Examples Of Comprehension Problems In Listening

EFL students always have comprehension problems in listening for many complicated reasons. The listening materials are considered to be too fast and variable for EFL students, especially for the beginning language learners. Renandya and Farrell (2011) believed that “any increase in speech rate tends to result in a decrease in comprehension” (p. 53). What’s more, when the speaker modifies the sound or blend several words together when they are speaking, listeners will get confused. When we talk with others outside class, communication seems much easier compared with the in-class formal listening practice, and that is because face-to-face communication is a two-way listening. If we have any difficulty or miss any information, we can easily go back and ask the speaker to speak more slowly and clearly, or to repeat the information. In this case, listening is not that difficult. On the contrary, formal listening exercises are usually one-way tasks; listeners cannot get any extra clue except the listening material itself. This is even more difficult for beginning listeners, and they have nothing to do except following the so-called good listeners’ strategies, which are actually ineffective for them.

According to traditional listening researches, the lower-level listener should be able to solve their comprehension problems by themselves with a lot of formal strategy training. However, the reality is a different situation. In this article, Renandya and Farrell (2011) stated that the traditional training of listening strategies is very popular, but many problems still exist. For example, it is a great burden for teachers to acquire many different strategies and theories in order to train their students; and the so-called effective listen...

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...few projects; instead, students at different language proficiency levels should have their own listening plans and designs. For those beginning learners, easier and more interesting listening resources would be appropriate. They may listen to kids’ songs; watch cartoons and movies with simpler conversations; listen to podcast; or read latest news that they are interested in and communicate with their classmates and friends. Their focus should be on fluency and adequacy. For those at higher proficiency level, more complicated video and audio resources could be a good try, and they may also focus on complexity. Teachers should also notice that, extensive listening does not only refer to outside class and self-monitoring activities. Teachers must take charge of some tasks in order to better control the effect and guide students to practice toward the correct direction.