Study Skills for Higher Education: Listening Skills Report

This essay delves into the critical study skills necessary for success in higher education, with a specific focus on listening comprehension. It identifies various listening challenges encountered by university students, such as information overload, false starts and repetition, and complex sentence structures, offering insights into how these obstacles can impede effective learning. The essay also explores practical strategies that teachers can employ to enhance students' listening skills, including getting to know students, reducing lecturing time, and utilizing technology in innovative ways. Furthermore, it provides actionable advice for students on how to become better listeners, emphasizing techniques such as maintaining eye contact, keeping an open mind, and practicing patience. By analyzing these challenges and strategies, the essay provides a comprehensive overview of how to improve listening skills, leading to improved academic performance and overall comprehension in a university setting.

Study Skills for Higher Education

Table of contents
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY.............................................................................................................................3
Listening challenges...................................................................................................................3
Three strategies teachers can use to help students improve their listening skills......................4
Listening challenges and strategies to become a better listener.................................................4
REFRENCES.............................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
The report consists of the listening challenges like the informative overload, false start and
repetition and complex/convoluted structure. The three strategies used by the teachers to
improve the listening skills of the students are discussed. The listening challenges and the
strategies to become a better listener are discussed.
MAIN BODY
Listening challenges
Listening challenges mentioned in the articles are:
Information overload
The students at the university are easily overwhelmed due to the information overload
by the lecturer. This happens to the students when so much information is given to the
students at a time. This is easily encountered at the class in the university when the students
are bombarded with lectures after lecture. In such case, the student find them being tuning out
the speech at some point of time. This can also happen when the lecturer add so many
statistics in one presentation that it makes hard for the students to keep track of all the
numbers in the slides, that is when the student is overloaded with information (Tefera, 2019).
False start and repetition
The students at the university have to deal with challenges while listening to the
lecturer but sometimes the lecturer is not choosing the right words for giving the knowledge.
The lecturer might be using the same words again and again that makes the students less
interested in listening to the lecturer. The lecturer need to start the speaking in ways that
attract the students attention, if the lecturer uses the wrong ways to start specking about some
topic at the class the students lose their interest and without interest in the particular things to
listen they find it really difficult to listen actively.
Complex/convoluted structures
While delivering the speech to the students the lecturer need to use the simple form of
words and sentences as the difficult structured sentences may make sense to the lecturer but

the student might understand something else. Giving the accurate knowledge without any
misunderstanding is the responsibility of the lecturer at the university. The lecturer needs to
speak in sentences that are easy to understand and respond.
Three strategies teachers can use to help students improve their listening skills
The students in today’s time are distracted by many things like their texts, updates on
social media, emails, how are their friends and many more reasons. It is being hard for the
teachers to engage the students in the effective listening while they teach. For this the
teachers can use the following strategies:
Get to know you students
It is found in the research that the students are more likely to listen to the teachers
who are familiar to them and have taken time to understand them as compared to the teachers
who have not made any contact with them. The teachers in the starting of the year can take
some time knowing their students by knowing their hobbies, what they like to do in their free
time and who they are friends with. The teacher can also play games to interact with their
students, this can be done by playing getting to know you game in the beginning of the year
or ask the students to fill a questionnaire (Asyiah, 2017).
Talk less
The teachers need to understand the fact that they spend most of their time talking and
lecturing the students while talking does not ensure that the students are effectively learning
from it. The teachers can take mini lessons in a class and ask the students to take part in the
discussion about the lesson. Try to make the class in which the students are made to listen for
shorter time and increase the time where they are talking about the parts they learned about.
Utilize technology
The teachers can try the new technologies with time to engage the students in the
learning. Listening to others in place of the teacher is as informative as it is with the teacher
speaking. The teacher can use the education technology by carefully selecting a documentary,
movie or providing an app that can help students to learn what they are been taught by the
teacher. This will not only attract the attention of the students but makes the learning part
more fun. By this the teacher can make the students interested in the listening part also
(Leong and Ahmadi, 2017).
Listening challenges and strategies to become a better listener
There are challenges that can be improved by applying appropriate strategies to it such as:
The listener can get distracted by things like the sound of the doors slamming and the
noises coming from the external environment of the classroom. To improve the attention and

make the listening effective the student can make an eye contact with the teacher while
listening to a speech. In western cultures making eye contact is considered to be the effective
in the communication process. This helps the listener to be attracted towards the better
communication and hence the listening.
The students can also get distracted while the teacher saying something does not match
their thinking level. It is essential in the listening to keep an open mind. The students should
wait before jumping to the conclusions. The only way to do so is waiting and listening to the
language the teacher use to express the feelings that is present in their minds. Everyone have
their own train of thoughts and the speaking should end before judging the statement (Cook-
Sather, 2018).
The student’s interrupt the listening and start to give their opinion on something with
solutions. In this case the students need to relax and wait for their turn to speak. The students
need to understand that everyone have their own pace of thinking and speaking. The teacher
is not teaching to them only the teacher need to address the whole class at a time and can
disturb the other students who are trying to listen and understand. In this the students can wait
and clarify their question in the end of the lecture.
Frequently asking questions by the student’s also disturb the students while listening. For
this, the student can make sure that they are only asking the questions that are making their
understanding better for the topic. The students can ask questions related to the topic being
discussed in the lecture so the student does not get distracted from the main topic.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the report that the listening challenges in the students can be
improved by using some strategies. Some of the listening challenges are informative
overload, false start and repetition and complex/convoluted structures. Strategies used by the
teachers to improve the listening skills are by getting to know the students, talking less and
utilizing the technology. The strategies can be developed for improving the listening
challenges.

REFRENCES
Books and journals
Asyiah, 2017. The vocabulary teaching and vocabulary learning: Perception, strategies, and
influences on students’ vocabulary mastery. Jurnal Bahasa Lingua Scientia. 9(2). pp.293-
318.
Cook-Sather, 2018. Listening to equity-seeking perspectives: how students’ experiences of
pedagogical partnership can inform wider discussions of student success. Higher Education
Research & Development. 37(5). pp.923-936.
Leong and Ahmadi, 2017. AN ANALYSIS OF FACTORS INFLUENCING
LEARNERS’ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL.
Tefera, 2019. Listening to and learning from the perspectives and experiences of Black and
Latinx students with disabilities: Examining the challenges and contradictions of high-stakes
testing policies. The Urban Review. 51(3). pp.457-476.