Challenges and Strategies for Improving Listening Skills in Higher Education

SKILLS FOR HIGHER
EDUCATION
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Skills for higher education are the skills that individuals need for their development
which involve compositions, communication, problem solving and communication etc., in their
education. These skills are important for the growth of an individual for their future careers.
These skills can enhance the confidence, competence and self-esteem of the students. However,
they can listening have few barriers too. In this essay, the different listening challenges will be
discussed from the given case study. The strategies which teachers can adapt to help their
students in improving their listening skills will also be discussed.
Listening skills refers to the abilities to listen effectively the messages and understanding
them in the same way the messenger conveyed (Assiter, 2017). Listening is the key to an
effective communication a without the ability to listen effectively the messages conveyed in the
communication can be easily misunderstood. It is the most important skill in the higher
education. Effective listening is important as it shows the messenger they empathize and show
that the listener is serious and understands the messenger being conveyed.
However, if the listening skills are not easy to adapt and often have various challenges.
The most common challenge in listening is linguistic challenge which makes it difficult for the
students to recognize the individual words in the flow of a communication. As students are used
to perceive words written as separate entities in their books and papers (Yurko and Styfanyshyn,
2020). These challenges include the speed of delivery, academic & special vocabulary and
accent. Sometimes the listening material is made up of everyday conversation so it may contain a
lot of casual words and expressions such as a slang. As students are mainly exposed to formal
and bookish language, so they might not be familiar with those expressions.
Additionally, linguistic challenges can also include grammatical complexity of the
message being conveyed such as long sentences, complex noun phrases and false starts used by
the speaker which might be difficult for the listener to interpret (Kirbas, 2017). The conversation
might include some technical terms which can be difficult to hear, pronounce, spell and
understand for the listener. Speaker can use words with dependent prepositions which express
specific relational meanings for the listener and the speaker. There are many abbreviations and
acronyms which can have different meanings in different contexts. So the speaker might be
explaining something and the listener might interpret something else from it.
The cultural differences can also become a challenge in the listening of the students.
These differences can be the speaker's accent and assumptions about the information being
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shared and their roles in the conversation (Eggenberger, 2021). The cultural barriers can include
language, as the people from different cultures have different languages and words interpretation
in their cultures. This can cause misunderstanding between the speaker and the listener. In some
cultures the signs and symbols can mean differently so the speaker might intents to interpret
something but the listener might not understand the same.
The content of the lecture can itself become a barrier in the listening. The content might
be too long which might take a bit longer to understand by the listener (Celik, 2017). However,
until then it can cause the listener to lack behind the topic. Sometimes the content of the lecture
includes the prepositions which express relational meanings to the speaker and listener which
can cause misunderstanding of the content. The complex structures such as noun phrases used in
the content of the lecture can also make it difficult for the listener to understand the message
conveyed.
Another challenge in listening is cognitive barrier. These barriers include the difference
between the speech and processing which can give the listener time to think about other things
while the speaker is communicating. Therefore, it can limit the listener's ability to concentrate
upon the lecture being conveyed (Oxford, 2019). These barriers can be caused by lack of
preparation of lightening, disorganized messages which can interfere with the listening skill
where only half of the mind is processing the lecture.
Students might also feel visual challenges which can affect their listening. Visual
challenges can occur from physical setting as if the student is sitting far from the audio and
visual aids being provided during the lecture. They can also arise when the lecture is being
presented through the power point slides and the listener might find difficult to see and hear the
slides. This can cause them in non-understanding of the lecture (Gafurova, 2020). The noises
during the lecture can also take the mind-off of the listener. Physical distance can also cause the
students to not recognize the speaker's body language and expressions which can make it more
difficult for the listener to understand the speaker's conversation and their meanings. The
physical distance of teachers from the students can also affect the listening of the students as they
might it hard t recognize the facial expressions and body language of the speaker across from the
distance. So the teachers should prefer taking the classes in low masses and arrange the sitting
arrangement in such a way that all the students can see the speaker clearly.
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