Listening Skills Case Study

Listening skills, especially in case of Japanese, moreover elderly students, may be the most difficult to improve. Having students focus on key words is considered useful in improving listening skills (Tips for Teaching ESL to the Elderly, 2000), however, it may prove to be challenging in case of extremely low level students whose listening skills are poor in terms of “hearing out” key words from a sentence.

There are several factors that influence the efficiency level of one’s listening, including characteristics of the speaker, the listener, the content of the message, and visual support that may accompany the message (Van Duzer, 1997; Brown & Yule, 1983). One of the conditions that facilitate efficient listening is whether the listener

Colloquial language and reduced forms, and the use of hesitation devices make comprehension more difficult, therefore the extent to which the speaker uses these forms has a deep impact on the listener’s comprehension. Exposure to such language in form of authentic material help the listener improve their ability to comprehend natural language at a higher rate. (Van Duzer, 1997) Obviously, familiar content is another important contributor in successful improvement of listening skills. (Van Duzer, 1997) Activities that help the learner develop a skill to differentiate between main idea and supporting ideas is essential when designing listening activities in contrast with exercising mere memory skills, for instance, measured by true or false questions. (Van Duzer, 1997) Despite of different language levels, both Students A and B in question showed similarities in terms of these aspects, as well: Both of them had difficulties in recognizing authentic speech patterns featuring colloquial language and reduced forms, the higher level student taking, and also did not show potential for improvement in terms of identifying main ideas and supporting ideas of a speech, allowing that in case of the low ability student this sentiment reduced to the level of not being able to “hear out” basic key words in a simple sentence used in traveling

By understanding your personal style of communicating, you will go a long way towards creating good and lasting impressions with others.” (Mind Tools) Taking this notion into consideration also suggests that in order to improve our listening skills, which are basically the essence of good communication, self-awareness is a basic condition. A person who is self-aware considers the needs and feelings of others, takes responsibility for their mistakes, is humble about their strengths, does not say thoughtless things, and is aware of how their words and actions affect others (Mind Tools). Unfortunately, in my teaching experience it has been considerably rare to find students who truly show self-awareness which makes it difficult to build on