Study Skills for Higher Education

This report discusses the importance of listening skills in higher education and explores the challenges students face in listening. It also provides strategies for teachers to help students improve their listening skills. The report concludes with personal experiences of listening challenges and strategies for becoming a better listener.

Study skills for higher
Education

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
Discuss three of the listening challenges mentioned in the article above..............................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................2
Suggest three strategies teachers can use to help students improve their listening skills......2
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................3
Describe some listening challenges you have experienced and the strategies that have helped
you become a better listener...................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
References:.......................................................................................................................................5
Books and Journals.................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Listening skills is ability to adequately receive and interpret what other has communicated in a
verbal and oral mode of communication. Students are required to have good listening skills in
order to interpret what teachers are saying in the various academic fields (Nichols and Straus,
2021). Lack of listening skills can really affect the message received by someone and can be
misunderstood. There is essential need of listening skills in order to understand the content
delivered by the teacher during the lecture at the speed. Present report will outline the different
challenges during the listening and the strategies that teachers adopt in order to improve the
listening skills of the students.
MAIN BODY
TASK 1
Discuss three of the listening challenges mentioned in the article above
Abbreviations and short forms: the abbreviations are a major problem in listening as there are
multiple full forma of a common abbreviation and which is very difficult for a listener to analyse
the meaning of the abbreviation at a correct place in a sentence which makes the complete
sentence useless for the listener by lacking its meaning. The abbreviations like FOMO, ED etc.
are so difficult o analyse while listening in speed and continuous manner.
Grammatical complexity: the grammatical complexity is also is major challenge in the listening
process. The grammatical complexity includes the long sentences, incorrect start of sentence,
complex noun phrases (Yurko and Styfanyshyn, 2020). Sometimes due to incorrect use of past
and future sentence make the sentence incorrect and misunderstood by the listener. The
repetition and the false start of sentence is also a grammatical challenge that listener face during
listening which not only change the meaning of sentence but sometimes also make the listener
difficulty in interpreting the message correctly.
Technical terms: This challenge is about the technical terms which can be complex and difficult
to listen to, recognize and pronounce such as Worcestershire, Isthmus and many more the biggest
listening challenge as is not understand they can change the meaning of the sentence and also
make the listener confuse which breaks the flow of listening and thereby distract the listener
(Eggenberger, 2021).
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TASK 2
Suggest three strategies teachers can use to help students improve their listening skills
Reading activity
This is strategy in which teacher can ask randomly any student to read the paragraph from the
where the previous student has left. This activity will make the student pay attention and
concentration to listen on what the other student is reading. By this student will increase its
concentration power of listening and also by this teacher can make student listen each and every
word the other students are speaking this will all help the students to analyse the different
pronunciation of a similar word by different students and will make them learn the technique of
listening to different accents, speed and vocabulary (Djabbarova, 2021).
Audio listening activity
The teacher and organise an audio activity where students will be asked to listen a audio and then
write whatever they listen in their own words and then read it aloud in whole class. The first
stage of stage activity listening audio will teach students the listening with open mind and with
full concentration. The second stage will determine with how much concentration the student has
listened and how much correctly the student is able to interpret what he/she has listened, the third
stage will help the students to listen other perspective of one audio that everyone has listened so
that by listening others audio they determine their mistakes. By this activity the teacher can
improve the listening skills to great extent very effectively and efficiently (Abdullaeva and
Khudoyqulova, 2021).
Group activity
In this activity the teacher will divide the class into group of 6-7 students and ask them to speak
one by one their name, 5 hobbies and 3 favourite colours and others will hear them carefully.
After everyone speaks, randomly any student will be asked to tell other students hobbies and
favourite colour which will tell how much carefully the students have listened each other’s
hobbies and favourite colour. This activity will help the teacher in engaging students actively in
listening each other thereby improving their listening skills (Joura and Rudova, 2020).
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TASK 3
Describe some listening challenges you have experienced and the strategies that have helped you
become a better listener
Speed of delivery: the excess fast and very slow delivery of speech is the problem that I have
faced during the listening the lectures in the class some teachers used to deliver very fast delivery
and some very slow.
Accent: the way of speaking and pronouncing a word is major challenge I faced during my
foreign class language as some people have different accent of English due to difference of
culture which make difficult for me to understand correctly every sentence thereby distracting
and breaking the flow of listening (Kukayeva and Tazhibayeva, 2020).
Background noise barrier: the background noises are the biggest barrier of the listening as the
noises make the listener unable to hear the important information. I think this is the biggest
challenge in the listening as listener and speaker are not able to communicate properly and
improper listening and unclear voice causes misunderstanding of message.
In order to become active listener I joined a social group where I didn’t know anyone personally
and there I used to listen everyone experience, views, problems which helped me in becoming
the active listener thereby also improving my critical thinking skills. The place was so good to
improve listening as everyone their use to silently without noise listen each other’s stories. This
helped me a lot in improving my listening skills (Zhang, 2020). When I use to walk in morning I
used to listen the audio tapes one hour which also helped me increasing my listening and
interpretation skills as well.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report that it is very important to have good listening skills in
order to understand the message communicated by the other person while having vocal
communication. It is analysed that among students listening skills are considered to be very
important in order to build critical thinking and also to interact with other students and the
administration staff. Listening has the various challenges like speed of delivery language to
challenges grammatical complexity technical terms long sequences and much more that are
required to be mitigated in order to have smooth and barrier free communication. Therefore there
are multiple methods by which students and other individual can improve their listening skills
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such as listening to audio and tapes interact with more people and try to concentrate by listening
avoid unnecessary sounds and disturbance and much more. It is concluded that an active listener
is considered as more productive and better learner.
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References:
Books and Journals
Abdullaeva, A.E. and Khudoyqulova, D.K., 2021. Psycholinguistic features of teaching listening
to students of higher educational institution. CEN
Djabbarova, N., 2021. TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS WITH ONLINE DIGITAL
TOOLS. Mental Enlightenment Scientific-Methodological Journal. 2021(1). pp.30-39.
Eggenberger, A.L., 2021. Active listening skills as predictors of success in community college
students. Community College Journal of Research and Practice. 45(5). pp.324-333.
Joura, V.V. and Rudova, Y.V., 2020. Make Your Listening Skills Active.
Kukayeva, Z. and Tazhibayeva, E., 2020. WAYS OF IMPROVING HIGH-SCHOOL
STUDENTS’LISTENING SKILLS. Студенческий. (7). pp.84-86.
Nichols, M.P. and Straus, M.B., 2021. lost art of listening. Guilford Publications.
Yurko, N. and Styfanyshyn, I., 2020. Listening skills in learning a language: the importance,
benefits and means of enhancement. Collective monographs.
Zhang, P., 2020. THE ROLE OF MOTIVATION, STRATEGY USE AND SECOND
LANGUAGE APTITUDE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LISTENING SKILLS BY
ADULT CHINESE LEARNERS. European Journal of Foreign Language
Teaching. 5(2).
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