Challenges and Strategies for Active Listening in Higher Education

This report delves into the concept of active listening, emphasizing its importance in higher education. It identifies key challenges to effective listening, including linguistic, cultural, and presentation-related barriers. The report explores strategies for improving listening skills from both the teacher's and student's perspectives, such as asking questions, encouraging face-to-face interaction, and providing listening tasks. It also discusses how students can overcome challenges like distractions, pre-conceived notions, and poor connections by adopting attentive habits, cultivating open-mindedness, and reducing interruptions. The report concludes by highlighting the significance of active listening in enhancing comprehension and academic success, underscoring the value of both teacher-led strategies and student self-improvement efforts.

Study Skills for Higher
Education

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Listening challenges....................................................................................................................3
Three strategies for improving listening skills............................................................................3
Listening challenges and the strategies of improvement from student perspective....................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Active listening refers to listening actively and openly and understanding the concept in the
same manner in which it is being presented and explained (Friston and et.al., 2021). This report
will discuss about the various challenges regarding the active listening along with teacher’s
moves with respect to overcoming those challenges. Likewise, student’s perspective with regard
to challenges and their own moves against those challenges is also discussed in this report.
MAIN BODY
Listening challenges
The major listening challenges are:
Linguistic challenge:
It is one of the major challenge associated with the listening skill. Language act as a
barrier when it contains such words and sentences which is not understandable by the listener.
Linguistic challenge includes the use of wrong grammar, improper words, difficult words, false
starts, repetitions, unnecessary words, and various other. Use of technical terms and language
may also create barrier and challenge for the listener in terms of difficult understanding and
wrong understanding. Using of abbreviations, acronyms, phrases may also act as a challenge in
terms of non-understanding and as a result poor listening.
Cultural challenge:
It will also act as a challenge because due to cultural difference students may not be able
to understand and interpret the exact meaning of the sentences and the concepts which is being
taught by their tutor. Cultural difference may also occur in the form of the perceptions and
beliefs that in different culture different concept may have different meaning. It also includes
speaker’s ascent, vocabulary and assumptions about the information and the conversation.
Presentation challenge:
Presentation of slides sometime instead of raising the awareness and knowledge may lead
to challenge and barrier with respect to the active listening. This means that the knowledge and
message share on presentation is also a barrier with regard to the active listening. This is because
students may not able to understand the meaning of the message in the terms in which they need
to and lead to low understanding which will ultimately lead to poor listening. It is counted under

the category of visual challenge wherein students may not able to understand the concept through
visual interferences. This challenge may also occur because the student’s perspective with regard
to the face to face interaction and normal class sessions where they can have oral conversation
and clearance of concepts instead of the use of visual.
Three strategies for improving listening skills
Asking questions:
It is one of the best strategy teacher can use in order to improve the listening skills of the
students. As per this strategy, teachers have to randomly ask questions in the class to its students
regarding the concepts or the topic which is being taught in the class. This will lead to the raising
of attentiveness as well as listening skill among the students (Asmawati, 2017). This can also
means, that along with teaching the lessons and talking more and explaining more, teachers can
also adopt the practice by which they can ask questions in meanwhile teaching the lessons so that
they can know that whether the students are actively listening the lessons or not. Likewise, by
asking the questions students will also be aware that the they have to listen carefully whatever is
being teaching in the class.
Face to face and eye contact:
This is also a good strategy which teacher can adopt. As per this strategy making face to
face interaction and eye contact will lead to create more attentiveness among the students and as
a result of that the students will try to and adopt the habit of active listening. Face to face contact
and eye contact will also enable the teacher that whether the students are listening or not
likewise, it will also lead to the development of habit of active listening without distraction.
Listening task:
Availing the students active listening task would also lead to develop the habit of active
listening. As per this strategy teacher can adopt the practice to give listening task to their
students so that they can know that whether the students are actively listening or not. this will
also assist the teacher to take adequate steps so that the listening can further be improved.
Listening challenges and the strategies of improvement from student perspective
Challenges:

There are many challenges regarding the listening a student may face. Distraction is one
of the biggest challenge. As per this challenge, due to the presence of distraction and non-
concentration in the class, student may face the listening challenge. Likewise, student may also
face the challenge of pre assumed mind. This means when the mind of the student is pre assumed
with certain different thoughts then also it can face the challenge of active listening (Xiao and
et.al., 2020). Poor connection is also a major challenge, students can face. As per this challenge
due to poor connection between the sender and the receiver the, student as a receiver may not
being able to understand the message of the sender that is teacher. It will lead to mis-
understanding and poor listening.
Overcoming:
In order to overcome these challenges students have to themselves adopt the practice and
strategy of active listening. This can be done through being attentive in the class. This means that
attentiveness in the class may help the student in order to understand and listen the concept in the
exact manner which is being teach in the class. Likewise, adoption of the habit of open mind will
also enable the students to have the active coming and acceptance of thought and as a result of
that the students would be able to actively listen and understand the concepts and thoughts
(Kayalar and Kayalar, 2017). This can also be improved with the habit of listening the words and
depicting the related image. This will allow the student to have the better understanding and the
active listening. Likewise, reducing the habit of interruption and imposing solution without
listening adequately would also lead to overcoming this challenge. Thus, by adopting and
considering this strategies student can easily overcome the challenge of poor listening.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is understood that active listening will lead to have a better
understanding of the concepts and the topics. Likewise, it is also understood that though there are
various challenges students face with respect to poor listening but with the implementation of the
teacher’s strategies and the student’s own efforts it can be easily overcome and mitigated.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Asmawati, A., 2017. ANALYZING STUDENTS’DIFFICULTIES TOWARD LISTENING
COMPREHENSION. ETERNAL (English, Teaching, Learning, and Research
Journal). 3(2). pp.211-228.
Friston, and et.al., 2021. Active listening. Hearing research. 399. p.107998.
Kayalar, F. and Kayalar, F., 2017. The effects of auditory learning strategy on learning skills of
language learners (students’ views).
Xiao, and et.al., 2020, April. If I Hear You Correctly: Building and Evaluating Interview
Chatbots with Active Listening Skills. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14).
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