Academic listening in non-native languages. Strategies and problems for L2 students

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

DEDICATION

LIST OF ABBREVATIONS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Problem statement
1.2 Purpose statement
1.3 Hypothesis
1.4 Research Questions
1.5 Organization of Approach

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

CHAPTER 3: THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The importance of listening in family and business relationships
3.3 Listening categories
3.4 Listening characteristics and demands
3.5 The importance of developing listening strategies
3.6 Conclusion

CHAPER 4: FRUSTRATION IN LISTENING
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Complexity in academic listening
4.3 The difficulties that students face during listening process
4.4 Student’s anxiety
4.6 Conclusion

CHAPTER 5: LISTENING STRATEGIES OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Listening Proficiency
5.3 The development of Listening Stages
5.4 Listening Methods and Strategies
5.5 Student anxiety solutions
5.6 The effect of four types of listening support
5.7 Speech Modification and L2 Discourse Processing
5.8 Conclusion

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT

Effective listening is critical for the L2 student to master in order to attain proficiency in foreign language study. There are significant difficulties and impediments in the way toward this mastery. This study explains the listening difficulties the L2 student experiences in non-native language classrooms and the strategies to improve L2 student listening skills. After general and specific review regarding the importance of listening, this paper addresses the frustrations for the L2 student, and then offers teacher strategies to calm student learning/listening anxieties.

Key words: language proficiency, student anxiety, teacher methods, ESL

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I’m thankful to my parents for choosing Beder University for me, I am convinced that they made the right decision for me, because I was educated and learned by professionals. I want to express my deepest gratitude to all my professors, for all their tireless, hard work. They are a perfect example for my future as a professor and as a professional. I want to thank Professor William Martin for answering all my questions and for reviewing my work. I want to express my respect for PhD Isa Erbas for his direction and for his precious lessons.

Now I want to thank God, whom I truly trust.

DEDICATION

I dedicate this paper to my family, to their efforts to ensure me a proper education.

LIST OF ABBREVATIONS

EFL: English Foreign Language

ESL: English Second Language

FL: Foreign Language

L2: Second Language

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Listening is very important in everyday life, in every relation, in every situation, but what is listening, what do we know about its importance, its frustration and its strategies? This paper will first examine what is listening and then give explanations about its importance, frustrations of L2 students in classroom listening and suggest strategies in overcoming their frustrations. In addition, the paper will address the general importance of listening as it applies to family relationships and business communication, specifically between employer and employee; the categories of listening; the characteristics and demands of academic listening; and finally, the importance of developing academic listening skills.

Listening is a complex process and the reason why students face difficulties even if they have high language competence. This paper looks at these difficulties that students face during academic listening and listening the anxiety and its theories. Also, reviews the relation of student- professor during the listening process. Students learning a second language confront different stages; there are shown five stages of listening comprehension, and the advance of listening during the five stages. There are the techniques of reduction of anxiety and students help in listening activities. In this paper are given the best listening strategies, methods, modification of language process, and the effects of four types listening support.

1.1 Problem statement

Listening is viewed as a simple process by ordinary people, by ESL students, by professors. Effective or ineffective listeningcomplicates or makes easier human relationships.They can either be satisfying or unsatisfactory, business can grow or falter, students can be outgoing and confident or anxious and shy. Professors can find difficulties in lectures when they face struggling students. For these problems, there are solutions with better teaching/learning methods and much of the solution, in and out of the classroom, has to do with understanding the listening experience and making the needed adjustments to improve our listening skills.

1.2 Purpose statement

The purpose of this paper is to remind everyone about the importance of listening, to remind ordinary people, students, professors. This paper will make them rethink; also, it will help them with the solutions. “Listening” has its own frustrations and anxieties. So additionally, this paper will have us consider these frustrations and anxieties and arrive at smart simple solutions to facilitate listening for everyone.

1.3 Hypothesis

The task of teaching ESL students is a difficult task. A major part of the problem is the difficulty L2 students have in listening and comprehending the material in the classroom. There are strategies teachers can use to enable students to overcome their frustrations as they listen to the native L2 teacher.

1.4 Research Questions

This study aims to answer the following questions:

1. What is academic listening?
2. What is the importance of listening?
3. How is listening applied in different relations, like teacher-student, mother-daughter and employer- employee?
4. What are some frustrations that students face during listening?
5. What strategies should be used by teachers to improve listening proficiency?

1.5 Organization of Approach

This paper consists of five chapters. The first chapter is an opening about the thesis; it covers the introduction, the purpose statement and the hypothesis. The second chapter covers the literature review and what is listening. The third chapter is about the importance of listening and it covers the importance of listening in family and business relations, listening categories, listening characteristics and demands as well as the importance of developing listening strategies. Chapter three, four, and five have their own introductions and their conclusions. The fourth chapter is about the frustration in listening, this chapter includes complexity in academic listening, the difficulties that student’s face during listening process, student’s anxiety and professor – student relation during listening process. The fifth chapter is listening strategies of English language; it consists of Listening Proficiency, Student anxiety solutions, the development of Listening Stages, listening methods and strategies and the effect of four types of listening support.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

A quick review of theoretical articles and books will show that only in the last fifty years was academic listening considered to be a topic for serious scholarship. In fact, most of the early work done on the subject in the 1960s was in American undergraduate student papers, graduate theses and doctoral dissertations. Here arethree examples: M. Adalbert Gajdosik, An Experimental Study of Listening and Its Interrelationship with Academic Achievement (PhD dissertation. Arkansas State Teachers College: 1961); William Carl Murphy, A Study of the Relationships between Listening Ability and High School Grades in Four Major Academic Areas (PhD dissertation. University of Alabama: 1965); and Mary LousieSayre, An Investigation of the Relationship of Listening Comprehension to Academic Achievement (MA thesis. Glassboro State College: 1970).

The research for this paper has focused primarily on scholarly articles published in the decades following. Harvey Taylor (1981)and Blaine Goss (1982) stressed how to learn how to listen and how people process the information they listen to.

Later scholars would look at different aspects of listening which addressed the basic importance of academic listening (Iwankovitsch, 2001), student anxieties (Pappamihiel, 1999 and Ferris 1998), and finally strategies to improve L2 language proficiency (Murphy, 1987 and Mendelsohn, 1995).There was also, in the last couple of decades, a shift in responsibility in the teacher/student relationship. An excellent example of this is Gary Buck’s early article, “How to Become a Good Listening Teacher” (1995).

One final comment regarding this literature review: most of the material I accessedwas published in specialized journals such as TESOL Quarterly and Research & Teaching in Developmental Education.

CHAPTER 3: THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

To listen with a purpose requires an innerstrength and the courage to open our mindsto other people's ideas, while at thesame time we must face up to the fact that some of our ideas may be wrong. Dominick Barbara

3.1 Introduction

Listening is very important in everyday life, in every relation, and in every situation. In this chapter I will review the general importance of listening as it applies to family relationships and business communication, specifically between employer and employee; the categories of listening; the characteristics and demands of academic listening; and finally, the importance of developing academic listening skills.

3.2 The importance of listening in family and business relationships

Ron Iwankovitsch states the obvious when he says that listening is very important in every relationship (Iwankovitsch, 2001). In his article, he describes the essence of listening in different situations and in different areas. Conversation between mother and daughter, he says for example, can provide an instance of the effect of poor listening: A joyful little girl on her first camping has in her hands a frog and runs happily to show it to her mom: “Mother, look at my frog”. The mother answers “tidy up, and leave that frog alone”. Instead of understanding the message that the little girl was excited about her new discovery, the mother responded as she felt she should in her role as a mother. Iwankovitsch asserts that this effectively lustrates our poor listening skills: that we tend to dismiss seemingly insignificant pieces of communication that are in fact important. The mother in this case did not see that her girl was so cheerful and happy that she wanted to share that happiness with her mother. If her mother would have reacted positively, and would have said “Wow, what a tender frog, now turn it back home and go clean up”, the daughter would have taken the positive feedback, and likely would have adjusted to her mother’s wishes without the initial rebuke. In the moment that we feel as we are poor listeners, in that moment we understand its importance.

In business, the majority of problems come from the misinterpretation of what is heard in family relations it is the absence of listening in addition to misinterpretation which leads to serious problems. A research by The University of Minnesota (Iwankovitsch, 2001, p. 5), reported that 60% of misinterpretation in the business world came from poor listening and only 1% from reading. Listening ability, it seems, is more than just a recall of the information, but also an understanding of the same information.Major family problems come from lack of communication or no communication at all.

A Loyola Universitystudy identifies the differences between being simply a “boss” and a “friendly boss” (Iwankovitsch, 2001, p. 5). The distinction the study made was that a friendly boss paid attention to what his employees had to say: every employee owns the right to be heard and the right to have their words considered. The obvious effective consideration was respect. Employees considered their bosses “friendly” because they could express their feelings and they were listened to.

Effective listening made successful an industry in Chicago. The company was in deep, serious problems, the bosses were losing lots of money, they tried different strategies but nothing had any result, until they thought about hiring a psychologist. The role of psychologist was to teach the chief of how to listen to his employee. The first suggestion by the psychologist was to listen to his employees. If one complains for something, ask who else thinks like him, ask how we can resolve the problem. And when that kind of conversation happened the change was incredible. Not only the result in industry started to be positive, as they were making money, but because of better listening strategies, the problems and the quarrels disappeared in 90% of those questioned(Iwankovitsch, 2001, p. 6).

Listening not only helps in business relations, but good listening helps the individual, because the individual gains important information and in more direct ways. Benefits from listening help in managingrelations with family members and gives each with a sense of worth and belonging. Iwanovitch points out the benefits in being understood: “If one can find listeners who are understandingand accepting he can experience pleasurefrom their company and feel closer to them” (Iwankovitsch, 2001, p. 6).

Listening matures individuals and gives them value. Maturation comes in the moment that we comprehend and can understand other opinions, feelings or thoughts even though we might not agree. This quality is not seen in poor listeners, or in mature individuals for that matter. With effective listening, the individual gains advantages, as do friends, family and society as a whole (Iwankovitsch, 2001, p. 5).

3.3 Listening categories

Dana Ferris and Tracy Tagg assert that listening has four important categories and that each of these categories is critical to achieving good results in the academic experience (Ferris and Tagg, 1996, p. 309). The first category involves the information of academic lectures, listening understanding method, problems and strategies for comprehending L2 lectures. The second category includes learning academic speaking skills formal and informal speaking. Ferris and Tagg’s third and fourth categories covered the L2 student’s ability to interact with native speakers in a faculty framework. Their work concluded with suggested programs to improve the L2 student’s academic oral/aural abilities (Ferris and Tagg,1996, pp. 298-299).

3.4 Listening characteristics and demands

Every listener should know the characteristics and differences between common listening and academic listening and also their demands (Flowerdew, 1995). Flowerdew explains very well the academic characteristics and its demands. In 1995, Flowerdew shows the characteristics and demands for academic listeners. He explains that L2 listening comprehension should be priority for professors. But also, students should take into consideration that for academic listening they should have background knowledge; they should have the capacity to distinguish among what is appropriate and what is not appropriate; and that professors should always keep in mind the principle of turn-taking and have the capability to understand long speeches. The last, but not the least, is the ability to understand the messages from newspapers and TV and radiobroadcasts (Flowerdew, 1995, p. 299).

3.5 The importance of developing listening strategies

Listening has its own strategies; by following these strategies we will understand their importance. Teaching without strategies, for example, results in unprepared teacherswho often start their lessons with a lot of questions, make comments, offer opinions about different things happening in life, and generally waste time; L2 learners need structure and though this type of unstructured conversation has its place, the classroom should be focused on learning and academic achievement. Additionally, in answers to students, professors need to be clear and to the pointin order to show up as good listeners and as models for desired student behavior. That means that professors should be always ready to confront and deal with different kinds of situations. Ferris and Tagg observe that for students to become good listeners and to develop their own listening skills they need to follow some steps. A prepared teacher will help the student in following these steps.

The first step is hearing the main point in the lecture: by hearing the main points they will be able to comprehend more during their listening section; the second step is communication with native speakers, even though this is difficult because students do not always have this opportunity. The third step is to engage with technical texts in waysthat students have the opportunity to improve their vocabulary. The final fourth step is to hearthe English language every day: by listening to English language songs, by watching moves, and by watching English language television (Ferris and Tagg, 1992, p. 313). Teacherscan, and should, include in their listening lesson elements, videos with subtitles, so everyone will comprehend more about what they hear; this will be very helpful in following classroom discussions.

3.6 Conclusion

This chapter reviewed the importance of listening, and the effect of listening in different kinds of relations, especially in family and business relation. This chapter noted the categories of listening, and what they include: The first category involves the information of academic lectures, listening understanding method, problems and strategies for comprehending L2 lectures. The second category includes learning academic speaking skills formal and informal speaking. Ferris and Tagg’s third and fourth categories covered the L2 student’s ability to interact with native speakers in a faculty framework. We also are noted the characteristics and demands and also some strategies for its improvement.

CHAPER 4: FRUSTRATION IN LISTENING

Anxiety is a complex notion; it relies with self-efficacy and also with evaluation of the threat. These evaluations joined with tasks, have negative influence in learning process. Eleni Papparmihiel

4.1 Introduction

Listening is a process which includes many difficulties, even for those who have high language competency. This chapter will look at the complexities of academic listening and the difficulties students face during listening process, focusing primarily on student anxiety and professor-student exchanges during listening process.

4.2 Complexity in academic listening

ESL students have difficulties in comprehending the spoken word; consequently, they have difficulties forming and answering questions. Academic listening is difficult even for those students with high language knowledge. Students are more comfortable in everyday conversations rather listening to class lectures and instructions. With friends, they talk about things in which they have interest and they listen for pleasure; while listening in the academic setting requires a more exact concentration. It is this demand for their attention that makes students frustrated. Chung Chiang and Patricia Dunkel explained many difficulties confronting L2 students (Chiang and Dunkel; 1992, p. 345.); they listed two which they considered the most important. First, these students had restricted listening ability in English language. Second, they lacked previous knowledge about the matter of the L2 lecture. This lack of information was considered as a fundamental problem because students often were not able to fully understand the lecture material in absence of informational foundation.

4.3 The difficulties that students face during listening process

Students of English have frustration to understand the oral language, in particular in listening circumstances where they do not have any chance to interact with the speaker. In such circumstances taking a listening test with audio tape is a big challenge for them. Such difficulties come because students have no familiarity hearing fluent natural speech in English language also they have lack of prior knowledge of the language system. The test takers are not informed about test subjects before, and they listen once or twice the audio input (Buck, 1995, p. 375).

SamuelMessick suggests that test anxiety may lead students to unsuccessful results during listening (Messick, 1996, p. 244). Some of these problems come from linguistic factors, some from educational or cultural ones. One of these problems considered is the privation or the absence to connect in communicative interplay with foreign language professors or native speakers. There are students who can understand pretty well what they hear, but they find themselves unprepared to interpret what they have heard. Another difficulty is the failure to discover the main ideas of the lesson. These students are not capable of choosing the most critical information, so instead of listening to the key words they keep focusing on little details that are unnecessary. A further complexity is the lack of familiarity with the structure and topic. Some students can only listen closely if the sentences are simple; their ESL experience has been restricted to simple dialogues. Another problem is the impossibility to comprehend the logic flow of the lesson; if students misunderstand what they first heard, they do not comprehend what they hear next, and instead of the target message they transmit another one that may be near the correct answer but is not. Students are often frustrated because of the rate of speedin lesson delivery. Too many times students find themselves lost in the complexities in navigating the speed rate of the spoken word. The speed rate in listening audio input and the speed speaking professors, in listening audio the speaker speaks fast and the anxiety starts, the same feelings come even with professors who speak fast.

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