Acquisition of Skills for Listening Comprehension: Barriers and Solutions

Listening is more often a neglected skill though there are some prevalent assumptions that reading and listening should be given same treatment and similar texts can be used to teach both the skills. However, the question of visibility of the speaker in listening activity and inconsistency 1 in teaching methods has led to controversy amongst theorists and test makers in terms of finding better facilitation for effective listening work. Jeremy Harmer, one of the most influential theorists in ELT argues that 'listening as a skill may be extremely similar to reading, but the text the listener has to deal with is considerably different from the written one. Most obviously, a listener cannot look at what he is trying to hear; he can only listen to it whereas the written word stays on the page and can be looked at more than once, the spoken word, unless recorded on tape or record cannot be repeated' (1983: 175-176). Having focused on some of the recent theories and the universal barriers to listening comprehension, this paper aims at finding out plausible solutions to help foreign language listeners overcome their problems.