Strategies to Improve Listening Ability in Online Classes

This study explores strategies to improve listening ability in online classes, including using headphones, reducing distractions, and maintaining eye contact. It also provides recommendations for teachers to help students understand lectures.

Students Attend lectures
on Zoom
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Abstract
This present study will show effectiveness of some strategies like using headphones, not using
other applications in the background. All these can help students in improving learning as well as
listening abilities in students. Decreasing distractions like using other applications, interrupting
between sentences and between lectures all strategies also allow students in improving listening
ability. Some ways have all been shown in this study like asking questions after completion of
lectures and using incomplete hand also help teachers to make their students understand their
lectures.
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Table of Contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................................2
Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................4
Analysis and Discussion..................................................................................................................4
Evaluation of some strategies that students can use to improve their listening ability...............4
Recommendations............................................................................................................................5
Recommendations to teachers as how they can help students in understanding their lectures...5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8
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INTRODUCTION
An ability to listen all information and lectures in class clearly is known as listening ability
(Wah, 2019). This present study is going to show effectiveness of some strategies as how it can
help students in improving their listening ability and by which they can focus on their lectures.
Some strategies which this study will discuss include; using headphones, reducing distractions
and others. Listening ability plays an important role as it makes them able to focus on their study
and improving learning. Further, this study will also discuss some ways or recommendations by
which teachers can helps students in understanding their lectures in an effective manner such as:
taking reviews from students and making them able to know about their weakened areas.
MAIN BODY
Analysis and Discussion
Evaluation of some strategies that students can use to improve their listening ability
In the context of online classes and learning or teaching on Zoom it can be said that video
conference calls have become the new normal for educators with school close due to pandemic.
Students can connect with their educators and can continue their learning and Zoom is
considered one of the best applications which is providing several options to students for
improving their learning. As compare to offline classes, students find some problems in online
classes as teachers cannot focus on all students at once and cannot also keep eyes on them. But
still there are some students who want to learn new innovative things via Zoom and online
classes so, there are some best practices and strategies by which students can improve their
learning and can learn new things without facing any difficulty.
Pay attention: It is one of the best and effective ways as by paying attention on lecturers as what
they are saying, how they are explaining, students can increase their listening ability. It also
increases their concentration ability and they are less likely to skip or miss some important
information’s. So, by paying attention and reducing all distractions students can improve their
learning by increasing listening ability and can also get higher scores (Pardosi, 2018).
Using headphones: while attending online classes there is requirement of having a personal
room or space for listening and concentrating on lectures. Otherwise it may hamper to listening
but if in case students do not have space and are surrounded by people or family members then
they can make use of headphones. By using headphones, students can eliminate all distractions
and noise. It makes their voice clear and can focus on lecture which increases their listening
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ability. It is also said that students need to keep their microphone muted until it is their turn to
speak because at the same time it becomes difficult to listen views and answers of all students
and sometimes, more than 2 students speaks at the same time and their voice clashes and other
students find difficulties in listening it clearly. So, it is one of the other best ways of improving
listening ability and learning new innovating ideas in online classes and learning on Zoom.
Improving connection: It is stated that at the time of online classes, students find problems in
concentrating and also in listening lectures clearly and one of the main factor is distraction and
poor connection. So, it can be said that students by not using other applications which can
distract them from learning, students can increasing listening ability. It decreases distraction and
improves concentration which leads to effective listening to lectures. Students miss or skip some
important information due to poor connection and all other applications running in the
background. So, focusing on only one application and learning at one time is one of the effective
ways because it decreases distraction and improve listening ability (Hanifah, 2020).
Reducing interruption and maintaining eye contact: In online classes and in offline both,
students need to maintain eye contact or focus on educators as what they are saying, how they
are explaining. It is stated and believed that eye contact helps students in understanding lectures
in an effective manner and also increases concentration. When students only focus on educators
and lecture then they are more likely to listen all information given by educators which increases
their listening ability and they can learn new things and all those things taught in the class.
Students need to let their speaker to complete sentence and without interrupting between the
sentence, students can improve listening ability and can also allow teachers to improve their
teaching.
So, from the above discussed all ways and strategies it can be said that students can improve
their listening as well as learning ability in both online and offline classes.
Recommendations
Recommendations to teachers as how they can help students in understanding their lectures
There are several ways by which teachers can make their students able to understand all
their lectures in a very effective manner by which they can get high scores in tests. Online
teaching is quite difficult than teaching offline to students because teachers find problems in
focusing on all students in online class. It becomes difficult to measure and identify that whether
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students are getting their lectures or not. So, in this context some effective ways can be
recommended to all teachers such as:
Encouraging active learning: It is difficult for students to remain engaged with a lecture even
for 50 minutes. So, it can be recommended to teachers that they should focus on engaging their
students by changing topics and in between lectures giving breaks to students (Ludvigsen, Ness
and Timmis, 2019).
Asking questions: It is believed that for understanding lectures and all information taught in
lectures, it is important of keeping interest and making sure by teachers as students are
understanding or not. Teachers want thaeir students to memorize information and to engage with
it. So, by asking right questions between the lecture and in breaks, teachers can make sure that
how many students are understanding lectures. According to this, they can make changes in
strategies of teaching and can make it interesting for helping students in understanding their
lectures (7 Ways to engage students in lecture,. 2016).
Using demonstrations: It is believed that many students learn by linking information with some
examples and practical and other situations. It helps them out in understanding in an effective
manner. So, it can be recommended to teachers that they should make use of some effective and
relevant demonstrates and examples by which students can take interest and can understand
lectures with examples (Meyer, Müller and Niemann, 2018). Some authors also believe that real
world examples are valuable and effective ways to demonstrate and making students understand
lecture.
Teacher and student centered learning: In this teaching technique instructor chooses topic and
after selecting topic they evaluate students learning by focusing on making classroom quiet.
Teachers ask students to cooperate and work in pairs as it is believed that when students work in
pairs and talk to teachers in between lectures then they are likely to understand lectures.
Clear signposting: It is a linking key learning points in order to specific learning outcomes
between activities. In this method, teacher given signs to all students as what they are actually
doing in the lecture and what is the main aim of lecture.
Concept questions: In this teaching technique, teacher can ask concept checking questions from
all students in order to make sue if students are understanding the actual meaning of language
and lecture or not. Same question is being asked from all students in order to understand the
main concept to students.
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Intonation activities: There are some intonations activities which increase interest of learners in
lectures such as: video warms up, stress shifting and others. Teachers also provide worksheet
activities of sentence for all students which consist of summary of lecture and allow students in
understanding them (Mestre Segarra, 2017).
Clear structure of lecture: In this lecture method of teaching, teacher requires to given oral
presentation to students by summarizing lecture as what was the moral and meaning of the
lecture. It is the method of relaying factual information which includes principles, ideas and
other factual knowledge related to the topic, defined to students.
Feedback: It is one of the other main effective ways in which teachers can ask for suggestions
and queries whatever students have related to the lecture. By asking queries and evaluating them,
teacher can identify that what is the main problem which students are facing and if their teaching
style is appropriate or not. In addition, after taking weekly tests, teachers can give feedbacks to
students with appropriate comments where students require focusing. It can help students in
understanding that where are they lacking behind and on which area they need to improve. So,
overall it can be said that given feedbacks by tutors and queries asked by students can help
teachers in helping out their students in better understanding of lectures (Kääntä and Kasper,
2018).
CONCLUSION
It has been summarized from above study that recording and other options play an
important role in online learning and lectures. Advanced technology is allowing people to make
their functions easier and as like this it is also allowing to teachers and students to improve their
learning and teaching abilities. It also makes them able to cope up with this changing
requirements and all changing situation. With the help of some strategies students can improve
their listening ability and can learn new things. Further, it has also shown some effective ways by
which teachers can help their students in understanding their lectures taught in online classes in
an effective and better way.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Hanifah, N., 2020. The Listening Strategies of the Senior High School Students: An
Overview. RETAIN, 8(2).
Kääntä, L. and Kasper, G., 2018. Clarification requests as a method of pursuing understanding in
CLIL physics lectures. Classroom Discourse, 9(3), pp.205-226.
Ludvigsen, K., Ness, I.J. and Timmis, S., 2019. Writing on the wall: How the use of technology
can open dialogical spaces in lectures. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 34, p.100559.
Mestre Segarra, M.Á., 2017. How to teach intonation to EFL students: A focus on
communicative teaching methods.
Meyer, M., Müller, T. and Niemann, A., 2018. Serious Lecture vs. Entertaining Game Show-
Why we need a Combination for improving Teaching Performance and how Technology
can help. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Education and New
Learning Technologies (EDULEARN 2018).
Pardosi, T., 2018. Improving Student’s listening Ability with Top Down and Bottom Up
Strategies At Eight Grade of SMP NEGERI 37 Medan.
Wah, N.N., 2019. Teaching Listening Skills to English as a Foreign Language Students through
Effective Strategies. International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and
Development (IJTSRD), 3(6).
ONLINE
7 Ways to engage students in lectures. 2016. Online Available through: <
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/learningteaching/Learning-and-Teaching-Support/
QuickGuides/kcl-qg/dl/7ways-engage-students-lectures.pdf>
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