Listening skills in an academic context and skills required for success at university

Challenges faced by students while listening in an academic context

Students need good listening skills to interpret what people are saying in various academic situations. For example, they need to be able to understand the content of a lecture at the speed it is delivered. Presentations also require good listening skills, as do seminars, where students are expected to understand and build on the contributions of others. Other events include tutorials, discussions, meetings with tutors and supervisors, group projects, and informal social interactions. In addition, students need good listening skills to interact with administration staff in the local context. In short, students exchange, discuss and apply critical thinking to a considerable amount of knowledge in oral/aural settings.

A lecture, for example, can present many linguistic challenges. These include speed of delivery, accent, academic and specialist vocabulary. There is also grammatical complexity such as false starts, long sentences, and complex noun phrases. An extract from a university medical lecture on stroke contains the following examples:

• False starts and repetitions: an honour– honorary
• Unnecessary words: So if I’d like to just go, go...
• Long sequences with a number of items, including run-on sentences with multiple clauses which pile up layers of information:Furthermore, it’s the third commonest cause of death, with a third of strokes being fatal; one in six people in the world will have a stroke in their lifetime, it’s unlikely to get through life without knowing somebody, a first-degree relative or very close friend, who will not have a stroke.
• Technical terms which can be difficult to hear, understand, pronounce, and spell: hemicraniectomy, thrombolysis
• Words with dependent prepositions which express specific relational meanings:the impact on, of, of stroke on people
• Embedded references to items mentioned before/after in the text: as I’ve said
• Complex / convoluted structures such as noun phrases: the very exciting acute treatment which has now emerged over the past ten years as I’ve said with thrombolysis and hemicraniectomy
• Abbreviations and acronyms: AIDS, EU, TB

There are other challenges too, including culture, dealing with the content of the lecture, the cognitive processing of numbers and statistics, working out detail from the main points, and visual challenges such as the use of PowerPoint slides. Students also need to know why they are listening, and be able to make a record of the content for future use.

1. Discuss five of the listening challenges mentioned in the article above.

2. Suggest five strategies teachers can use to help students improve their listening skills.

Marks will be awarded for answering the following questions and your ability to provide a well-written essay with references. There is a more detailed description of how marks are achieved on pages 7-9. You are advised to support your discussion with at least six sources published during the last ten years.

Ensure that the essay has the following structure and contains the details outlined:

• Cover page: essay title, student ID, name of course and university
• Introduction
• Main body – consisting of well-written paragraphs
• Conclusion
• In-text citations throughout (minimum 10)
• Reference List (minimum 6 references)
• Academic writing throughout

The job market is competitive but having a degree can help students to achieve higher paid jobs when they graduate. This is because the skills learned at university are known as transferable skills and are also valued by employers in the workplace.

1. Identify five skills that students require to be successful at university and discuss why they are also important in the workplace.

2.Provide five recommendations that could help students improve the content of their CVs.

You are advised to support your discussion with at least ten sources published during the last ten years.

Marks will be awarded for answering the following questions and your ability to provide a well-written report with references. There is a more detailed description of how marks are achieved on pages 7-9.