Study Skills For Higher Education: Challenges and Solutions for Active Listening

This report discusses the challenges faced by students in active listening at universities and how to overcome them. The challenges include accent, remembering subject matter, lecture duration, grasping ability, vocabulary, tiredness, speaker's speed, semantic barriers, intra-culture, work load, and noise barriers. The report also provides tips and tricks to develop active listening skills such as listening materials, visualisation, short duration of lectures, training and monitoring, absence of mind, other activities, minimising distractions, reducing noise, and asking questions.

Study Skills For
Higher Education

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Discuss crucial challenges loaded with students in listening skill at the university....................1
Discuss how students can evolve active listening abilities..........................................................4
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Listening is a soft skills which refers to allowing people or individual to understand the
information that other conveys to them. Listening is a part of communication skills that brings
forth the speaking skills, that is also known as verbal communication and interpersonal skills.
For having an efficient and impacting communication within the group or the individuals, it is
very crucial to hear to people carefully what they are wanting to communicate or say. This report
mainly includes the challenges and objections faced by the students while listening to their
respective educators and organisational faculties. Students usually loses focus and concentration
with presence of mind in between their lectures, these are the factors disturbs their study
progress. So to get better of these challenges, different aspects and crucial measures are also
obturated in the report (Amira and et. al, 2019). This would foster the students to develop and
change and mend their learning skills.
MAIN BODY
Discuss crucial challenges loaded with students in listening skill at the university
 Accent: Accent refers to way of pronunciation of a specific word or language particularly
to a speaker or a cluster of masses or speakers. Accent varies from country to country of
speaking the same language. People usually uses English language to communicate but
their accent differs from the original ones. This might be possible that the other person
will lack behind because of the accent that they have and use. It is always difficult for
different nations to acquire others language and accent for instance the Americans and
the Indians have different accents and that is very prominent as anyone can easily
identify that they are outsiders and are facing problems in understanding of the language.
The listeners usually learns from the speakers. So the words and the language used by the
educators in the institution should be easy and it should be decent to have an effective
impact on the student's learning and their growth by having and efficient communication
(Baratta, 2018). The students of other nations usually faces challenges when they leave
their indigenous nation.
 Remembering subject matter and information: The students usually loses interest
because of lack of presence of mind and they feel boring in listening to lectures. The flow
of learning and further communication breaks and this hinders the educator's capability to
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give them n effective learning. This outcomes in not recollecting and recalling the lessons
that they were given at the institution provided by their educators.
 Time period of lecture: The duration of the given lectures at the institutions and
universities are long enough, and so with this the students usually loses interest, focus
and energy. At the beginning of the lecture, the students usually are excited and pays
attention to lectures but by the end they tend to get bored and don't remember the
learnings. The longer duration affect the interest and focus of the students to their
respective lectures (Egamnazarova and et. al., 2021).
 Grabbing and catching ability of listener: It is possible that each and every student
have varied potentiality and they tend to behave and react differently based on their
understanding abilities. To some students it is easy to understand while on the contrary
some faces issuances while learnings and takes longer time to grasp things. This is all
dependent on the fact of grasping power or capabilities of the students. The educators are
always trying to provide content and they put their efforts to lessons and so the lectures
provided by them is all same for each and every student (Fahnert, 2021). The student
having more grasping abilities will acquire things quickly and the other in the contrary,
thus students having lesser abilities will face difficulties to understand things. This is the
major issuance mainly faced by the students who are average or below average in the
class. This degrades the confidence and de-motivates their capabilities towards things and
lectures given in the class and are unable to tackle the queries asked to them by their
educators.
 Vocabulary: When the students listening skills is good , they tend to communicate to
others. They use words that are easy and known by them and this fosters their interest in
learning and enhancing their word power count. On the contrary, the students who are
less interested in the lessons they tend to avoid communicating and this brings forth lack
of interest and it is difficult for them to use words while communicating. They start to
feel boring as the things and subject matter provided gets difficult to them to understand
(Gonulal and et. al., 2019). So it is crucial role for the educators to use and select good
and convenient words so that the students develops learning skills efficiently and apply
them in their class lessons and improve their focus on their personality development.
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 Tired: The students are facing difficulties in their working when they feel tired and
diverted towards their learnings which degrades their listening abilities. Students may
find it difficult in paying attention to lectures due to laziness and less activeness in the
class.
 Speaker's speed: Some speakers are inbuilt with speaking fast and this hinders the
listening skill of the students. This is because they are unable to understand the the
lectures provided by their faculties when they communicate to their students. The speed
of the educator should be not so fast and also not too slow. The educators speaking
slowly will contribute to boring lectures and this would affect the student's learnings.
And also the educators speaking rapidly will lead to issuances in understanding and
learning the concepts (Imuta and Spence, 2020)..
 Semantic/ Linguistic barriers: There are different languages for one single/similar word
and this affects the understanding among the individuals of the different nations. Students
from different countries faces issuances of understanding different word meanings. This
brings forth the misinterpretation and misconception to learnings and and fosters the
difficulty in communication with their educators. Even the students who are listening to
their educators carefully and with full attention, they will discover issues in
understanding correct meanings to similar words used by the educator. This is one of the
major challenge faced by the students from different nations as this brings wrong
messages to their learnings that they will use in future in communicating (Karakas,
2019).
 Intra-culture: The students form different nations follow different cultures. It is not easy
for the students from different nations to understand the culture where they are living
apart from their indigenous nation's culture. The students will mainly find difficulties in
understanding of the cultures and things that are provided by their educators. The
educators must prepare their lessons that they are going to give to their students.
 Work load: Loads of pressure of work on the students brings low quality of work
completion and the work is not effectively done. The students gets diverted towards their
work and this fosters in enhancing the anxiety within the student's mind. Ultimately, the
students do not feel good enough and this affects their listening skills (Krivosheyeva and
et. al., 2020). .
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 Noise barrier: Noise barriers are the hindrances like some external factors/barriers
which arises when the educators wants to deliver their messages with the students and
they faces issuances in learnings. The students finds it difficult in communicating and
listening due to noises coming form the road side vehicles, other construction sites and
works etc. going outside the classroom.
Discuss how students can evolve active listening abilities
In following ways the students can develop their listening skills:
 Listening materials: For better understanding and developing listening skills within
students, the educators must provide various listening materials to aid them foster their
habit of listening. The educator can assign their students various homework and
assignments related to their lectures done in the class. So this will aid in compulsory
completion of the work assigned at any cost. This after sometime, would aid in fostering
the habit of performing their homework and assignments and it will not be difficult for
the students to grasp their abilities. The students will more be listening and paying
attention to their educator after this activity is performed.
 Visualise learning: The students have inbuilt skills of visualising as compared to
listening (Nong and Zou, 2021) . The visualisation process of learning is the crucial part
as this aids in fostering developmental skills that are required for the growth and
understanding of the lessons taught in the classroom. This saves time and and brings forth
easy understanding of learnings. The students sometime faces difficulties in
understanding languages so by visualisation, it gets easier to learn the lesson part. And
this will lead to paying of more attention to the lesson. For instance, the media players
playing movies or web series are on their tips and this shows how interested they are into
their learnings through visualisation. This leads to more quick understanding through
picture format, as this is visualised quickly. In this way, the educators should start
teaching their students by visual supports to improve their learning skills of the students.
 Short duration of lectures: The students usually get bored while attending the same
lectures for longer duration of time. This leads to boring lectures and students get bored
easily by the classes and to avoid the duration of lectures, the lectures should be short
(Orelus, 2020).. This will aid in loss of absence of mind and interest in the courses that
are given in the class and will listen more to their educators with full concentration.
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 Training and monitoring: The students faces loads of issuances while they live in other
countries as there is different culture, language which they are not familiar to and this
brings hindrances to their communication with the educators. So it should be
responsibilities of educators to provide them extra training regarding it. This aids in
fostering their understanding of communication between them and their educators.
Training before admission to universities should also be provided. This will aid in
avoiding the difficulties in the lectures duration and will get to learn more about the skills
in development. Also training motivates the responsibilities of the educators to monitor
students.
 Absence of mind: Presence of mind generally refers to be attentive to the activities going
round an individual. So basically the student are physically present but they are not
attentive in listening to lectures efficiently. Reasons behind their absence of mind can be
issuances related to family or external problems. Unfortunately, these affects the presence
of mind of the students (Sener, 2021). Students just pretends that they are listening to
educator but they are actually not because they are only physically present and not
mentally in the class. They are also not aware of what their educators are teaching to.
 Other activities: Students should go thoroughly through their study materials, lectures,
documentations , television media and listen to more informative news, musics etc. to
foster their listening skills. More they start listening to things, more will their
communication and listening skill foster.
 Minimising of distraction: When students are facing personal issuances they are not
active at their works. They feel diverted and because of this their listening skills is
affected abruptly. Students should avoid all the distractions to perform well in their
assigned tasks and in this way only they can do things correctly and efficiently that was
taught by their educator.
 Reduce noise: By reducing noises around the institution, students will improve their
focus and will listen more efficiently to educators (Silverstone, 2019).
 Ask questions: Cross questioning plays a vital role in resolving any difficulties that a
student faces. So questioning related to the learning and courses provided fosters their
learning skills by development of listening and communication skills.
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CONCLUSION
From the above report, it can be conferred that for having a smooth conversation,
students and educators must understand each others points and opinions. Good listening and
communication skills leads in fulfilling the challenges faced by students in their learnings. The
majors reasons could be accent, lecture duration, language speed, difficulty in understanding,
vocabulary understanding and learning to new culture and languages. But these issuances can be
easily overcome by developing habit of listening. Assigning tasks and homework can foster the
development of skills and incline their focus. The time duration of the lectures can be cut off to
reduce the work load burdens.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Amira, T., Lamia, M. and Hafidi, M., 2019. Implementation and evaluation of flipped
algorithmic class. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology
Education (IJICTE), 15(1), pp.1-12.
Baratta, A., 2018. Accent and teacher identity in Britain: Linguistic favouritism and imposed
identities. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Egamnazarova, F.A. and Mukhamedova, M.S., 2021. Improving english language listening
skill. Academic research in educational sciences, 2(Special Issue 1), pp.28-32.
Fahnert, B., 2021. Absence makes the mind grow stronger–Educating in a pandemic and
beyond. FEMS Microbiology Letters, 368(18), p.fnab129.
Gonulal, T., 2020. Improving listening skills with extensive listening using podcasts and
vodcasts. International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research, 7(1), pp.311-320.
Helena, L.E.V.Y., Konieczny, L. and Hanulíková, A., 2019. Processing of unfamiliar accents in
monolingual and bilingual children: effects of type and amount of accent
experience. Journal of Child Language, 46(2), pp.368-392.
Imuta, K. and Spence, J.L., 2020. Developments in the social meaning underlying accent‐and
dialect‐based social preferences. Child Development Perspectives, 14(3), pp.135-141.
Karakas, A., 2019. Preferred English Accent and Pronunciation of Trainee Teachers and Its
Relation to Language Ideologies. PASAA: Journal of Language Teaching and Learning
in Thailand, 58, pp.264-294.
Krivosheyeva, G., Zuparova, S. and Shodiyeva, N., 2020. Interactive way to further improve
teaching listening skills. Academic Research in Educational Sciences, (3), pp.520-525.
Nong, C. and Zou, J., 2021. Caring Orientation: A New Form of Classroom Teaching. US-China
Education Review, 11(4), pp.172-177.
Orelus, P.W., 2020. Other People's English Accents Matter: Challenging Standard English
Accent Hegemony. Excellence in Education Journal, 9(1), pp.120-148.
Sener, M.Y., 2021. English with a non-native accent as a basis for stigma and discrimination in
the US. Dignity in movement: Borders, bodies, and rights. E-International Relations
Publishing.
Silverstone, J., 2019. An absence of mind. In Ideas in Practice (pp. 87-102). Routledge.
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