Improving Listening Skills for Higher Education Students

This article discusses the importance of listening skills for higher education students and the challenges they face in improving them. It also provides strategies for teachers to help students improve their listening skills for academic and professional excellence.

Study Skills for
Higher Education

Table of Contents
ASSESSMENT 1 ............................................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

ASSESSMENT 1
INTRODUCTION
Higher education plays a significant role in the life of every individual for career
advancement and professional development. For growing in a professional manner, students at
graduation level are required to develop and enhance the core skills that will provide them
effective growth opportuneness for getting success in their career. For example, at the graduation
level, they must improve some skills like Listening skills i.e. an individual's ability to receive
and interpret the information in the process of communication(Yoon, and Templeton, 2019).
These skills are required to be developed at graduate level so as to effectively understand the
lecture delivery, communication at seminars , etc. In the following essay, the listening challenges
and strategies to improve the listening skills are being discussed.
TASK
Students have to face many listening challenges at graduate level that they need to
improve by enhancing their listening skills. They may face the linguistic challenges while the
delivery of lectures due to the different accent of various professors at the university. The
linguistic challenges may include the speed of delivery, the accent that professor is using while
delivering the lecture, the vocabulary i.e. the academic or specialist. Some students also face
grammatical challenges due to the false starts , long sentences and their inability to understand
the complex noun phrases. So, they need to work on their grammatical knowledge and academic
as well as specialist vocabulary so as to overcome the challenges in listening skills. Some of the
main listening challenges that the students face at graduation level are explained here.
Individuals also have to face the challenges of understanding the technical terms used by
the professors during the lecture or by the speaker at the seminars due to which students face
inability to understand the topic that is being conveyed to them. The technical terms that can be
difficult to hear , pronounce or spell and understand like thrombolysis, hemicraniectomy etc.
Students feel it inconvenient to understand the words pronounced by that they also don't know
the meaning of as a result of which they are unable to get the crux of the topic that impact their
academic studies in a major way (Hedger, and Johnsrude, 2022). Students who face these
challenges face problems at masters level or professional level as well and are not able to get
admission at the big universities that affect their career due to weak communication skills.

Another listening challenge include the false starts and repetition in the communication
that disrupts the interpretation of the students for the communication being delivered to them.
False starts refers to the act of starting an utterance and later discontinue it before the
completion. They can sometimes make the students to rely less on the communication being
delivered to them. But the false starts do not occur much as compared to the repetitions or
corrections. Students may face false starts at the seminars where the conversation becomes
intense where there are many speakers speaking instantaneously o when a speaker is interrupted.
Abbreviations and acronyms use in the conversation or communication also pose a
listening changeling to the students and interpreting the information being conveyed to them.
Some of the common abbreviations at the academics level that are used by the professors can be
understood by the students such as Amt i.e. an abbreviation for amount, USA etc. but when the
abbreviations are heard at the seminars or while listening to the presentation, some unheard
abbreviations or acronyms cause a listening challenge to make the topic understandable to the
students (Romero, 2018). If any student hits an abbreviation that the one is not familiar with, the
individual faces many problems in drawing the conclusions on communication that has been
delivered.
The use of unnecessary words in the communication to make it more sensible can
sometimes lead to wrong interpretation of the topic and doesn't really help anyone. When the
professors use the superfluous word to make their speech more effective, it can make the
communication complex to understand by each and every individual that can be considerer as an
another listening challenge that the students face at graduation level. For example, the use of
work 'So' , 'actually' , etc. can make the speech less effective to the listeners. The use of
unnecessary words can be seen in case of professors in delivering the lectures because speakers
at the seminars are prepared enough to use convenient words.
The complex and convoluted structures used in the presentation and explaining them to
the students can be difficult for the students due to the complex structure and the use of
complexive noun phrases at the communication can make more complexive for the students to
understand and interpret. The acute treatment that has been taken into consideration in over past
ten years like thrombolysis and hemicraniectomy do also pose listening challenge to the students
due to their inability to understand the structured information and complex nouns. Apart from the
above challenges, the students also have to face different cultures and multilinguistics of

different lecturers when they are taking education from abroad. This also cause inability to listen
and interpret the delivery of information in an effective manner (Sherstad, 2019). Individuals
need to work on the above listening challenges so as to improve their listening skills and develop
their communication skills for academic as well as professional excellence so as to to ensure
career enhancement and growth.
Professors and teachers at the college are required to use effective strategies to help the
students in improving their listening skills. They must ensure the effective delivery of
information and train the students to understand the communication and conversation by
improving their listening skills in an effective manner so as to be able to understand the delivered
information at any place i.e. university, convocation, seminar etc. some of the strategies that the
teachers must use for improving the listening skills of students are discussed here.
Teachers can encourage students to make an eye contact while conversation with the
professors in the class or while answering the questions put up by those professors. This will
strengthen their interacting skills with the professors and make them confident to ask with the
teachers the respective queries during the running of class. For example, they can ask the
meaning of complex noun or phrases used by the teachers or they can ask the abbreviations or
acronyms etc.
Teachers can also use the Feedback technique to improve the listening skills of the
students. They can make the students take feedbacks on their performance. For example, students
can get their queries solved with the teachers after the class so as to ask the related doubts with
the lecture. They can use the feedback techniques in virtual mode as well to strengthen more the
listening skills of the students. If they continuously use this technique, there will be a much more
improvement in the listening and communication skills of the students.
Paraphrasing technique can also be used by the teachers to make the students
strengthen their listening skills. They can make the students paraphrase the topic so as to clarify
it and interpret in a better manner. It will also provide the student with more terms to learn and
understand and use them afterwards. Learning the new terms by paraphrasing technique will also
help the students at any new place i.e. at seminars and while delivering presentation as well
(Giuliani, Brown, and Wu, 2021).
Practice public speaking in the class would also help the teachers in improving the
listening skills of students. The teachers can organise the easily programmes in the class itself to

encourage the students for public speaking that will enhance the listening skills of the students
with improving their communications skills as well while ensuring their confident to speak as
well. They can prepare the students with the speeches and train them on pronunciation by
providing them with a proficient English professor so as to improve their listening skills.
Teachers can use the various listening techniques to provide the students with effective
listening strategies such as they can provide the students relevant materials to use and refer the
listening techniques like informational listening that is used to retain the information that will
encourage the students to read more and learn listening skills. Other listening techniques that can
be used by the teachers include sympathetic listing, comprehensive listening, critical listening,
Therepuetic listening etc.(Luker, 2022. So the teachers can use the above techniques and
strategies to strengthen the listening skills of students that will enhance their career growth by
providing them with good employment opportunities due to their academic and professionless
excellence through learning these skills.
CONCLUSION
The above report has highlighted the the importance of listening skills in the life of
students at the academics as well as professional level. It has discussed some of the listening
challenges that students face at graduation level and that they need to improve for their carer
advancement. It has been identified that false starts and abbreviations are the mostly faced by
students in listening and interpreting. The report has also recommended some strategies that the
teachers can use to improve the listening skills of the students that include feedback taking and
paraphrasing technique etc.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Giuliani, N.P., Brown, C.J. and Wu, Y.H., 2021. Comparisons of the sensitivity and reliability
of multiple measures of listening effort. Ear and hearing, 42(2), pp.465-474.
Hedger, S.C.V. and Johnsrude, I.S., 2022. Speech perception under adverse listening conditions.
In Speech Perception (pp. 141-171). Springer, Cham.
Luker, M.J., 2022. Matrix listening; or, what and how we can learn from historical sound
recordings. Ethnomusicology, 66(2), pp.290-318.
Romero, J.P.A., 2018. The ethics of listening: regarding the pain of War in Colombia.
Sherstad, P.S., 2019. Exploring the Higher Education Listening Experiences of Generation
Z (Doctoral dissertation, Regent University).
Yoon, H.S. and Templeton, T.N., 2019. The practice of listening to children: The challenges of
hearing children out in an adult-regulated world. Harvard Educational Review, 89(1),
pp.55-173.