Learners Perceptions about Listening Comprehension Problems - Dissertation Example

?Learners’ Perceptions about Listening Comprehension Problems Literature Review This literature review reveals that previous studies in the past havefocused on learners’ perceptions about listening comprehension problems, strategies, and teachers’ solutions to improve students’ listening performances. Hasan (2000) establishes that many EFL learners experience difficulties in comprehending natural spoken English that is delivered at normal speed in a study that reports listening problems experienced by learners in the EFL classroom in the ESP Centre that is located at Damascus University. Additionally, the study establishes that learners encounter a range of listening problems, which can be overcome through various techniques that help learners to utilize effective strategies in confronting them; nevertheless, this literature observes that learners’ perceptions of their listening problems may or may not be valid because several factors may interact to influence their perceptions. This literature makes a clear distinction between listening and comprehension processes with the former requiring no interpretation or reaction to the text while the latter requires the meaningful interactive activity to facilitate understanding of the text. In the context of this research, listening comprehension refers to the manner in which listeners discriminate and construe meaning from information that they receive through their auditory and visual clues to make sense of the communication process. This perspective of listening comprehension is in line with the Second language approach, according to which listening to verbal language is both a vigorous and intricate process, requiring learners to pay particular attention to selected areas of audio, to make meaning, as well as relate what they hear to their mind frames. Hamouda (2012) argues that, despite its profound significance in foreign language learning, listening has long been ignored in foreign language acquisition, research, teaching, and assessment especially given the little focus on listening problems encountered by L2/F1 learners in listening to spoken English. This literature reports findings from a study that investigates the listening problems experienced by a group of first year English Major Students of Qassim University, which include accent, pronunciation, speed of speech, insufficient vocabulary, different accents of the speakers, poor concentration, anxiety, and bad quality of recording. Knowing the various difficulties learners encounter in listening comprehension is paramount in EFL teaching because it enables EFL teachers to guide learners in developing effective learning strategies that will eventually enhance their English listening competence. Listening plays a very significant role in communication because it enables listeners to take in new ideas and information from discourses; listening takes a lion’s share of the total time spent on communication and it is central to students’ educational development because it is the most frequently used language skill in the classroom. EFL learners have major problems in English listening comprehension because educators overemphasize English grammar, reading, and vocabulary competence areas at the expense of listening skills in EFL teaching courses. This literature suggests that adapting and improving listening materials, and improving teachers' classroom techniques on the part of the teachers, in addition to, improving English proficiency, and improving listening strategies on the side of the students can help alleviate the various listening comprehension problems. Graham (2006) explores the perceptions of English students between the age of 16 to18 concerning listening comprehension in French; in addition to that, this literature also examines the students’ viewpoints on the influences that result to either success or failure in listening comprehension assignments. According to this study, a substantial proportion of students in the higher levels of education rate their competence in listening comprehension lowly, and one of the major issues constraining their listening capacity is the speed at which texts are delivered. Besides having trouble coping effectively with the speed of narration, many learners view the task of identifying single words in a flow of French as well as recognizing the implication of the words identified as very challenging endeavours. Additionally, this study reports that many learners perceive their difficulties in listening comprehension are attributable to their own low ability in the listening skill and to the complexity of the listening tasks and texts set, with little guidance shown regarding the role played by ineffective listening strategies. Many learners are not comfortable with listening because it induces a lot of anxiety in them as they are compelled to process input of information rapidly in order to comprehend the material being presented by speakers. Listening is indeed a complex process which requires the application of a wider variety of knowledge sources, both linguistic and non-linguistic, to facilitate the interpretation of the rapid influx of data. This complexity, coupled with the abstractness of the listening process itself further aggravates learners’ frustrations regarding how to go about or even enhance their listening in foreign languages. According to Kelly (1991), lexical ignorance is the main constrain to listening comprehension beyond the intermediate stage of foreign language study; this literature goes further to highlight the events that make up the listening process and why the native speaker is regarded a better listener unlike foreigners. Listening entails bottom-up (sound input) and top-down (application of cognitive faculties) processing and perception relies on the intricate interplay between these two processes; learners will mostly rely on the bottom-up processing when listening especially in their initial stages of foreign language learning, but will progress to the top-down processing with increased proficiency. This study establishes that Lexical errors account for over 65.5% of all the errors where comprehension was severely impaired, thus leading to the inference that lexical ignorance is undeniably the most prevalent cause of misperceptions in listening with foreign language learners. The foreign learners’ ears insensitivity to sounds in foreign languages depends on the learners’ first language, and regardless of the amount of training, foreign language, learners can never acquire native-speaker like competence. In that respect, this research further suggests the establishment of a coherent methodology of vocabulary learning, which translates to efficient and quantitative learning that leads to long term retention as the first step in enhancing listening comprehension. This study further recommends a shift in focus from attributing foreign learners’ listening comprehension difficulties to an auditory or perceptual deficiency and developing strategies to a focus on lexical expansion. Goh (2000) provides a cognitive perspective on language apprentices’ listening understanding problems by identifying the actual time listening problems encountered by a group of English Second language apprentices and further examining these problems along the three-phase ideal of language understanding. According to this literature, all learners will encounter difficulties when listening to the target language only that the types and extent of the difficulty differ because a number of varying factors including, but not limited to, speech rate, lexis, phonological features, and background knowledge influence them. Many other issues that have been associated with learners’ difficulties in listening comprehension lie within the scopes of text structure, syntax; the rest are predominantly personal factors such as inadequate acquaintance with the target language, in addition to lack of attentiveness and enthusiasm. Among the difficulties encountered by learners in listening are parsing problems such as inability to recognize sounds as distinct words or groups of words, paying attention, and inability to process texts due to lack of prior knowledge. Overall, real time listening problems are related to the three cognitive processing phases- perception, parsing, and utilization, with a number of related factors such as poor sound representations of familiar words, failure to use appropriate comprehension tactics, and insufficient prior knowledge being to blame. Chand (2007) looks at the perceptions of both teachers and learners’ on listening skills in non-classroom learning situations especially in view of the fact that listening aids study has previously focused on policy use in classrooms and on theory and training of Second Language instruction. This study also argues that listening plays a significant role in language learning, and is probably the most essential language skill, yet it is also the least obvious of the four language skills, because it is difficult to observe. According to this study, there is a current shift in research interest towards listening comprehension, especially on learners’ self-reporting of their awareness of the listening process in second language; in the view of this study, an understanding and awareness within the learners’ of the strategies involved in listening can have a significant positive impact on their listening development. The results of this study report the learners’ views on their self-perception of listening skills and the strategies used to facilitate or improve listening; students are aware of the processes involved in listening development, while teachers are very oblivious of the learners’ self-perceptions. In view of this gap, this research suggests strongly that teachers, whether they teach in classrooms or at a distance, should strive to gain insight into the learning processes of their learners, and they can do this by becoming directly involved in the classroom research. Vogely (1995) argues that second language learners must be motivated and use strategies effectively to understand authentic aural input, and goes further to offer insights into some of the significant strategies that learners perceive they apply in the process of performing listening comprehension tasks. This body of knowledge also reports that learners’ listening skills improve considerably with exposure to authentic speech, and that the successful second language learners normally have a repertoire of strategies that they draw upon in their listening comprehension tasks. Listening comprehension is inevitably an integral part of the foreign language classroom curriculum because it is not merely a question of understanding, but a process of constructing meaning based on multi-dimensional relationships between the learners and external/internal influences, and the complex elements in the learners’ reality. This research suggests an intricate interplay between learners’ perceived awareness of strategy and their listening comprehension- in that case, learners who perceive they are using the right strategies in the process of listening comprehension are more likely to comprehend much of the content of the listening task. Learners tend to rely on top-down strategies in the comprehension of less difficult passages and when faced with technical listening challenges such as faster speech, and less salient topics, they fall back to familiar bottom-up strategies that are less cognitively demanding. This study further remarks that, information on perception can shed light unto the way learners develop strategies and their relationship to comprehension thereby providing avenues along which researchers can establish the fault lines in comprehension and strategies to remedy the problems. In general terms, this study establishes that most learners recognize the effectiveness of top-down listening strategies even though most of them hardly apply the same in listening comprehension; similarly, most learners report awareness of the effectiveness of bottom-up strategies even though they hardly apply them. Diane and Neomy (2009) investigate learners’ perceptions of their speaking skills, of their contributions to oral class activities, including their attitudes towards the same, in addition to how such perceptions and attitudes influence their willingness to communicate in second language. This study establishes that the learners’ perceptions of the speaking activities and of themselves as learners in the foreign language classroom contexts largely influence their willingness to communicate in a number of ways. According to this study, vocabulary and fluency are the most difficult aspects of oral interaction because they inevitably determine the level of comprehension in real situations as these, and confidence to participate in speech discourses is eroded within the competitive and intimidating classroom scenario. Learners report having experienced anxiety in the classroom environment due to fear of exposure for their inability to contribute to oral discussions, and the leaners equally perceive the whole class discussions as the most difficult type of interaction even though it is aimed to improve fluency, vocabulary and self-confidence. This study asserts that small groups are an effective means of reducing learners’ performance anxiety, and provides greater opportunities for communicative interactions. Asassfeh et al (2011) investigates the Jordanian English–major undergraduates’ perspectives concerning major English as a Second Language learning difficulties they encounter in the four basic language skills namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This study builds on insights from other researches’ findings; for instance, the research documents that EFL students’ encounter difficulties in listening comprehension due to limited vocabulary, lack of control over the speakers’ pace or speed of delivery, inability to get things repeated, and failure to recognize pauses in speech. In addition, Taiwanese EFL learners’ crucial difficulties that impede development of listening comprehension are the incapacity to cultivate listening practices, or to improve the capability to process facts, in addition, to low English proficiency, and misconceptions concerning the listening process. This study argues that despite the many difficulties experienced by foreign learners of English in their attempt to acquire communicative competence, little has been done to examine these difficulties from the learners’ perspective. According to this study, EFL Learners perceive listening to be the least difficult of all the four skills especially when some aural material is accompanied by visual presentations that aid in the comprehension task. Additionally, listening is often neglected in ESL instruction because both teachers and learners do not consider listening to be such a difficult task, because it is controllable; in that case, this research argues that the learners’ relative ignorance of listening might have misinformed their perceptions concerning the problems they encounter in listening. Unlike reading, listening requires much more effort since the learner needs to employ a considerable amount of aural attention to achieve comprehension in a listening task, thus, listening is not as easy as it may seem. According to Moradi (2012), listening has always been a major challenge afflicting non-native speakers in academic lectures, and in view of this, this current study investigates the consequence of listening approach training on a collection of Iranian EFL students’ listening comprehension of educational discourses. Effective listening comprehension skills are particularly important for students’ academic success, and the explicit instruction of listening comprehension strategies should be highlighted as one of the key areas of focus for educators in ESL. This body of research argues that ESL learners are further constrained in the process of listening comprehension than native speakers because they have to comprehend the content delivered in English as well as struggle with other impediments that a lecture could create such as accents and speed of oral delivery. Unfortunately, many ESL learners’ listening skills are normally underdeveloped to facilitate effective listening comprehension that entails extracting content information from lectures, and often, this factor is never taken into consideration during instruction as learners are assumed to have developed listening competence. This literature suggests that strategy coaching has the capacity of enhancing listening comprehension of ESL learners and a positive correlation exists between the effective use of strategy and second language learners’ proficiency. In that case, the difference between effective and ineffective listeners can be understood in terms of the strategies used during the various phases of listening comprehension; this study asserts that more effective listeners will more likely make a greater use of both bottom-up and top-down processes. Conversely, less effective listeners are the ones that usually remain fixated on single word meanings, which hardly enhance listening comprehension on their own, probably due to their lack of metacognition concerning task requirements that helps to choose appropriate strategies. References Asassfeh, S., et al. 2011. Lending Ears to EFL Learners: Language Difficulties. The Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist, Vol. 28, No. 1: 33-46. Chand R. 2007. Same size doesn’t fit all: Insights from research on listening skills at the University of the South Pacific (USP). International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning Volume 8, Number 3. Diane D.L and Neomy, S. 2009. Learners’ perceptions and attitudes: Implications for willingness to communicate in an L2 classroom. System Volume 37, Issue 2, Pages 269–285. Goh C.M. 2000. A cognitive perspective on language learners' listening comprehension problems. System Volume 28, Issue 1, Pages 55–75. Graham, S. 2006. Listening comprehension: The learners’ perspective. System Volume 34, Issue 2, Pages 165–182. Hamouda, A. 2012. Listening comprehension problems--voices from the classroom. Language in India 12.8: Pg.1. Hasan, A.S. 2000. Learners' Perceptions of Listening Comprehension Problems. Language, Culture and Curriculum Volume 13, Issue 2, pages 137-153. Kelly, P. 1991. Lexical ignorance: The main obstacle to listening comprehension with advanced foreign language. International Review of Applied Linguistics In Language Teaching, 29(2), 135. Moradi K. 2012. The impact of listening strategy instruction on academic lecture comprehension: A case of Iranian EFL learners. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. Volume 70, 25 January 2013, Pages 406–416. Vogely, A. 1995. Perceived Strategy Use during Performance on Three Authentic Listening Comprehension Tasks. The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 79, No. 1, pp. 41-56. Read More