listening difficulties for esl

Vol. 8. No. 4
A-2
March 2005

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Barriers to Acquiring Listening Strategies for EFL Learners and Their Pedagogical Implications
Yiching Chen

Department of Applied Foreign Languages
Takming College in Taiwan
Abstract
As theorized in Anderson 's (1983, 1995) associative stage of skill acquisition, errors or obstacles become an important index of the learning process. However, learning obstacles have not been widely researched in the field of language learning strategies. This study explores the difficulties or barriers confronted by the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners while acquiring listening comprehension strategies during a training program. The findings indicate that the obstacles confronted by the learners are multifaceted. Each facet carries a probable risk of comprehension failure. Learning barriers are associated with the internal factors of learners such as their affective statuses, listening habits, information processing capacities, English proficiencies, and their belief about listening activities. Other barriers concerned the nature of listening strategies and the listening material used. Based on the findings, a series of pedagogical implications are provided.
Introduction
This study looks into the barriers that inhibit EFL learners from acquiring listening comprehension strategies during strategy training. As most of the listening strategy studies concern learners ' strategy use or the effects of strategy training, inadequate attention has been given to the obstacles that EFL listeners experience in strategy acquisition. Thus, qualitative methodologies, instead of quantitative ones, are adopted in order to investigate the questions of how listening strategies are learned and why certain strategies are not learned, rather than the questions of what kinds of listening strategies are employed and what improvement learners have achieved. Pedagogical implications grounded

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