Study Skills for Higher Education: Discussion of Listening Challenges and Strategies for Improvement

This report discusses the challenges faced in listening skills in higher education and strategies used by teachers to improve them. It covers topics like false start and repetition, unnecessary words, technical term, abbreviation and acronyms, complex structure and many more.

Study Skills for Higher
Education
Listening skills in
Academics

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Discussion of listening challenges ..............................................................................................3
Strategies used by teachers in order to improve listening skills..................................................4
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Study skills are important in life of a students as it helps them in completing higher education
effectively (Arco-Tirado, Fernández-Martín and Hernández-Moreno, 2018). There are various
skills which is important for higher studies including communication skills, listening skills,
problem solving skills and many more. Listening skills is one of important skills among them
which helps to receive information by a person. These listening skills is also important in life of
students as it allow them to focus on information provided by teachers in classroom which boost
their knowledge. It also helps to get good grades to student and also provide opportunity to
develop good career. This project report includes discussion of various challenges occur in
process of listening. It also includes various strategies to be adopted by teachers in order to
improve listening skills of their students.
Discussion of listening challenges
Listening is one of important part of communication as it helps to understand meaning of
information effectively in order to decrease misunderstanding (Bracewell, 2020). There are
various challenges face by a person in listening process due to use of technical term or
unnecessary words. These results in changes real meaning of message and make it irrelevant.
These challenges not only occur in academic life of a person but also occur in professional life.
In professional life, a person needs to share various information to their senior or juniors and also
to understand information or feedback provided by them. In academic life, they need these
listening skills for understanding information provided by teachers. Some of challenges faced by
students or any person in listening process are as follows:
False start and repetition: False start is one of challenges in listening process as it makes
message unattractive and boring and results as fails to gain attention of listener (Al-Husseini and
Elbeltagi, 2016). This also results in bad impression about communicator in perspective of
listener and user does not take interest in information share by communicator. Repetition is also
one of problems in listening process as it results in decreasing of importance of information.
Repetition of words and sentences in any information or message make it boring and listener
does not pay attention to it. With repetition of information in sentence, listener think information
is irrelevant which create barrier in listening process.
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Unnecessary words: Unnecessary words used in any message or information make information
irrelevant. It does not allow listener to concentrate on information which create challenges in
process of listening (Cullen, 2017). It also creates changes in meaning of message which
decrease relevance of information. The unnecessary words in message make message too long
and a person avoid reading long message which create problems in listening process. An
individual read short message with interest but does not, take interest in long message. So, it is
important for communicator to avoid use of unnecessary words.
Technical term: Technical term used in any information are related to particular term which can
be understand by a person who has knowledge related to that term (Knox and Stone, 2019).
These technical terms are difficult in pronounce, understand, hear and spell which may lead to
misinterpretation of words. This technical term cannot be used by any person in general
conversation. If listener does not have knowledge about this technical term, then they may find
wrong meaning of that word of cannot understand real meaning of information which my results
in huge problems.
Abbreviation and acronyms: Abbreviation refers to shortened form which is used in border
represent whole like Dr. or Prof. whereas acronyms include initials in phrase used from other
words. These two terms are used by people interchanged but there are distinct (Garnett, 2016).
These can lead to misunderstanding to a person as communicators used in any sense which can
be understand by listener in other sense. This may change meaning of whole message and create
miscommunication. It is important for communicator to avoid use of these abbreviation as well
as acronyms in order to enhance meaning of information.
Complex structure: Complex as well as convoluted structure of information create problems in
understanding of message by listener (Durazzi, 2019). Sometimes due to complex structure,
listener does not read or listen complete information which may leads to miscommunication.
They avoid information in order to its complex information and this create challenges for
listening process. Sometimes listener understand wrong meaning of information due to its
complex structure and may forget any important part of information, all these sometimes also
lead to misunderstanding and results in conflict between two persons.
Strategies used by teachers in order to improve listening skills
Listening prices is one of important aspect for a student as it helps them to concentrate on
information provided by teachers and boost their knowledge. It also helps to develop various
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skills in students and make them efficient for future which helps them to get various opportunity
in life of a person (Ghanizadeh, 2017). It helps them to effectively listen information and provide
feedback about information provided by them. Some of strategies adopted by a student in order
to improve their listening skills are as follows:
In order to improve listening skills of a person it is important for teachers to read pre
lecture handout related to topic of lecture. It provides them revise all information which is
necessary to provide students related to that chapter or topic. It also provides clarity to teachers
in order to what they need to communicate with their students. It helps them to effectively
transfer knowledge and information related to topic and also boost confidence of teachers while
teaching as they have prepared for topic and for answering question of students.
It is also important to listen necessary factual information as this factual information is
including facts instead of providing theories as well as person interpretation (Holzweiss, Walker
and Conrey, 2018). This factual information is important for teachers to provide students. With
this factual information, students learn to understand facts, data as well as statistics. It boosts
their knowledge and understanding capacity which in turn helps to improve their listening skills
related to fact-based data. This helps to develop capacity and skills in a person to understand fact
or data which is important for them in to get various opportunities.
Academic language is another important aspect which is focused with key language
within lectures. These includes language of speculation, association as well as degree of certainty
(Hora, 2018). Teachers helps to improve academic language of a students which helps them to
understand information provided by sender. Teachers with adoption of this strategies also helps
students to improve their academic language which is beneficial for them for both written as well
as oral communication and also helps them to understand this information. This academic
language not only helps them to get good grades in their academic life and also helps to get
various good opportunities in life of a person.
Listening for purpose of association as well as evaluation in lecture is also one of
important thing as it helps teachers to associate as well as evaluate lecture in order to improve
listening skills of their students (Oliver and Jorre de St Jorre, 2018). They can evaluate listening
process by asking question which helps teachers to understand what have understand by students
in class. This makes students to attentively listen information provided by teachers in class. This
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also develop some of necessary skills in students as by answering question of teachers, they may
improve their verbal communication skills.
Teachers can also adopt reprocessing of information from lectures with use of notes.
Teachers can also reprocess information which helps to recall information provided by them to
students (Sharma, Joshi and Sharma, 2016). This helps to mind about information and
knowledge provided by teachers in classroom which helps to improve their listening skills.
Reprocessing of information is important as a person cannot remembers complete information. A
Person may forget some part of information which is not necessary for them to reminds. In order
to improve listening process and remind students complete information, teachers provide them
reprocessing of information.
CONCLUSION
From above mentioned project report, it can be concluded that listening skills is one of important
skills in life of a person as it helps them to understand views, ideas, information in right manners
without any confusion. There are various challenges faced by a person in process of listening
including false start and repetition, unnecessary words, technical term, abbreviation and
acronyms, complex structure and many more. It is important for sender to understand these
barriers and try to avoid these things in their information. It is important to adopt various
strategies to be adopted by sender as it helps to improve efficiency of listening process. These
strategies include preparing of pre lecture handout, listening of various important factual
information, academic languages, listening evaluation, reprocessing of information and many
more.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Arco-Tirado, J. L., Fernández-Martín, F. D. and Hernández-Moreno, N., 2018. Skills learning
through a bilingual mentor’s program in higher education. International Journal of
Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 21(8). pp.1030-1040.
Bracewell, R. J., 2020. Investigating the control of writing skills. In Reading Empirical Research
Studies: The Rhetoric of Research (pp. 436-463). Routledge.
Cullen, G. J., 2017. Exploring the higher education instructor skills needed to deliver instruction
in a flipped learning classroom (Doctoral dissertation, Colorado Technical University).
Durazzi, N., 2019. The political economy of high skills: higher education in knowledge-based
labour markets. Journal of European public policy. 26(12). pp.1799-1817.
Ghanizadeh, A., 2017. The interplay between reflective thinking, critical thinking, self-
monitoring, and academic achievement in higher education. Higher Education. 74(1).
pp.101-114.
Holzweiss, P. C., Walker, D. W. and Conrey, M., 2018. Preparing new professionals for
administrative leadership in higher education: identifying specific skills for training.
Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education.
Oliver, B. and Jorre de St Jorre, T., 2018. Graduate attributes for 2020 and beyond:
Recommendations for Australian higher education providers. Higher Education
Research & Development. 37(4). pp.821-836.
Sharma, S. K., Joshi, A. and Sharma, H., 2016. A multi-analytical approach to predict the
Facebook usage in higher education. Computers in Human Behavior. 55. pp.340-353.
Al-Husseini, S. and Elbeltagi, I., 2016. Transformational leadership and innovation: a
comparison study between Iraq's public and private higher education. Studies in Higher
Education, 41(1), pp.159-181.
Knox, J. and Stone, M., 2019. Embedding employability skills for the legal professionals of the
future. The Law Teacher, 53(1), pp.90-101.
Garnett, J., 2016. Work-based learning: A critical challenge to the subject discipline structures
and practices of higher education. Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning.
Hora, M.T., 2018. Beyond the Skills Gap: How the Vocationalist Framing of Higher Education
Undermines Student, Employer, and Societal Interests. Liberal Education, 104(2), p.n2.
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