UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTONOMA DE NICARAGUA, LEON

“CMDTE. GERMAN POMARES ORDOÑEZ”

CUR –SOMOTILLO
FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEPARTAMENT

Research Protocol

Strategies to overcome the listening difficulties of university students.

Authors:

Maykol Catin Avendaño.

Johan Andres Navas
Marvin Laxery Reyes
Snayder Steven Roque

Tutor: Dr.

“A LA LIBERTAD POR LA UNIVERSIDAD”

Problem Statement

According to the syllabus of the university, which is based on the common

European framework (CEFR), students in second year should have a B1 level.

Surprisingly, a great number of these students do not have this requested level.

Listening is a mental procedure of understanding and figuring out

meanings. English has four main skills (Speaking, Listening, Reading and
Writing) and all of them have their complexity, but in non-English speaking
countries, listening become harder. Students in Nicaragua are not the exception,
they face the same listening problems. It is suggested that each student needs to
be exposed to the language at least 10 hour per day, according to research
(MBA, 2019)

This research paper’s main attempt is to set and provide strategies to deal

with this phenomenon. There are many students in second year who are facing

some issues when it comes to listening comprehension mainly because of the

previous listening course and the amount of time this course is given. Nonetheless,

poor to no research has been done in this field of study. Because listening is a

fundamental skill to every single English learner, we set up the focus of our

investigation: “Strategies to overcome the listening difficulties of university students.”

1. What difficulties do sophomore encounter in listening to the dialog?

2. What strategies are feasible to overcome listening difficulties in university
students?
Justification

The focus of this investigation is to identify the reasons why sophomores at

CUR- SOMOTILLO are facing issues with their listening skills and to provide

possible solutions or recommendations to address this phenomenon. This document

will explore the importance, techniques, background, and knowledge that needs to

be put into practice to acquire great listening skills.

A similar study was conducted by a group of students of the Science and

Humanities faculty in Leon, Nicaragua, in order to determine the main problems of

listening skill in students of fifth year. Nonetheless, this study took place before the

teaching hours of this class were cut almost by half. Also, not only does this matter

but also gives us the opportunity to dig into more analysis including the geographical

futures, the number of students, the teacher’s expertise and teaching techniques.

In this study we expect to find answers to this problematic and to set a starting

point for future students and teachers of this course. More importantly, we hope we

can motivate learners and teachers to be committed to both learning and teaching.

Lastly, we hope for further investigations in this area.

 I. Hypothesis

The little time that is given to this class and the lack of appropriate techniques are

causing students of second year of the English major at CUR- SOMOTILLO to

have good listening comprehension skills.

General objective:

To determine the factors that prevent sophomore students from acquiring good

listening comprehension skills at UNAN_ LEON CUR SOMOTILLO.

Specific objectives:

To analyze what makes listening a challenging task for these students.

To monitor the effectiveness of the strategies that are used when teaching

listening.

To provide solutions for students to better their listening skills.

 METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN

a. Type of study
This research has a qualitative approach; however, we would like to define and
explain what qualitative research is:

According to Interaction Design Foundation: Qualitative research is the

methodology researchers apply to obtain deep contextual understanding through
participants via no numerical means and direct observation. Creswell (2002); Pope
and Mays (1995) augmented that ‘qualitative research’ aims at exploring,
understanding, and interpreting social phenomena within its naturals setting.

In our study, we will determine the effectiveness of the different strategies

applied when teaching listening skills to overcome listening difficulties. Thes type of
study is descriptive in which we will examine the challenges students face
whenever the teacher tries to promote any active listening activity.

Theoretical Framework

A. What is listening?

Oxford defines listening as the complex skills and sound perceptions. Listening
covers the understanding of the meaning of words, phrases, clauses, sentences,
and discourses. (Kaplan, 2018) In her article explain: Listening may seem simple.
You may not consider it to be a powerful tool. However, more and more business
leaders and entrepreneurs are taking it on as a serious skill and are reaping the
rewards.

A.1 Active Listening

 According to (Kaplan, 2018) ´Actively listening´ can be defined as giving your
complete, intentional focus to what someone says, rather than what their words
literally mean. Also, one the most famous quotes by Peter Ducker is “The most
important thing in communication is hearing what isn´t said”.

An Study about deep listening direct by Diana Raab Ph.D. define Active listening
as making a conscious decision to hear what people are saying. It’s about being
completely focused on others—their words and their messages—without being
distracted. (Ph.D., 2017).

B. Definition of listening Comprehension.

We can find different definitions about listening comprehension defined by

different authors. According to (West Germany and Jhon Oakeshott-Talor, 2008)
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.

B.1 listening comprehension strategies

(R.Emerick, 2019)The findings of his study showed that the language instructors, by
and large, believed that direct, explicit listening instruction is essential in
developing L2 listening skills, yet they report to only rarely provide process-
oriented or metacognitive instruction for their students. It is important that all
teachers and students know the listening comprehension strategies with the
purpose of improving in listening comprehension skill. (Graham, S., Santos, D.
and Francis-Brophy, 2014) In their study “Teachers beliefs about listening in a
foreign language” summarizes the following:

1. .Without instruction in how to improve listening, learners are very slow to develop
effective listening strategy use, if at all; by contrast, it is possible to develop that
effective use through instruction, with potential benefits for learners’ listening
proficiency.
2. The development of metacognitive strategies and metacognitive awareness in
relation to listening can be particularly helpful and can be achieved through learner
discussion of strategy use.
3. Attention to the development of bottom-up and top-down strategies is important for
helping learners to develop their listening.
4. Prediction/pre-listening strategies need to be combined with strategies for verifying
and monitoring predictions.

A research about “listening comprehension difficulties encountered by students in

second language learning class” (Mustafa Bingol, 2014) expressed that there are
three types of strategies in listening comprehension. They are cognitive,
metacognitive, and socio-affective. These strategies can change based on the level
of learners. They are cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective. These
strategies can change based on the level of learners.

( Shigeo Kato, Kento Tanaka, 2015) In their research, they 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.

C. Reason why listening is difficult for EFLT students.

Listening has been consider one of the most difficult skill in learning a language,
due to several reasons that we must take into account. All we know that listening
involves many aspects and procedures that can make it complicated. According
to (Abdulaziz Ali Al-Qahtani, Mei Lin, 2016) defined listening comprehension as
an interactive process in which listeners are involved in constructing meaning.
According to (Shabrina, 2021) in her conference paper suggested that there are
several aspects that have emerged that contribute to a better understanding of
the nature of listening comprehension (Rost, 2011). These aspect are:

1. Receptive

Receiving what the speaker says, getting the speaker´s idea, and receiving
the transfer of image, impressions, and thoughts from the speaker.

2. Constructive
Constructing and representing meaning. Catching what is in a speaker´s
mind.
3. Collaborative
Negotiating meaning and responding to what the speaker has said,
signaling to the speaker which ideas are clear and acceptable.
4. Transformative
Creating meaning through involvement, empathy, and imagination.

This aspects must be taking into account when a student is been proved in
listening exercises.

A research published by University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of

Language conclude that they identified factors that affect students in listening
comprehension. (Amber Bloomfield, PhD, Sarah C. Wayland, PhD, Elizabeth
Rhoades, MA, Allison Blodgett, PhD, Jared Linck, PhD,Steven Ross, PhD, 2010)

The reasons found were the followings:

C.1 Characteristics of the listener

Understanding a foreign language taps several general cognitive abilities. For

example, listeners with greater working memory capacity— that is, those who are
most efficient at attending to, temporarily storing, and processing incoming
information— understand more of what they hear when they are listening to their
nonnative language.
3.1 Listeners’ anxiety can also impact their ability to understand what has been
said. If a listener is anxious or in some other way distracted and unable to pay
attention, it will be more difficult to accurately determine what was said.

C.2 Characteristics of the passage

Studies directly examining the effects of passage length on L2 listening

comprehension find little evidence that this factor alone affects comprehension
difficulty.

C.3 Characteristics of the testing conditions

Research shows that imposing time limits makes cognitive tasks more difficult.

Performance on L2 listening tests may be unaffected by increasing time limits if

the examinee has the option of pausing or replaying the passage.

D. Major Problems That Learners Face With Listening Comprehension

According to (Sri Ayu Handayani, Nurdin Noni, Amra Ariyani, 2023) researchers
found that students have challenges that they experience during the English
learning process and especially in the listening comprehension.

D.1 Students challenges in quality recorded materials

Recorded materials may not always be readily available, and students may have
difficulty finding high-quality resources. High-quality recorded materials may be
expensive, and not all students may have the financial resources to access them
(Sri Ayu Handayani, Nurdin Noni, Amra Ariyani, 2023).

D.2 Students challenges in cultural differences

Differences in language, slang, and pronunciation can create communication

difficulties for students who are new to a culture. Different cultural norms and
expectations can be confusing and challenging for students who are unfamiliar
with them (Sri Ayu Handayani, Nurdin Noni, Amra Ariyani, 2023)

D.3 Students challenges in accent

Students may struggle to accurately pronounce certain words and sounds,

leading to difficulties in communication. Students may not have a rich vocabulary
in their second language, making it difficult for them to express their thoughts and
ideas effectively (Sri Ayu Handayani, Nurdin Noni, Amra Ariyani, 2023).

D.4 Students challenges in unfamiliar vocabulary

Students need context to understand the meaning of words. If the material does
not provide enough context, students may struggle to understand the meaning of
unfamiliar vocabulary. (Rohmatillah, 2014) He found that Kind of difficulties faced
by the students were (1) almost all of the students have difficulties in pronouncing
the words, (2) how to write and spell, (3) the different grammatical form of a word
known as inflections was one of causes of students difficulties in learning
vocabulary.

Bibliography

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