Challenges and Strategies for Improving Listening Skills in Academic Context

This essay explores the challenges faced by students in developing listening skills in academic context and strategies that teachers can use to improve these skills. The challenges include linguistic challenges, grammatical errors, physical distance from lecturer and speaker, and complex sentence structures. Teachers can use various strategies such as taking feedback, asking questions frequently, providing notes, and using new technologies to facilitate good listening to their students.

STUDY SKILLS FOR
HIGHER EDUCATION
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Assessment-1
Listening skills in academic context
Study skills are the skills which students need to master for various academic situations.
Listening skills are one of those skills which students need to acquire in order to interpret their
academic sessions (Cottrell, 2019). These skills are useful on various occasions such as meetings
and discussions with tutors or any formal and informal interactions. Listening skills are needed
in general so that they are able to interact properly with administrative staff and people. In this
essay various challenges to listening skills will be explored. The strategies which teachers can
adapt to improve these skills of students will also be discussed.
The major listening challenge which students may face are linguistic challenges. These
challenges include speed, accent and vocabulary used by lecturer while delivering lecture. If the
speed of the lecture is too fast, the students will not be able to listen it properly and therefore will
be unable to understand it (Sahlén and et.al., 2020). The accent of lecturer i.e. the way they
pronounce words might be different for some students. They might not understand some words
and confuse them with other words. This creates misunderstandings and own understanding of
students. As a result, they interpret the lecture according their understanding and understand
different meaning to sessions and interactions. Special vocabulary used by the lecturer that
includes academic words which students might not have heard before create a barrier in
understanding. The students might not be able to process the lecture and interactions. This can
cause non-understanding of academic sessions which can harm their studies.
When people from different cultures, education and origin backgrounds interact, the
listening challenge might arise. Here the challenge can be grammatical errors. Some people
might start sentences in wrong way which might be completely normal in their cultures but the
person they are interacting might interpret it very differently. Other grammatical errors such as
unnecessary words used in words and long sentences can also affect the listening skills. Long
sentences can be difficult to process (Astika, 2019). They might need more time to interpret
which can create a listening challenge for them. Grammatical challenge also includes the
complex noun phrases used by lecturers or staff. Students are used to speak and listen the
academic language which they learn from books and sessions. When in the interaction or during
lecture complex noun phases are used they might not be able to interpret it.
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Another listening challenge is layers of information in one sentence. This challenge arise
when the lecturer or the person interacting provide various layers of information in a single
sentence (Tate and Hopkins, 2020). The students might not be able to understand the hole
information at once. The speaker might use a single sentence with multiple clauses to express
singular information. Listener will not be able to pile up every information disclosed, which
leads to skipping of information. They might not able to keep of every thing discussed, which
creates a challenge for the students. The speaker might use abbreviation for some words which
might be unfamiliar to the students. This can create a listening challenge as they are unable to
interpret what they are listening. Embedded references used by lecturer which the students do not
remember can also create barriers in understanding.
Students are used to interpret simple language which they use in their everyday life. They
understand the language they have learnt from books and studies. Complex structure of sentences
used by the lecturer can create a listening challenge for the students. They structure of sentence
might be complicated which can confuse the students (McClelland, 2017). This confusion can
become a barrier in understanding of the lecture. Complex sentence structures need additional
time to interpret and in the continuous lecture it is not possible for the student to hold that much
of information. Teachers can use simple language and not use accent while delivering lecture so
that the students do not get confused. If any complicated word or an unusual word is used in
delivering lecture, the teacher should provide/ interpret meaning for the same immediately.
Physical distance can become a listening challenge as distance between speaker and
listener can create poor understanding of lecturer delivered. If the lecturer is delivering the
lecture at a considerable distance from the students and there are no microphone or speakers
available the student will be unable to hear the lecture delivered. Physical distance can also affect
the interpretation of PowerPoint Presentation (Duvaraganathan, Edison and Evangeline, 2021).
The students might see the presentation but not hear the conversation. This can become a barrier
in understanding. Body language and gestures also pays a vital part in the understanding of
communication. Due to physical distance, students might not see the body language and gestures
of the speaker. Thus, they will not be able to interpret the message conveyed through lecturer
effectively. This can cause students disturbance and distraction from the topic being conveyed in
the lecture.
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Teachers need to identify if their students are able to understand the lecture being
delivered. They can use various strategies to improve the listening skills of their students. The
first straggly which teachers can use to develop the listening skills of their students is to prepare
a pre-lecture handout on the lecture topic (Santos, 2018). Teachers should use the simple
language while delivering lecture. Using simple language will let the students interpret their
sessions and interactions easily. If the teacher provides notes for the lecture they are delivering, it
will be easy for students to keep track of what teacher is communicating. Teachers should use
academic language as it is they key language of lecture i.e. speculation, degree of certainty and
language of association. Notes can be an association of lecture and evaluation for the students
and teachers both. This will facilitate the students in reprocessing the information gathered from
the lectures using the notes provided.
One of the best strategy is to keep ask questions throughout the lecture. If the teacher
asks the questions in between the lectures it will stop the students from being distracted (Nemec,
Spagnolo and Soydan, 2017). It will also maintain the interest of students in the topic. This will
let the teacher know if all the students are able to hear the lecture. It will also facilitate the
teacher to identify how much of lecture is understandable to the students. It will let the students
to be attentive and focused during lectures.
Teachers can use new technologies which can facilitate them improvements in the
listening skills of their students. These technologies can include microphones and speakers. The
teachers can use speaker while delivering the lecture so that the lecture is audible to every
student. Speakers can be installed if the number of students is large (Rahmawati, 2021). Screens
and laptops can be provided to students through which they can see the lecturer. This will
facilitate the students to understand and interpret the body language and gestures made by the
lecturer. There are many other resources available to the teachers which they can use such as:
massive open courses, TED (Technology, Education, Design), YouTube or Open access
resources at the university. These can facilitate the students if they have missed something from
the lecture (Puspita, 2021). Also, watching something rather than reading lets the listener better
remember the things being said.
Taking feedback after the lectures is another successful strategy to improve listening
skills. Asking questions after delivering a lecture can let the teacher analyse the level of
understanding of their students. Students will pay attention to the lecture when they know they
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have to answer questions (James, 2021). They will listen carefully what hey have been taught.
They will also be interested in listening. It can also let the teacher identify what and where
students are lacking.
Another strategy the teachers can use is interring meanings of lectures. It means teachers
should use clues and prior knowledge bout a situation to describe the meaning of what students
hear. Students even if they are not able to hear properly can understand the meaning from
interring meanings (Jabbarova, 2020). In simple words it means that if teachers use contextual
clues and knowledge of the world during lectures, they students will be able to identify what is
being said and what is taking place. This strategy can also be used in online classes or video
lectures. Teachers can provide subtitles of their lectures and the students will be able to
understand it though reading subtitles or description.
From the above essay it can be concluded that listening skills are a vital part of student's
life. Listening skills are needed in everyday life as well as in the academic situations of students.
However, there are certain challenges faced by students which hinders their listening. Linguistic
challenges, grammatical errors and physical distance from lecturer and speaker can affect the
flow of communication. Teachers can use various strategies such as taking feedback, asking
questions frequently and providing notes to facilitate good listening to their students. It can help
the teachers in better delivery of lecturers whereas it can facilitate the students in better listening
and interpretation of lectures.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals:
Astika, G., 2019, August. Academic listening in EFL context: what are the challenges?. In
VietTESOL International Convention 2019.
Cottrell, S., 2019. The study skills handbook. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Duvaraganathan, P., Edison, K.T.A. and Evangeline, H.M., A Study of Challenges and
Strategies of Effective Listening to the L2Learners. Journal of Seybold Report ISSN NO.
1533. p.9211.
Jabbarova, A., 2020. The Importance of Teaching Listening via Listening Strategies. Архив
Научных Публикаций JSPI.
James, P., 2021. Technology advancement for functional listening difficulties. Technology.
McClelland, S.I., 2017. Vulnerable listening: Possibilities and challenges of doing qualitative
research. Qualitative Psychology. 4(3). p.338.
Nemec, P.B., Spagnolo, A.C. and Soydan, A.S., 2017. Can you hear me now? Teaching listening
skills. Psychiatric rehabilitation journal. 40(4). p.415.
Puspita, D., 2021, August. TED-Talk: A Listening Supplemental Material for Learning English.
In The 1st International Conference on Language Linguistic Literature and Education
(ICLLLE).
Rahmawati, F., 2021. Teaching Listening of University Level through Online Learning System:
A Case Study. Jurnal Penelitian, Pendidikan, dan Pembelajaran. 16(17).
Sahlén, B. and et.al., 2020. Children Listen: Psychological and Linguistic Aspects of Listening
Difficulties During Development. Frontiers in Psychology. 11.
Santos, R.S., 2018. Improving young learners´ listening skills through storytelling (Doctoral
dissertation).
Tate, S. and Hopkins, P., 2020. Listening Skills. In Studying Geography at University. (pp. 67-
72). Routledge.
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