Listening Skills Challenges in Intercultural Communication

Listening Skills Challenges in Intercultural Communication Having chosen to study abroad, one should be ready to meet various communication challenges including listening difficulties. A new cultural environment and language specifics may appear to be complicated for the overall study process. Moreover, the efficiency of your educational results will strongly depend on the language you choose for the courses to be read in as well as on the extent to which you know the local academic tradition peculiarities. Most of physiologic sources suggest that listening skills are highly important for successful communication. From this point, listening becomes a sort of social art frequently not possessed by the majority of people. This happens because most of the study time in schools is dedicated to development of writing and reading skills, rather than listening ones, which are treated as something being naturally developed with no additional effort. When studying abroad listening skills matter greatly. You are to get in touch with new people and make progress in study, which means reconsidering the very format of communication. Listening may become a challenge in this respect. On the one hand, because you have to pay more attention to what people say and which terms are to be taken in conversations. The intonation and accent might be very different from the ones you are used to. Besides, if you study the language of the country you plan visiting, beware that its spoken form is quite different from an academic one. On the other hand, you will have to apply additional effort to manage the study itself. In fact, listening is not hard, even if you are to study in another country. However, it is worth paying more attention, if you plan to make progress.