Developing Active Listening Skills: A Guide for University Students

This report examines the listening challenges university students face, such as physiological barriers, lack of vocabulary knowledge, cultural differences, poor material quality, tone and accent issues, speed of delivery, and lack of attention. It emphasizes the importance of active listening for effective communication and academic success. The report suggests strategies to develop active listening skills, including avoiding distractions, listening attentively, focusing on body language, avoiding interruptions, engaging with the speaker, and maintaining focus. It concludes that continuous practice and effective strategies can help students overcome listening barriers, improve communication, and achieve their academic and professional goals. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and study resources for students.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
1. Discuss some of the listening challenges students may experience at university...................3
2. Explain how students can develop their active listening skills...............................................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Skill is a set of behaviour and values that are important for new learners and academic
student for their future careers. The skill plays significant role in development of personal and
professional behaviour to achieve growth in life. There are various set of skills that are important
for the students to learn in their academic comprehensive such as communication skill, decision
making skill, listening skills , time management skills and many more. These skills are the key to
success of a person which makes an individual different from others. Listening skills are one of
the crucial skill that helps to connect with people to interpret accurately during the
communication process. It is a part of communication skill to make effective communication
with other person. In simple words, listening skill is a medium through which message is
transferred, construct in meaningful manner and respond by the receiver (Aslan, 2021). It
promotes better understanding of thoughts, avoid conflicts and misunderstanding among the
people. This report will examine the challenges of listening skill that may experience by the
students and certain ways to develop their listening skills.
TASK
1. Discuss some of the listening challenges students may experience at university.
Listening skill is a key to take part in the process of communication in order to receive
message effectively. The academic learners are facing various listening challenges in the
university as they are not able to understand the information and knowledge shared by their
teachers and lecturers to teach them. Ineffective communication creates barriers in their learning
process and reduce their capability to receive the message in appropriate form. This skills is very
important for student to understand the possible outcome delivered by the lecturer in order to
learn things for a long time. It is fundamental learning process that develops their concentration
power and enhance their focus level. It is a psychological involvement with a person to
understand other's views and perspective and construct the message in concise form. Due to
certain elements of disturbance in the university atmosphere, corridor noise etc., cause nuisance
in the classroom that results into confusion and stress among the students (Spataro and Bloch,
2018). They are not able to develop comprehensive learning and information that are discussed
by their teachers in the classroom. However, there are some challenges that are faced by the
students to develop listening skills that are discussed below:

 Physiological barrier: This barrier may cause due to environmental noise, corridor
nuisance that affects the effective listening process. The information made by the lecturer
may be disrupted due to various sounds that prevent person from being heard. Some
students may have poor hearing problems and speech impairment that affects them to
actively take part in the academic comprehensive.
 Lack of Vocabulary Knowledge: The lack of understanding of terminology and
vocabulary creates barriers in the process of listening skill. The vocabulary knowledge is
important for the student to easily interpret the information conveyed by the other. The
success of information is completely depends upon both the receiver and sender. The
wrong assumption is made by the receiver due to lack of concentration and clarification
of words and thoughts of each other. This may be the reason of causing dispute among
the person. The information share by the lecturer in the university is not listen by the
students due to which they are not able to learn the things accurately.
 Cultural Barrier: This is one of the main reason for ineffective communication. It
involves different cultural background, opinion and thoughts of people who belong from
different nation. The student comes from various nation, they have different speaking
style and language due to which other students are not able to understand the
communication made by the sender. It is the responsibility of university to create such a
environment to make them familiar with the cultural knowledge of each other so that
effective communication can easily be made (Bilyalova, Salimova and Zelenina, 2019).
Due to varied cultural background, it is quite difficult for the students to interact with
other learners. Cultural background involving listener and speaker may create cultural
barrier. The variation in vocabulary, accents , confusion regarding information may
affects academic comprehension.
 Quality of Recorded Material: The instruction given by the teachers is not properly
noted by the students. They generally missed the key information due to lack of
lightening capability. However, to record proper notes and information, the students must
listen the information carefully, must translate it into their language and should prepare
the main idea. Listening skill is a long process that are relevant to establish information.

The lack of proper information may discourage the students to develop their listening
skill.
 Use of tone and accent: Improper communication results into reduction in listening skill.
Sometimes accent and use of tone is not actually recognised with the information shared
by the teachers in the university due to which students fails to disseminate the ideas and
views made by the speaker (Suleymanova and Hysaj, 2022). In order to develop better
understanding of academic concept, the teachers and lecturers must enhance their
listening skill.
 Speed of listening: It is important for the teacher to use moderate tone and speed of
information so that it can easily be transferable to the actual listener. The major issue
arises with listening comprehension is speed. If the speed of information is high, then the
speaker is unable to understand the shared knowledge and will create barrier in the
developing listening skill.
 Lack of attention: Listening skill requires high level of concentration and attention to
interpret the information which is transferred from the receiver to sender. Many students
are facing in developing their listening skills due to lack of attention during the listening
process. They can enhance their listening skill only when they have quality to grab the
information by actively take part in the process of listening comprehension.
2. Explain how students can develop their active listening skills.
Active listening skill is important to make effective communication. It is technique through
which information is passed form one person to another. Attentive listener focus on speaker and
tries to avoid distraction to make effective listening process. It creates better understanding
among the people. Listening process is complex process and it requires lot of effort to understand
it carefully. It is a soft skill that is vital for workplace and higher education (Bobrov and
Kudryavtseva, 2020). It enhance the retaining power of an individual. It build trust among the
people and enhance the problem solving skill of student. It is used to develop knowledge and
ideas to do something which is creative and advanced. There are various other skill that are
associated with the listening skill such as communication skill, leadership skill, problem solving
skill, time management skill etc. Active listener are engaged with the speaker, listen them ,
interpret the thought and respond in favour of speaker. There are various elements that
contributes in the process of active listening including attention, body language, tone, speed ,

review , feedback and judgement to encourage the speaker. Students who take actively take part
in the classroom are able to complete the task in a specified period of time. The listening skill is
an important aspect of student's life which ensure growth and development of their personal and
professional life. It foster their effective communication and listening skill (Rao, 2019). It helps
them to interact with other people. It makes them result oriented towards their goals. It makes
them focus towards their goals and objectives of life. The communication take place with an
educational institution is an integral part of academic comprehension. There are various ways
through which listening barrier can easily be overcome in order to make effective
communication.
There are some strategies that may help the students to enhance their listening skills are
mentioned below:
 Avoid Distraction: It is most important strategy that emphasise on improving listening
skill. It is important for universities to avoid distraction that affect the student to achieve
the information as shared by their lecturer and teachers. Distraction can be occurred due
to corridor noise, classroom objects etc. may mislead the students to gather the
information made by teacher in the classrooms.
 Listen Attentively: It is important for student to improve their listening skills by
carefully listening to each and every information made by teacher in classroom. It helps
them to give response quickly. It will improve their understanding level. It is an effective
tool to enhance mindful thinking and helps them to make effective communication.
 Body language: This factor plays important role to identify the efforts and intention of
the speaker which help the student to covey the message accurately (Buriyeva and
Buriyeva, 2021). The listening process is based on body language as it highlight the
presenting style and thought of the speaker in the classroom. It elaborates the views and
ideas made by the speaker and easily catch by the students to make effective
communication. It is crucial aspect that requires the teacher to follow in order to aware
the students with the concept of academic learning.
 Avoid Interruption: There are various elements that prevents the students from making
effective listening process. The interruption between listening comprehension will
highlight the disrespectful behaviour of students towards their teachers. So, it is important

to avoid interruptive object within a classroom in order to make active listening skill.
Otherwise, there may be a chances of confusion and chaos in their academic learning.
 Engage: Active listening is a process where engagement is taken place between the
speaker and receiver. The thoughts and expression are exchanged among people to bring
clarity in their views. It requires better understanding of thoughts and views between
students and teacher in order to make information more interactive and interested. It
boost the morale and confidence of the teacher if they receives the possible outcome from
the students.
 Focus on speaker: It is important for student to strategies their listening skill by
increasing their focus on speaker. They should make conscious efforts to learn from the
active speaker. They are required to sharpen their memories to use the information for
their future learning process (Khasgiwala and Oza, 2018). However, the listening
process improves the decision making skill of a person. It establish the interpersonal
relation among the teacher and students. It enables the student to memorize the shared
information during the examination to score good position in their life. It makes an
individual more disciplines and goal oriented to achieve success in their life.
Therefore, the active listening process creates mutual understanding among the speaker and
listener. It directs the person in right direction to possess effective skills in order to enhance their
soft skill. By using the above mentioned strategies , the students can easily overcome their
listening barriers and can establish better communication with teacher in the university. It helps
them to gain advanced knowledge and skill to develop various other skill that are associated with
the process of listening.
CONCLUSION
From this above report, it has been concluded that the listening skill is a core element of
communication skill. In order to make effective communication, the student must possess
listening capabilities to respond quickly. Listening skill is two way communication process that
are made to shared information and knowledge in higher education. These skills contributes
majorly in the life of students as it is a key to success for those who are disciplined and more
focused towards their goals. It requires continuos practice that enables the students to develop
and improve their listening skill. Effective listening skill overcome all the barriers that may
cause misunderstanding due to miscommunication among the people.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Aslan, A., 2021. Problem-based learning in live online classes: Learning achievement, problem-
solving skill, communication skill, and interaction. Computers & Education, 171,
p.104237.
Bilyalova, A.A., Salimova, D.A. and Zelenina, T.I., 2019, May. Digital transformation in
education. In International conference on integrated science (pp. 265-276). Springer,
Cham.
Bobrov, A.V. and Kudryavtseva, E.E., 2020. EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION AS A KEY
SKILL OF A SUCCESSFUL LEADER. In Communicative Challenges of the XXI
Century (pp. 74-78).
Buriyeva, N.D. and Buriyeva, N.G., 2021. Teaching listening comprehension in esp
classes. Asian Journal of Multidimensional Research (AJMR), 10(3), pp.623-627.
Khasgiwala, V. and Oza, S., 2018. Influence of Faculty Communication on Students’
Learning. Asian Journal of Management, 9(1), pp.246-250.
Rao, P.S., 2019. The importance of teaching language skills to the second or foreign language
learners of english: A comprehensive study. ACADEMICIA: An International
Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 9(4), pp.6-19.
Spataro, S.E. and Bloch, J., 2018. “Can you repeat that?” Teaching active listening in
management education. Journal of Management Education, 42(2), pp.168-198.
Suleymanova, S. and Hysaj, A., 2022. Undergraduate Emirati Students’ Challenges of Language
Barrier in Meeting Expectations of English Medium University in the UAE.
In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 199-209). Springer,
Cham.
Valiyev, A.N.Y. and Ibrahimova, D.H., 2021. Opportunities for the development of creativity
skills of students in the process of teaching drawing science. ACADEMICIA: An
International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 11(3), pp.2201-2209.
Yabukoshi, T., 2021. Self-regulation and self-efficacy for the improvement of listening
proficiency outside the classroom. The Language Learning Journal, 49(1), pp.27-40.