Definition of Listening
Listening has been defined by many researchers. Chastain (1971) defined listening as the
ability to understand native speech at normal speed. Morley (1972) said listening involves
auditory discrimination, aural grammar, selecting necessary information, remembering it, and
connecting it to the process between sound and form of meaning. According to Postovsky
(1975), listening differs in meaning from sound discrimination to aural comprehension. Goss
(1982) defined listening as a process of understanding what is heard and organizing it into lexical
elements to which meaning can be allocated. Bowen, Madsen, and Hilferty (1985) demonstrated
that listening is understanding the oral language. Students hear oral speech, divide sounds,
classify them into lexical and syntactic units, and comprehend the message. Listening is a
process of receiving what the speaker says, making and showing meaning, negotiating meaning
with the speaker and answering, and creating meaning by participation, creativity, and empathy.
Definition of Listening Comprehension
The term “listening comprehension” has been defined by different authors. According to
Brown and Yule (1983), listening comprehension means that a person understands what he/she
has heard. If he/she learns the text through hearing it, he/she will understand it. Dirven and
Oakeshott-Taylor (1984) defined listening comprehension as the product of teaching
methodology and is matched by terms such as speech understanding, spoken language
understanding, speech recognition, and speech perception. Rost (2002) and Hamouda (2013)
defined listening comprehension as an interactive process in which listeners are involved in
constructing meaning. Listeners comprehend the oral input through sound discrimination,
previous knowledge, grammatical structures, stress and intonation, and the other linguistic or
non-linguistic clues. According to Nadig (2013), listening comprehension is the various
processes of understanding and making sense of spoken language. These involve knowing
speech sounds, comprehending the meaning of individual words, and understanding the syntax of
sentences.
Listening Comprehension
Strategies Goh (2000) said that it is very important to teach listening strategies to students
and before doing this, teachers should increase learners’ knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and
phonology. According to Vandergrift (1999), the development of strategy is significant for the
training of listening and learners can guide and assess their own understanding and answers.
Previous Studies about Listening Strategies
Different studies about the use of listening strategies by learners have been carried out.
Vandergrift (1999) said that metacognitive strategies lead to listening achievement when they
deal with cognitive strategies. Less efficient learners utilized cognitive and memory strategies
most frequently and social strategies least frequently. The more efficient learners often applied
strategies. They used top-down and metacognitive strategies which are related to the learners’
listening skill. The less efficient didn’t use top-down strategies but utilized bottom-up strategies
(Graham, Santos, & Vanderplank, 2008; Shang, 2008).
Major Problems That Learners Face With Listening Comprehension
There are a lot of difficulties that learners may encounter in the listening comprehension
processes and the purpose is to be aware of these problems and try to solve them. Some of these
problems are as follows:
Quality of Recorded Materials
In some classes, teachers use some recorded materials that do not have high quality. The quality
of sound system can impact the comprehending of learners’ listening (Azmi Bingol, Celik,
Yidliz, & Tugrul Mart, 2014).
Cultural Differences
Learners should be familiar with the cultural knowledge of language that has a significant effect
on the learners’ understanding. If the listening task involves completely different cultural
materials then the learners may have critical problems in their comprehension. It is the
responsibility of teachers to give background knowledge about the listening activities in advance.
Accent
Munro and Derwing (1999) expressed that too many accented speech can lead to an important
reduction in comprehension. According to Goh (1999), 66% of learners mentioned a speaker’s
accent as one of the most significant factors that affect listener comprehension. Unfamiliar
accents both native and non-native can cause serious problems in listening comprehension and
familiarity with an accent helps learners’ listening comprehension.
Unfamiliar Vocabulary
When listening texts contain known words it would be very easy for students to them. If students
know the meaning of words this can arouse their interest and motivation and can have a positive
impact on the students’ listening comprehension ability. A lot of words have more than one
meaning and if they are not used appropriately in their appropriate contexts students will get
confused.
Length and Speed of Listening
Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014) stated that the level of students can have a
significant role when they listen to long parts and keep all information in their mind. It is very
difficult for lower level students to listen more than three minutes long and complete the
listening tasks. Short listening passages make easy listening comprehension for learners and
reduce their tiredness.
Conclusion
Language learners are often overwhelmed by too much anxiety in the process of learning foreign
languages Since listening skill is one of the essential skills which should be mastered and used
for communication used in real life situation. Anxiety is one of the important factor that hinder
students’ listening capacity and performance in EFL classrooms, therefore, it should be paid
much attention by both teachers and students.
