Exploring EFL Students’ Listening Strategies and Difficulties in Online Learning

Abstract

Listening skill is the first and fundamental skill that is developed and used at the beginning of language learning to advance in language acquisition. Listening skill is important to ensure good communication in any language, but listening skill is considered to be difficult to master. Moreover, in the shift to online learning, the students might encounter difficulties in listening in which they have to overcome, therefore it is necessary to study students’ strategies used to solve listening difficulties in online learning. This researcher implemented a descriptive qualitative research method for this study through semi-structured interviews. The data collection for this research is from five students of the English department at the University of Islam Malang through the use of voice note WhatsApp platform.The data were presented using figure and illustration to describe the findings as well as to make it easier to conclude the study. The result shows that the students have their unique way of dealing with online learning problems that they encounter. Each student also has different causing factors that influence difficulties in online listening. It is also found that not all strategies used by students are effective against the problems they encounter especially for the problems that are not under their direct authority. It is suggested for the next researcher to conduct a study about more specific listening strategies to cope up with online learning. Keywords: Online Listening, Difficulties, Strategies