Study Skills for Higher Education

Discussing five of the listening challenges mentioned in the article

Rearing English language for the students is important to develop personal and professional skill for performing better in near future. Listening skill is one of the crucial skill sets in order to improve English language for performing in the academic sessions (Chazal, 2014). Effective listening provides a scope to the students to understand the context, develop language and improve own understanding on the specific topic. It is hereby important for the academic context, where English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is crucial for the students to have effective guidance and access the resources for developing their language (Syakur, 2020). EAP mainly provides an opportunity to the students to develop their English skills that they require for performing efficiently in their academic session and achieve future career goal.

The four skill sets as per the EAP are such as reading, writing, listening and speaking, through which the students can acknowledge the English language and improve their language in long run. Reading and writing are important for developing the language. Additionally, speaking in English improves own talking style and develop the skill of the students for representing their thoughts and ideas in synchronise way. Moreover, listening skill is hereby also important for improving understanding about the English language and develop own language. There are linguistic challenges in the UK and other international countries, where the students cannot understand or speak in English language, which further raise difficulties to attend the classroom sessions and training courses for meeting their personal and professional career objectives (Rintaningrum, 2018). English is hereby considered as the most important language for interacting with others worldwide and also participating in the academic courses and in professional field.

The major challenges related to the listening skill are such as technical terms, word with dependent prepositions, abbreviations and acronyms, long sentences and redundancy in speech. These are the major challenges for which the students cannot understand the content in English language and they fail to acknowledge the content due to existing difficulties.

Technical terms: There are several technical terms in the speech, for which it becomes difficult for the students to understand the words, without having knowledge on the language. It can be difficult for the students to hear, understand, pronounce, and spell the words correctly (Chazal, 2014).

Word with dependent prepositions: there are English words which is dependent of the prepositions, and the students cannot understand the meaning of the words, for example, the impact on, of, of stroke on people. This issue affect the listening skill of the students where they cannot understand the complex phrase easily during speech (Voss and Kostka, 2019).

Abbreviations and acronyms: Abbreviations and acronyms are also utilised in the speech and it is problematic for the students to understand the critical Abbreviations and acronyms in order to acknowledge the whole context. It is not possible for the students to listen the Abbreviations and acronyms and understand the context efficiently which further raise challenges sin listening skill.

Long sentences: Long sentence is another major challenge faced by the students in pronouncing and spelling. Long sentence is complex for the students to listen and understand the English language, for which there is problems in understanding the language and develop personal and professional skill in English language (Craven and Sherman, 2017).

Redundancy in speech: Redundancy in speech is another challenge related to listening skill, where the students cannot understand the words and sentences in English language, due to the inclusion of extra components which are not strictly necessary in the sentence (Syakur, Zainuddin and Hasan, 2020). It makes the sentence more complicated for which the students cannot understand the words and face difficulties to acknowledge the content, pronounce and spell the sentences.

These are the major challenges associated with the listening skill of the students, where the listening power and the English language cannot be improved through the academic class sessions (Galante et al., 2019). It is hereby important for the teaching professionals and others to identify the existing challenge sand develop alternative solution for improving the listening skill of the participants so that the student scan improve their listening power as well as improve English language successfully (Chazal, 2014). Through implementing the strategic options in the academic sessions, the teachers can support and guide the students for improving their listening skill so that they can develop English language and participate efficiently.

Suggesting five strategies teachers can use to help students improve their listening skills

The teachers in EAP aim at supporting the students for improving their listening skill so that they can acknowledge the sentence in English language and improve own abilities to write, read and speak English successfully (Chazal, 2014). There are several options through which the EAP teachers are trying hard to guide the students through developing good strategies that will be discussed further.

Preparing for the lecture by reading a pre-lecture hand-out on the lecture topic is one of the best strategies, where the students are provided the notes and hand-outs so that they can review the topic and understand the context. Before the speech, the students must review the study hand-outs and acknowledge the language, sentence and words for better understanding of the context of the seminars (Chazal, 2014). This is useful to improve the listening skill of the students, where they can understand the sentence, language and the context of the speech. The teachers try hard to prepare the hand-outs and develop good sentence with simple words and creative content, so that it would be understandable for the students.

Reprocessing information from a lecture using notes is another process, where the teachers support the students for taking notes during the lectures. The teachers try to repeat the sentences and important information and data for the students, so that they can take notes out of it, for further reading and writing (Syakur, Zainuddin and Hasan, 2020). The students can have the time for hearing the context and write it down efficiently during the lectures. It is also helpful for developing listening skill among the students by providing them a scope of writing the notes successfully.

Utilising inclusive learning lesson is another way to guide the students, where the teachers try to interact with the students and provide them a chance to clear their doubts and discuss over the lecture topic. Inclusive learning classes includes, writing, reading, speaking and listening activities, where the students can interact with the teachers and clear theory doubts during the lecture sessions (Syakur, Zainuddin and Hasan, 2020). It is also beneficial to improve understanding of the students in specific academic session and maximise their performance in long run (Voss and Kostka, 2019). It is also helpful for the students to improve English language and personal skill for maximising their performance (Chazal, 2014).

A focused study of key academic language in the lecture, such as the language of association, speculation, and degree of certainty will be helpful where the teachers try to utilise academic language, simple word and sentence for better understanding. It is another effective way to guide and support the students for acknowledging the language and improving their listening skill in long run (Craven and Sherman, 2017). Through academic language, the teachers try to represent the information in a simple sentence so that the participants can understand the language and write it down for better evaluation.

Utilising the digital media for learning activities is another strategy of the teachers to guide the students with creative academic sessions. For example, the teachers focus on developing graphs, charts and pictures and utilise computer system at the lecture sessions, in order to interpret the information in a simple way (Chazal, 2014). In such learning activity session, the students can review the information in the monitor and also hear the lectures effectively (Xoshimova, 2019). It is useful for enhancing the understanding and improving listening power of the students. On the other hand, creating power point presentation and utilising the word documents are also effective for the students, where they can review the information in the monitor and understand the learning activities successfully (Syakur, Zainuddin and Hasan, 2020).

The above mentioned strategies are utilised by the teaching professionals in order to support the students for developing their English language and also improving their listening skill, so that the students can understand the language, and acknowledge the sentence and information during the lectures (Newton et al., 2018). The interactive session as well as the digital learning sessions are the most creative strategies for the teachers to guide and support the students by providing notes before the lecture session, as well as utilise the power point slides and word document for audio visual learning sessions, which is considered as the most effective academic session for supporting the students to improve their listening skill and English language successfully (Tweedie and Johnson, 2018). It is important for the teaching professionals in EAP to interact with the students and provide them a scope to write the notes during the session, which would be beneficial to improve listening skill of the students. The hand-outs before lectures as well as digital content through computerised system will provide a scope to the teachers to support the students for improving their language and listening skill in long run.

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Reference List

Chazal, E., 2014. Prepare English Language students for academic listening’, British Council. [online] Available at: https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/prepare-english-language-students-academic-listening [Accessed 9th June 2021].

Craven, M. and Sherman, K.D., 2017. Q: Skills for Success–Listening and Speaking 3. The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language, 20(4).

Galante, A., Okubo, K., Cole, C., Abd Elkader, N., Carozza, N., Wilkinson, C., Wotton, C. and Vasic, J., 2019. Plurilingualism in higher education: A collaborative initiative for the implementation of plurilingual pedagogy in an English for academic purposes program at a Canadian university. TESL Canada Journal, 36(1), pp.121-133.

Newton, J.M., Ferris, D.R., Goh, C.C., Grabe, W., Stoller, F.L. and Vandergrift, L., 2018. Teaching English to second language learners in academic contexts: Reading, writing, listening, and speaking. London: Routledge.

Rintaningrum, R., 2018. Investigating Reasons Why Listening in English is Difficult: Voice from Foreign. Asian EFL Journal, 20(11).

Syakur, A., 2020. Improving the Eighth Grade Students’ Listening Comprehension Achievement by using Dictation Techniques. Konfrontasi: Jurnal Kultural, Ekonomi dan Perubahan Sosial, 7(3), pp.205-216.

Syakur, A., Zainuddin, H.M. and Hasan, M.A., 2020. Needs Analysis English For Specific Purposes (ESP) For Vocational Pharmacy Students. Budapest International Research and Critics in Linguistics and Education (BirLE) Journal, 3(2), pp.724-733.

Tweedie, M.G. and Johnson, R.C., 2018. Listening instruction for ESP: Exploring nursing education where English is a lingua franca. In International perspectives on teaching the four skills in ELT (pp. 65-77). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Voss, E. and Kostka, I., 2019. Flipping academic English language learning: Experiences from an American university. Singapore: Berlin: Springer.

Xoshimova, D., 2019. Features of Grow of Sensate-Expressive Speech in English Language at the Students via Conceiving by Listening. European Journal of Research and Reflection in Educational Sciences Vol, 7(12).