While the challenges posed by the speaker or the situation may be out of the listener’s hands, there are a few skills or 'strategies' that English learners can use to help them along. The speaker, the situation and the listener can all be the cause of these difficulties.Ĭontributing factors include the speaker talking quickly, background noise, a lack of visual clues (such as on the telephone), the listener’s limited vocabulary, a lack of knowledge of the topic, and an inability to distinguish individual sounds. There are many difficulties an individual may face in understanding a talk, lecture or conversation in a second language (and sometimes even in their first language). Listening challenges for English language learners This is all the more remarkable as learners often say that listening is the most challenging of all the skills in English. Yet, for all its importance, students (and even teachers) often fail to give listening the attention it needs. This is significantly more than speaking, which accounts for 30 per cent, and reading and writing, which make up 16 per cent and nine per cent respectively.
It should not be difficult to realise the importance of listening when we consider that it occupies about 45 per cent of the time adults spend in communication.
How can learners improve their listening comprehension? Teacher Raphael Ahmed shares some useful strategies in one of our top five articles of all time, illustrated by artist Jamie Johnson.
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