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1.2 Issues in listening comprehension that EFL learners
face
Listening is crucial in the process of obtaining the main topic or information during the conversation or listening videos, audios. As a result, listening to a foreign language is more difficult than we may believe, particularly in English, which has irregular pronunciation. To listen the words correctly, we must have seen at least this word once. The more demand for learning English is causing the more problems among EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners. I chose to clarify the problems that are faced to EFL learners because when I started to learn English the listening was a big problem and at present in the cycling I am witnessing that youngest learners come across with difficulties in encountering the listening ability.
In the below the stress will be put on scholars’ point of view about the cause of issues, different problems and some possible solution to the dilemmas.
As stated by Buck“listening is a complex process in which the listener takes the incoming data, an acoustic signal and interprets it is based on a wide variety of linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge”14.
“The aim of listening comprehension is to understand the native conversation at normal rate in a spontaneous condition”15. Without comprehending the listening skill, learners never learn to communicate or speak effectively and as mentioned the goal of learning listening is understanding without difficulties.
It is supported by Harmer who states that “listening is good for our students’ pronunciation too, in that the more they hear and understand English being spoken, the more they absorb appropriate pitch and intonation, stress and the sounds of both individual words and those which blend together in connected speech.”16
Listening problem is barrier to everyone who learnt languages because listening is the basic of language study and there is an exam from listening skill. According to Goh as cited “listening difficulties are defined as the internal and external characteristic that might interrupt text understanding and real life processing problem directly related to cognitive procedures that take place at various stages of listening comprehension”17.According to some experts as cited in Hamouda and Essays “there are some problems in listening comprehension.
Boyle classifies the factors “influencing listening comprehension and directly related to EFL listening into four inter-relating categories:
1.Listener
2.Speaker
3.Medium
4.Environment factors”18.
Aside from these, Chang Chang and Kuo discovered “five major listening difficulties: speed, a cluster of sounds difficult for segmentation, obsession with the translation, association of sounds with words and meanings, and idiomatic expressions”19. Yagang proposes that “the sources of listening difficulties came mainly from the four aspects: the message, the speaker, the listener, and the physical setting”20.
Underood organizes the major problems as follows:
“lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak
not being able to get things repeated
the listener’s limited vocabulary
failure to recognize the “signals,”
problems of interpretation
inability to concentrate,
established learning habits”21
“When listening skill has been the issue, there are certainly some difficulties in listening; the first is that people cannot communicate face-to-face unless the two types of skills (listening/speaking) are developed in tandem. The second problem is that under many circumstances listening is a reciprocal skill. People cannot practice listening in the same way as they can rehearse speaking, or at least the part of speaking that has to do with pronunciation, because the listener cannot predict the communication.”22
Yiching, however, thinks that some barriers cause problems in listening such as
Belief barriers
Material barriers
Habitudinal barriers
Information processing barriers
English proficiency barriers
Strategic barriers
Affective barriers.
He introduces some strategies to encounter above mentioned barriers. They are: “forgetting to activate strategies, regarding strategies as extra burdens to information processing, being challenged by the complex nature of the strategy, having problems conducting the proper strategies and even being unable to comprehend the text after applying strategies”23.
Problems in listening emphasized by Field are those: “Learners know the word, but get the wrong sense. Phonetic variation of a word misled them. (reduction, assimilation, elision, classicization, syllabification). Learners know the word in written form but not the oral version. Learners have difficulty to catch the word from a connected speech such as a dialogue”24.
From the given information, I tend to say that there a lot of causes of listening problem for EFL learners. From my point of view, the followings may be main reasons that activate issues for young learners.
1.Lack of practice
2.Low concentration- not paying close attention to speakers, is detrimental to effective listening. This comes from physical discomfort, inadequate volume, lack of interest in the subject.
3.Poor judgement
4.Focusing on Style, Not Substance
5. Lack of prioritization
Apart from those difficulties, there are some strategies proposed by some experts that can be applied to overcome the problems. According to Oxford, listening strategies are one of the ways which makes successful in listening comprehension. Strategies will be thought as the ways in which a learner approaches and manages a task, and listeners can be taught effective ways of approaching and managing their listening. There are six strategies that can help EFL learners effectively in doing listening comprehension, those are:
Memory strategies, such as grouping or using imagery, have a highly specific function, such as helping students store and retrieve new information.
Cognitive strategies, such as summarizing or reasoning deductively, enable learners to understand and produce new language by many different means.
Compensation strategies, like guessing or using synonyms, allow learners to use the language despite their often large gaps in knowledge.
Metacognitive strategies, which allow learners to control their own cognition-that is, to coordinate the learning process by using functions such as centering, arranging, planning, and evaluating.
Affective strategies help to regulate emotions, motivations, and attitudes.
Social strategies help students learning through interaction with others.
To put in a nutshell, all mentioned dilemmas can be solved with certain or possible solutions. These problems have been studied and suggestions have been given as a result of Methodists great attempts.
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