Academic Listening Skills

Different types of tasks focus on different stages of the listening process, listening strategies and sub-skills that learners need to develop. The choice of task will therefore depend on the aims of listening instruction at a particular learning stage and on the characteristics of a particular teaching context. Thus, in an academic listening course note-taking tasks will be more frequent than other types of tasks, reflecting the needs of students attending such a course.

There are different classifications of task types in analyzing tasks and their effect on the development of listening skills. Rost (1990), for example, classified tasks into open tasks, such as note-taking, and closed ones, such as true/false sentences. In addition, tasks

In fact learners are not equipped with key elements to interact alone with input (Ehsanjou & Khodareza 2014). According to Luo (2008), it is so difficult for the students to understand English through listening and undoubtedly, the speed of getting information is so faster through listening than reading. Listening is one of the four skills in English that EFL learners cannot easily develop it, as they find challenging to intelligible the target language when they should interact with a native speaker of that language (Isaza, ‎2013). As Thomas and Dyer (2007) stated, since universities pay more attention to English grammar, reading and vocabulary, EFL learners have serious problems in English listening comprehension. According to Persulessy (1988), listening is a skill that tends to be neglected and one of the reasons for this opinion is the feeling among language teachers that this skill is automatically acquired by the learners as they learn to speak the language. Most of the teachers believe that listening will develop naturally through the process of language learning; also they assume listening is synonymous to breathing, automatically (Thomas and Dyer, 2007). As Hamouda (2013) stated, English listening comprehension is not given serious

Most of the second/foreign language learners complain about not being able to listen or hear appropriately. Learners are not aware of the nature of listening, how to improve their listening ability, and how to overcome the listening comprehension difficulties while listening (Sheshgelani, 2013). Osada (2004) emphasized that both teachers and learners has not pay much attention to listening comprehension, they are less aware of its importance. In classrooms, teachers seem to test, not to teach listening and students seem to learn listening, not listening comprehension. This is a challenge for the students enrolled in English programs. Osada (2004) reported that listening as a complex mental process, involves perception, attention, cognition, and memory. Comprehending speech in a foreign language is a very difficult activity for language learners. While listening to a foreign language, most of the language learners face difficulties. In order to help students improve their listening ability and solve their listening difficulties, language teachers need to understand students’ listening difficulties in comprehending spoken texts, and teach effective listening