Table Of Contents
Promoting effective listening
The following notes assume that you are likely to be using MUSO 
to provide your students with online information and resources for your subject.
For non-native speaker (NNS) students, listening is the pre-eminent skill needed for:
- interactions in a variety of face to face settings, including tutorials
- comprehension of academic tasks
- comprehension of input leading to other learning, and
- note-taking in lectures and tutorials.
Lectures and tutorials make significant demands on them in terms of comprehension. Many international students, including those from China, will find that they have not always been adequately prepared for the realities of study in a monolingual English-speaking environment. According to Mulligan and Kirkpatrick (2000), NNS students are often educated in 'poorly resourced' programs with a top-heavy focus on writing and reading skills, which leave them 'ill-prepared for listening to lectures in Western universities' (pp. 313-4). Very few Chinese students will have had any regular exposure to native speaker teachers in their previous schooling (see Studying English in China).
The first few weeks of lectures can prove especially demanding. Not only do they need understand the concepts and new forms of cultural knowledge being presented, but the lecturer's accent, spoken style, and use of jargon, idiom and metaphor can also affect comprehension. In more than half of the interviews, Chinese students commented on the lecturer's accent as a significant initial distractor. In some cases, strong accents together with a too fast delivery undermined comprehension throughout the whole course.
In the first couple of weeks it was so hard to follow the lectures.
Was this because you couldn't understand what was being said?
Sometimes you couldn't keep up, or there was an accent problem you had to get used to... . And sometimes, if you didn't do any pre-reading, there was no way you could follow, because you didn't have the background. So those first few weeks were very tiring. Even working as hard as you could, if you wanted to do some revision, because your reading speed was so slow and there were so many things on the reading list, reading up the last lecture left you no time to pre-read for the next lecture; and if you didn't pre-read for a lecture or tutorial, you couldn't follow the lecturer, and how could you discuss in the tutorial?
— Nova
Students may be misled by lecturers' use of metaphors as common as:
- 'add a new chapter'
- 'handpicked'
- 'catchword'
- 'attack their job'
For an illuminating study see Littlemore (2001).
See also the section on Glossaries above. [Use your browser's 'Back' button to return to this page.]
In [. . . ] for example, could you understand the lectures reasonably clearly, or did you feel you were missing a lot?
I still had some problems with the tutorial because, the most important one is that that teacher, he had a very strong Australian accent, and I couldn't take notes very clearly because he speak in his own way and he would not repeat.
This was the tutorial, not the lecture?
For the lecture, we already had the lecture notes, it was very clear.
— Keith
Are there any other things which you think might affect your understanding when you're listening to lectures here?
If they speak too fast, and if the teacher speak another accent. For example, I think Indian people the accent will be quite different from Australians and sometimes I really couldn't understand what they talk about if they speak too fast.
— Terrie
Have you had any problems with the lecturer's accent?
I'm used to Australian accents now. But some staff from Indian or some Asian background – teachers – just some of them – not all of them, I have some problem.
— Ruth
As a rough guide, it can take a recently-arrived NNS student about one semester to understand up to 70% or more of material presented in first-semester lectures and tutorials. Chinese students report using a number of strategies to help themselves to bridge the listening gap: for example, pre-reading; post-reading; recording lectures; and forming out-of-class study groups.
What percentage of lectures do you have problems understanding?
20 or 30%.
— Mabel
Could you understand the lectures?
No.
Not at all?
Just a little bit.
So how did you manage – solve the problem?
I still haven't solved it! I can understand a lot now, much more than at the beginning, but I still don't understand everything.
— Mary
In class in my first month here, I think I understood 50% of what I heard. Because my major – pretty hard to understand....
— Lionel
What other things might affect your understanding of the lectures?
If I did the study before I go to the lecture, that's helpful; if [I] didn't, that would be a little bit hard.... I need to print out my lecture notes beforehand, and I go back home and check the dictionary – some vocabulary that I'm not familiar with – check it before I go to the lecture.
— Ruth
... And sometimes, if you didn't do any pre-reading, there was no way you could follow, because you didn't have the background. So those first few weeks were very tiring... if you didn't pre-read for a lecture or tutorial, you couldn't follow the lecturer, and how could you discuss in the tutorial?
— Nova
So do you need to do some reading before you go to a tutorial?
I find this the other way round. I think after like attending the lecture and the tutorial, it's more easy to read the book because you can pick up what the lecturer have mentioned.
Do you think that the subject that you're talking about in that week, the topic, does that become clearer?
Not within a week's time.
So it takes a bit longer?
Yes.
— Mabel
Were you able to follow the lectures at all?
Not much.
So what did do about that?
Oh, I just go the lecture, and when I went back home I read the textbook; try to understand the textbook first; then if I don't know I email the lecturer, and they reply to me very quick.
— Susy
In class in my first month here, I think I understood 50% of what I heard. Because my major – pretty hard to understand.
How did you overcome the problem?
I recorded them. I recorded every class, and then listened back to them later.
Would you listen through a whole lecture, right from beginning to end?
Yes.
How many times did you have to listen through to understand it?
For some of them I just listen one time and then I think I can grasp the main points; and some of them – no matter how many times I listen, I don't understand.
This process, did you maintain it right through to the last semester?
Oh no, I only recorded classes in the first semester. Because later I found that after I'd recorded them I had no time to listen to them. And anyway, by that time, I was understanding 70-80%; and in my second semester felt I understood the basic concepts, and I didn't need to record any more.
— Lionel
So how did you deal with [the problem of lecture listening]?
I just did the best I could; when that didn't work I'd go to my classmates to discuss. Then, because there was one Australian in our class, so I thought, it's really important to discuss what we're studying, and I got into a group with the Australian and also an Indian this Indian girl, she had already studied Marketing, quite closely related to my major, and she had lots of ideas; so we three made up a group together, and that was a big help.
— Nova
However, as the following pages indicate, lecturers and tutors can significantly improve student comprehension by attention to the presentation, structure and cultural dimensions of the material to be taught:
- General guidelines for lecturing
- Initiatives in the first weeks
- Facilitating comprehension in tutorials
- Other resources
Download a printable version of this page (.doc ~10Kb)Problems? Questions? Comments? Please provide us feedback.
