To examine students’ listening comprehension difficulties, one of the factors that could not be ignored is student proficiency. Listening comprehension proficiency as well as overall language proficiency might contribute to students’ problems in listening comprehension. Language learning ability, similar to other human ability, might vary among individuals (Hewson, 1982).
In fact, a major difference among those listening difficulty study with Anderson’s (1985) model occurs in the relation of students’ listening proficiency and their listening difficulty. Wang (2008) groups students as freshman and sophomore English majors.
These students encounter most of their listening comprehension difficulties in the perception stage, followed by the parsing stage. They face fewest difficulties in the utilization stage. There is no significant difference in the stages of listening difficulty between freshman and sophomore students. Similarly, even though English majors possess better listening abilities than two groups of medical students in Chang, Lu, Chang and Ting’s (2012) study, they all face most of their listening comprehension difficulties in the parsing stage, regardless of their listening comprehension proficiency.
There is a slight trend that students with lower listening comprehension proficiency might have more problems in the perception stage, but the difference is not significant.
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On the contrary, Goh’s (2000) and Sun and Li’s (2008) study both detect the discrepancy in the stages of listening comprehension difficulties among students of different listening comprehension proficiency. The low ability students in Goh’s (2000) study report more problems in perception and parsing stages while students of higher ability show listening difficulty in all three stages of the comprehension process. The low level students in Sun and Li’s (2008) study indicate problems in perception and parsing stages more frequently than high level students. Only in the utilization stage do high level students show more difficulties than their low level counterparts.
The conflicting results might be related to the subjects’ actual language proficiency.
If, according to Anderson (1985), the first stage for comprehension lies in perception, it might be possible that students of lower listening comprehension proficiency are hindered at this stage, as do the subjects in Wang’s (2008) study. Seldom do these students go to the second stage of comprehension, not to mention the third phase.
Therefore, these students exhibit more difficulties in the perception stages.
Students in Chang, Lu, Chang and Ting’s (2012) research might be a little better than those in Wang’s (2008). They mostly face problems in the parsing stage. They are already able to discriminate sounds and perceive the listening inputs properly but are not yet able to construct the meaning of the material in the parsing stage. Higher-level students in Sun and Li’s (2008) study report using strategies such as concentration, selective attention and self-evaluation to solve listening problems of all three stages.
Compared with low-level students, high-level students adjust their attention at the perception stage and use selective attention to grasp main ideas in the parsing stage.
They also try to ask expanding questions to connect new and old information. Perhaps that’s why they face fewer problems in the first two stages than the low-level students.
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In Goh’s (2000) study, both groups of students have problem recognizing words.
This is plausible since these students are both in the journey of learning the English language and their perception skills are not fully automatized. High and low ability students also tend to forget what is heard quickly. The parsing problem might result from the excessive demands enforcing on their limited processing capacity. The chunking and mental representation of new inputs are often displaced before they could be properly used. High level students in Goh’s (2000) research express that they sometimes understand the words but not the intended message of the listening input.
This might be because of their limited schemata and the insufficient contextual information given in the material. Low-level students have difficulty in paying attention, for they seldom use metacognitive strategy to redirect their attention. They are also obstructed by the lack of vocabulary. It could be surmised that the differences in the occurrence of listening difficulty might lie in the difference among students’ overall listening comprehension proficiency and the strategies they use to solve them.
Apart from comparing students’ listening proficiency for discussion of Anderson’s (1985) model, some scholars have devoted solely to the relation of listening difficulty and proficiency. Ghoneim (2013) invites intermediate and advanced college seniors in Egypt to think aloud their listening comprehension problems. It is found that the two groups of learners declare the same problems but in different percentage. Specifically, the percentage of occurrence for different problems in intermediate students are nearly double than in advanced students.
A different conclusion displayed in Zhang, Lu and Tan’s (2010) study, which resort to Anderson’s (1985) model but is not discussed earlier because of the conflicting results. The researchers of the study group students by two measures: one by students’
overall English proficiency and the other by students’ English listening comprehension
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proficiency. Neither the grouping of overall English proficiency nor English listening comprehension proficiency show significant differences among groups in students’
listening comprehension difficulties. However, when one digs into categories of listening difficulty, students of lower English proficiency face more problems on perception stage, while those of higher English proficiency report more problems on parsing and utilization stage. Most of the students, regardless of their English listening comprehension proficiency, report most difficulties on parsing stage. It is suggested that wherever learners’ proficiency are, there’s certain distance between the learners and the listening material. The level of one’s listening proficiency could not change the quality of listening difficulty.