Study Skills Essay: Challenges and Strategies for Effective Listening

This essay delves into the critical study skill of listening, essential for success in higher education. It begins by defining study skills and then focuses on the challenges students face when listening, including false starts and repetitions, abbreviations and acronyms, and the use of unnecessary words. The essay then outlines effective strategies for improving listening skills, such as maintaining eye contact, avoiding interruptions, and using positive body language. It also addresses various listening challenges like judging the speaker or topic, getting ready to speak, distractions, and making assumptions. The essay provides practical advice on how to become a better listener, emphasizing active listening and maintaining focus. Finally, it concludes that enhanced listening skills lead to better understanding and knowledge acquisition, with teachers playing a crucial role in fostering these skills. The essay references several academic sources to support its arguments.

Study Skills For
Higher Education

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Essay.......................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
A study skill refers to array of the skills which manage the procedure of organizing or
attractive new information, information retaining and dealing with different task or activities.
They consider mnemonics, which aid retention of information lists; effectual reading;
attentiveness techniques and well-organized note taking (Abbot, Graf and Chatfield, 2018). This
report is based on listening skills as per given article and below essay includes the three
challenges, three strategies through students can improve their listening skills and some listening
challenges, strategies for become better listener and conclusion of essay writing.
MAIN BODY
Essay
There are three listening challenges; the first is “false start and repetition”, in this act of
starting a statement or consequently aborting it earlier to finishing point. A new idea and guide
of reflection. False starts are just not as ordinary as repetitions or corrections. They happen
mainly often when the conversation becomes strong, with lots of speakers who speaking at once,
and after the speaker is a interrupted. They can also arise when the speaker becomes more
excited and start to skip from single topic to other. Starting with false sentence or words can
confuse the other person to understand the conversation topic (Cottrell, 2019). Some people
repetition single word again and again, this is challenge to understand the person what they want
to talk about. Second challenge is “Abbreviation and acronyms”; an abbreviation defines
usually a summarized form of the words used to symbolize the whole like Dr. and Prof. It is most
important to use words at right time in conversation so that listeners are not get confuse. Some
people use short forms now days which are very confusing for some people in understanding.
While the acronym refers to a set of first letters from the phrase that typically form other word
like radar and scuba. Third one is “Unnecessary words”, sometimes speakers are using
unnecessary words which have no meaning and sense during the conservation. In conversation if
people don’t have any words or they don’t know how to represent their words in front of people
then they get nervous and use unnecessary words which have no meaning. These three are
biggest challenges in listening skills.

There are some effective strategies which are helpful for students in improving their
listening skills, first is “Always look at the speaker and maintain eye contact”, to improve
listening skills it is important to make an eye context with speaker so that it can make an
effective communication in both as well as the understanding level become increase. Through
this active listening will be maintained among speaker and listener. Second strategy is “don’t
interrupt the speaker during conversation” for improving the listening skills it is must to
listen to speaker very carefully and don’t interrupt in between the conversation it give wrong
impression and show that there is lack in listening skills student (Deb, 2020). Third is “use
positive body language” to show interest it is must to use positive body language so that speaker
knows that listener is understood their thoughts and what they are saying. Through this listener
provide a comfort zone to start a conversation in clear manner. All these listening skills are
important to improve student’s listening skills and through improved skills they can understand
things in well manner and also generate more knowledge. Through this their development
become more easy and in enhanced manner.
There are some listening challenges that are experienced such as; Judgement of speaker and
topic, Judgment of the speaker or the topic sometimes listener don’t understand the point of
speaker and take other meaning of that statement so it create conflicts, Getting ready to speak or
thinking about counterargument, Distraction or inattentiveness, Connecting to what other people
is saying or making it about listener, Making assumptions and reading mind of speaker, it is
wrong thing to judge speaker before they start their conversation and without listening their
points, Giving advice and counsel as well as believing that know answer already (Naima, 2020).
These all are biggest challenges that some people are experience in their part of life or students
in their school life. To overcome from these challenges, it is most important to make some
changes in their personal and education life so that their habits can changes through this their
skills also gets improve. There are some ways through person or student can become better
listener such as; Keep in mind that Listening is most important to understand things and listen
speaker carefully with positive intention. Tell yourself that the you'll say to someone else about
this conversation later. Keep or maintain eye-contact with speaker during conversation. In
current scenario the smart phones are biggest barrier of challenge among people, so keep smart
phone away during listening what speaker is saying. There are some ways through person can

develop mores listening skills. All strategies are effective to improve skills and become a better
listener at every place.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded the above report, the listening skill is part of study skills which is most
important to understand things in well manner. Through active listening student can gain more
knowledge and things understand in better manner as well as in quick manner. There are three
challenges are discuss in above essay which are give negative impact listening skills of student.
To overcome from all challenges there are also strategies are discussed which help to students
are in enhance their listening skills in better way. Teacher can help in better to students to
develop listening skills because they are good guider for students in all aspects.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abbot, S., Graf, A.J. and Chatfield, B., 2018. Listening to Undergraduate Peer Tutors: Roles,
Relationships, and Challenges. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in
Higher Education, 30(2), pp.245-261.
Cottrell, S., 2019. The study skills handbook. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Deb, J., 2020. An exploration of the relationships between students’ listening skills, self-rated
academic listening, and their metacognitive awareness (Doctoral dissertation, Memorial
University of Newfoundland).
Gheller, F., Lovo, E., Arsie, A. and Bovo, R., 2020. Classroom acoustics: Listening problems in
children. Building Acoustics, 27(1), pp.47-59.
Naima, N., 2020. Developing listening skills in language learning. International journal of
discourse on innovation, integration and education, 1, pp.71-74.
Norkunas, M., 2019. Teaching to listen: Listening exercises and self-reflexive journals. The Oral
History Review.
Oxford, R., 2019. Teaching and researching listening skills: Theory-and research-based
practices. Research-Driven Pedagogy, pp.10-34.
Supriyadi, A., Mayuni, I. and Lustyantie, N., 2019. The Effects of Learning Model and
Cognitive Style on Students' English Listening Skill. International Online Journal of
Education and Teaching, 6(3), pp.545-561.
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