prepare and though
the students in advance regarding it.
 Work load – When the students have lot the pressure then they are not able to work
effectively. Their mind get diverted and they feel anxiety and not able to listen what the
work is being given to them. The students do not feel good enough and this is how their
listening affected.
 Noise barrier – This barrier arises when the teacher wants to deliver it's message with
the students but due to some external factor the message is not delivered effectively to the
students. The students finds difficultly in listening due to occurrence of unnecessary
noise which is arise form the vehicles, some construction sites or any other elements
producing unnecessary noises.
Explain how students can develop active listening ability within themselves.
The ways through which the students can develop their listening skills are mentioned below -
 Listening material - The teachers should provide some listen material to the students, so
they can develop the habit of listing. The teachers can give this in the assignment or
homework format (Spataro and Bloch, 2018). So this will be mandatory for the students
to complete it at any cost. Initially the students will find difficultly in being habitual but
after sometime it will be easy for the students to perform it. This will improve the
learning ability and grasping power of the students. The students will start paying more
attention towards their faculty after this activity is performed.
 Visualise learning - The students are good at visualising as compared to listening. The
students learn thinks quickly by watching it as compared to listening it. Visualisation
makes the things learn easily and for longer duration of time. The students sometime

faces issues understanding languages, here if someone shows them things then they learn
it quickly (Rao, 2019). Also, they will pay more attention to the thing which are shown to
them. For example the story of the movies or web series are on tips of the students, the
reason behind it is that they are in picture format, they are visualising it and
understanding it more quickly. So the teachers should start teaching their students with
the help of some story or in a picture format, to improve the learning skills of the
students.
 Short duration lectures – The students get bored while attending the same lecture for
the long period of time (Mend, 2018). So the students get bored easily, to avoid this the
duration of the lectures should be short. By this the students will not loss there absence of
mind and will listen to their teachers with more concentration.
 Training and monitoring – The students belonging to other countries faces a lot of issue
in understanding the things communicated to them by their teachers. So it should be
responsibility of the teachers to provide them training regarding it. This will improve
their understanding, what the teachers wants to communicate. The training to there
students should also be provided before they took admission in the universities. By this
the students will not face difficultly in their lecture time and will get to learn more. This
will motive them to understand the accent of other countries too. After providing training
this is the responsibility of the teachers to monitor the students. The performance of the
students is either improving or not should be monitored by the teachers.
 Absence of mind – The students are physically present in the classes but they are not in
state of listening the things. The reason behind their absence of mind can be family
related issue or personal issues. But all this affect the presence of mind of the students.
The students pretend like they are listening to their students but in reality they are just
appeared in the college physically. They don't even understand what the teachers taught
them and are just lost in their own world.
 Other activities – The students should go through lectures, news, documentation,
television shows, musics in listening forms. All the activities will are possible to listen
should be performed in that way only. This will improve their listening ability. The time
students spends on listening things the more they will develop the habit of listen to their
teachers.

 Minimise distraction – When the students have some personal issues they feel diverted
and due to this their listening is affected. The personal issue may include the family or
friends issues too. Due to upset of mind, the students are not able to focus towards their
work properly. The students should avoid all this distractions by performing Yoga,
playing outdoor games, spending time with there love ones or performing the work which
makes them happy in order to increase there concentration power and this is how they
can focus on the things taught by their teachers.
 Reduce noise – The unnecessary noise occurred while the students are taking lectures.
The students should try to sit at the place where unnecessary noise do not occurred. This
will improve their focus and they will listen to their teachers more effectively. So place
where unnecessary or vehicle sounds occurs should be avoided.
 Ask questions – To check either the message or information given by the teachers are
delivered properly to teachers of not. The teachers should ask questions to the students
about the topic which they had taught to them. This will help the teachers to identify the
knowledge and listening ability of the students. Also their presence of mind can be
evaluated by performing these kinds of activities in the class.
CONCLUSION
From the above essay it can be concluded that for having a smooth communication
among students and teachers they should have the ability to understand each other points. The
students faces a lot of challenges at the time of listening. The reasons could be due to accents of
the teachers, speed of the teachers, duration of the lecture, difficulty in understanding hard
vocabulary and so on. But these challenges can be overcome easily if the students develop the
habit of listening. The teachers can give different listening task to the students which will help
them in increasing their focus. The time period of the lectures can be cut off. Numerous activates
can be performed by the students to improve their listening ability.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Diamond, U., 2021. Anticipating graduation: Listening to the voices of 12 women college
seniors. Qualitative Psychology, 8(2), p.264.
Eveland Jr and et. al., 2020. Listening during political conversations: Traits and
situations. Political Communication, 37(5), pp.656-677.
Hao, Y and et. al., 2019. An evaluative study of a mobile application for middle school students
struggling with English vocabulary learning. Computers in Human Behaviour, 95,
pp.208-216.
Kuru Gönen, S.İ., 2019. A qualitative study on a situated experience of technology integration:
Reflections from pre-service teachers and students. Computer Assisted Language
Learning, 32(3), pp.163-189.
Mend, Y., 2018. ELLs: English Listening Comprehension Development Through Digital
Literacy Practices. International Journal of Research in Social Sciences, 8(8), pp.161-
167.
Perramon, M. and Ugarte, X., 2020. Teaching interpreting online for the Translation and
Interpreting Degree at the University of Vic: A non stop challenge since
2001. Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 6(2), pp.172-182.
Rao, P.S., 2019. The significance of writing skills in ell environment. ACADEMICIA: An
International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 9(3), pp.5-17.
Spataro, S.E. and Bloch, J., 2018. “Can you repeat that?” Teaching active listening in
management education. Journal of Management Education, 42(2), pp.168-198.