English Listening Comprehension Difficulties of High and Low Proficiency Learners
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Abstract
Drawing on Anderson’s three-phase model (1995), this study aimed to investigate the listening comprehension difficulties of first-year students enrolling at a southern university. Thirty participants were randomly selected from 1,750 students taking fundamental English courses; sixteen of them were classified as high proficiency listeners (HPLs) and 14 were classified as low proficiency listeners (LPLs). Data were collected from the participants who were required to individually listen to the aural input, completed the listening task, and took part in immediate stimulated recall to reveal his/her actual listening problems while engaging in the listening task. Major findings discovered two problems encountered by LPLs. The problems they had with perception was catching only certain words, and parsing was missing incoming information due to fixating on particular words. At utilization, the problem both HPLs and LPLs had at this level was confusing about key ideas in the messages. Reflected by their task scores, utilization was found the most problematic for LPLs. It is recommended that future studies investigate other variables that are likely to cause listening comprehension problems, such as various text types (lectures, conversations, advertisements) and delay recall tasks such as providing short answers or summarizing; these might reflect cognitive process and thus illustrate the depth of listening problems that listeners possess.
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