Voices from Chinese students: professors' use of English affects academic listening (1)

Research in English for Academic Purposes has begun to show that non-native speakers of English have much difficulty in English academic listening at American universities. Chinese students, who are from a very different educational system and cultural environment, experience special challenges in English academic listening. This paper focuses on how American professors' use of English in class affects Chinese students' understanding of academic lectures. Seventy-eight Chinese students who enrolled in 2000 winter semester at an American university participated in this study. The results show that 1) rapidness of professors' English speech; 2) professors' lack of clear pronunciation; 3) professors' use of long and complex sentences; 4) professors' use of colloquial and slang expressions; 5) professors' lack of clear definition of terms and concepts; and 6) professors' use of discourse markers affect Chinese students' English academic listening at an American university. It offers important suggestions for American professors as how to make their lectures more accessible to Chinese students. ********** Academic Listening: Definition and Importance Academic listening involves listening and speaking tasks in university classes. According to Flowerdew (1995), it has its own characteristics and places special demands upon listeners. To be a successful academic listener, a student needs relevant background knowledge, ability to distinguish between important and unimportant information, and appropriate skills like note-taking, etc. Richards (1983) also suggests many micro-skills are required for listening to academic lectures: the ability to identify purpose and scope of a lecture, ability to identify topic of a and follow topic development, and ability to identify role of discourse markers in signaling structure of a lecture (p.229). Academic listening plays a very important role in a student's academic success. It plays an even more important role than academic reading or academic aptitude (Conaway, 1982). In a study by Powers (1985), American and Canadian professors of engineering, psychology, chemistry, computer science, English and business rated listening and speaking highest when asked to tell relative importance of listening, speaking, reading and writing for international students' success in their academic departments. The findings point to idea that academic listening plays a crucially important role in one's academic success. Research in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has begun to show that non-native speakers of English have much difficulty understanding academic lectures at American universities. According to a study by Anderson-Mejias (1986), it is in listening rather than reading and speaking that non-native learners experience a great deal of difficulty. Ferris and Tagg (1996) investigated university professors' views on ESL students' difficulties with listening tasks. Instructors at four different institutions and in a variety of academic disciplines responded to questions and provided comments about their ESL students' listening skills. All respondents felt that their ESL students had great difficulty with comprehension, responding to questions, and class participation. Among ESL learners in American universities, Chinese students are largest group. Data from Open Doors (2000) shows that two world regions sending largest proportions of students to US are Asia and Latin America and students from China are largest single group. Chinese students, who are from a very different educational system and cultural environment, experience special challenges in understanding academic lectures in English. The question of which factors most affect their academic listening skills merits closer examination. This study is an evaluation of Chinese students' challenges in understanding English academic lectures at an American university. …

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