Listening-Problems and Solutions

18.
Listening: Problems and Solutions
Out of the four language skills, listening is the first skill that a normal
child starts to practice. Till the age of a year and a half, all what babies do is
listen to all the sounds around them: however, they are not able to understand
everything. When learning a language, we cannot ignore the importance of this
skill as it helps learners to recognize the accent, pronunciation, and to even do
better at comprehending the language itself. Throughout this summary essay,
we will be exploring what listening is as well as talking about some problems
and solutions associated with it.
Listening is not the mere ability to listen to what is being said. It is the
ability to listen and actually comprehend what others are saying. It includes
understanding the speaker’s accent, grammar, vocabulary, and the message he
wishes to convey. As it is said in the article, an able listener is someone who can
do these four things simultaneously. Willis (1981:134) lists micro skills which
she calls enabling skills. These skills involve predicting what others will talk
about, guessing the meaning of unknown words, using one’s knowledge of the
subject to expand his understanding, retaining relevant points by means of
summarizing and note-taking, recognizing discourse markers and cohesive
devices, understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, and
understanding inferred information such as speaker’s attitudes or intentions. Of
course, not all learners can do all of these micro skills successfully which
creates certain listening problems.
Some learners cannot be able listeners as we explained above because

they face some problems with the message, the speaker, the listener, and the
physical setting. The message to be listened to forms a challenge to many
learners. They find a difficulty in listening to a taped message, and they prefer
to read it on a piece of paper. Because the listening material may deal with any
area of life such as street gossips, proverbs, and many other things, the content
is usually not recognized well. In many situations, listeners cannot predict what
speakers are going to say, and they cannot listen to recorded messages at a
lower speed. Another issue is the linguistic features of the message. Liaison
which means the linking of words in speech when the second word begins with
a vowel and elision which means omitting a sound or sounds in rapid speech are
common phenomena that make it difficult for students to recognize individual
words in the stream of speech.
As for the speaker problem, Ur (1984) claims that a speaker sometimes

says more than what he needs to convey what is in his mind. Redundant
utterances appear in the form of repetitions, false starts, re-phrasing, self-
corrections, elaborations, tautologies, and meaningless additions such as I mean
or you know. This redundancy is a natural feature of speech, and it may help or
hinder the student depending on their level. Because they are used to teacher’s
accent or to the standard variety of British and American English, they find it
hard to understand speakers with other accents. Moreover, students who are
used to spoken prose find it difficult to understand natural dialogues which are
full of hesitations, pauses, and uneven intonation.
Now we come to the problem of listeners themselves. Foreign-language

students are not familiar enough with clichés and collocations in English that is
why they are not able to predict a missing word or phrase. The lack of
sociocultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language can
hinder comprehension because language, as Anderson and Lynch (1988) say, is
used to express its culture. Learners of a foreign language allocate time to
reading more than listening and this will help widening the gap between what is
said and how to understand it. psychological and physical factors may also have
a negative effect on perception and interpretation of listening materials because
it is tiring for student to focus on interpreting unfamiliar utterances.
The physical setting is a major problem too. The existence of noise be it

background noises on the recording or environmental noises can distract the
listener and take his mind off the content of the listening material/passage.
Understanding the meaning of the listening passage will also be distracted when
it is recorded on a tape or a radio because of the lack of visual and aural
environmental clues. The speaker’s body language and facial expression is not
visible; therefore, it will be more difficult for listeners to understand the
message.
There are many ways to help learners overcome some of the problems
mentioned above. Considering the problems learners face when it come to the
message, we can provide a number of solutions. First, provide listening
materials that match the student’s level, and give them authentic materials rather
than idealized, filtered samples. Second, design task-based exercises to engage
students and help them learn listening skills subconsciously. Third, provide
students with various types of input such as lectures, radio news, films, TV
plays, announcements, everyday conversation, interviews, storytelling, English
songs, and so on. Fourth, support your teaching with visual aids or draw
pictures and diagrams related to the listening topics to help students guess and
imagine actively.
As for the speaker, we can also do some things to aid students. First, give
practice in liaisons and elisions in order to help students get used to acoustic
forms of rapid natural speed. Second, make students aware of different native-
speakers accents while listening. Third, select short, simple listening texts with
little redundancy for lower-level students and complicated authentic materials
with more redundancy for advanced learners.
Now we come to the solutions associated with the listener problem. What
we can do is, first, provide background knowledge and linguistic knowledge
such as complex sentence structures and colloquial words and expressions as
needed. Second, give, and even try to get, feedback as much as you can.
Feedback is very important to achieve the maximum benefit of the lesson and to
make sure that students are learning in the best possible way. Third, help
students develop the skills of listening with anticipation, listening for specific
information, listening for gist, interpretation and inference, listening for
intended meaning, listening for attitude, etc., by providing varied tasks and
exercises at different levels with different focus.
A listening lesson involves many activities, and the writer of the article
presents a wide range of listening activities that can themselves be effective
solutions to listening problems. First and for the pre-listening stage, teachers
can follow a number of activities such as discussing the topic, brainstorming,
games, and guiding questions. When we arrive at the while-listening stage, they
can follow activities like comparing, filling in gaps, ticking off items,
paraphrase, matching, etc. Finally, the post-listening stage involves activities
such as answering to show comprehension of messages, problem solving,
summarizing, jigsaw listening, writing as follow-up to listening activities,
speaking as follow-up to listening activities.
In conclusion, we can say that listening is a process of identifying and

understanding what others are saying. While practicing listening, students may
face many problems as we have presented above but overcoming some of them
is easy if the teacher and the students cooperated and committed to certain
activities that will help both of them achieve the maximum benefit of the
listening class.

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What are some common problems faced by listeners?

What solutions are proposed to help overcome problems related to the message?

18.

Listening: Problems and Solutions

Some learners cannot be able listeners as we explained above because

As for the speaker problem, Ur (1984) claims that a speaker sometimes

Now we come to the problem of listeners themselves. Foreign-language

The physical setting is a major problem too. The existence of noise be it

In conclusion, we can say that listening is a process of identifying and

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