Improving listening skills of tertiary level students for effective information retrieval

Abstract

Listening is essential to the leaming process. Students in tertiary institutions of learning need to acquire effective listening and note-taking skiils in order to benefit from lectures. This paper focused on factors militating against effective listening during lectures such as poor rate of presentation, poor communication skills, attention faking, personal anxieties, judgemental spirit and use of ineffective note taking strategy. Strategies of how effective listening skills can be developed and utilized by students were also discussed. These include fighting distractions, avoiding day-dreaming, identifying cues for listening and utilizing effective note taking strategy. Recommendations were also made on how the lecturer/teacher can promote students' effective listening thereby enhancing students' retrieval of information.