Why is Listening Difficult?

Many students believe that listening is the hardest language skill to be learned. Some of them said that because it was a native speaker who was talking, while they are not used to with the accent, style, the speed, or the pronunciation. And some others said that it was because the listening medias (radio, TV, tape recorder, etc) are not good. Some of schools still use an old one which has no good sound or the amplifier can not be controlled, etc. Actually, the most recommended media for listening activity is earphone, since it has a good quality of sound and can muffle the sound around the listener. Unfortunately it only exist in language laboratory and most of schools do not treat it well so it can not be used.

If the school where you teach is on such condition, I strongly recommend you to read the articles from CLASS ACTIVITY; Story Telling (Listening and Speaking Activity) in this blog. You may revise it to make it suitable for you in teaching.

This kind of activity will make the teacher know about whether the student can understand the story or not. Because nowadays most of listening activities are kind of hard. The teacher often play a very long story that even a native itself might get a problem to understand it. The teacher should check the student’s comprehension in each sentences by asking a little or very easy question.

Example: “This is the story. Once upon a time there lived a man, his name is Budi.” Then the teacher asked the students, “is there a girl in that story?” then the students answer “No, but a man” and the teacher ask them again, “what is his name?”, then the students answer, “Budi”, the teacher ask them again, “how do you spell it?”, The students answer “B-U-D-I”. And finally the teacher read the next sentence, ask them, read the next, ask them, and so on.