SUB-TOPIC :

Factors Affecting Listening And Speaking Skills

1.

Listening is often neglected in language teaching because:

Lack of teaching materials; Lack of equipment; Lack of training in how to use the equipment; Listening is not included on many important tests; Lack of real-life situations where language learners need to understand spoken English; Lessons tend to test rather than to train student listening skills.

2.

Both listening and reading are receptive skills, but listening can be more difficult than reading because:
Different speakers produce the same sounds in different ways, e.g. dialects and accents, stress, rhythms, intonations, mispronunciations, etc.; The listener has little/no control over the speed of the input of the spoken material; The spoken material is often heard only once (unlike the reading material)

3. The listener cannot pause to work out the meaning:

Speech is more likely to be distorted by background noise (e.g. around the classroom) or the media that transmit sounds; The listener sometimes has to deal simultaneously with another task while listening, e.g. note-taking, etc.