Listening Difficulties and Strategies in Preparing for IELTS Listening Test Using Online Learning: A Case Study of Intensive English Learners

Listening is one of the significant roles in the educational process of English language learning. Despite its importance in our daily communication, it is a skill where most EFL learners struggle with during online listening comprehension practice. This study examines the listening difficulties faced by the EFL learners (i.e., Intensive English learners) in preparing for the IELTS listening test. In this paper, the researchers reviewed the terms listening and online learning, including their significance, process of listening comprehension, learners’ difficulties based on the content of the listening text, failure to concentrate, listener, speaker, and environment, as well as strategies to overcome the issue. The participants were 16 international learners undertaking an Intensive English Course in Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). A questionnaire was employed to elicit the participants’ listening difficulties and strategies used in the Intensive English classes. The data were analysed and reported using the descriptive quantitative method (mean value, standard deviation, and percentage). The results of this study on learners’ difficulties and the strategies to overcome the problems in listening in the intensive English classes are also discussed. Findings on understanding learners’ issues would enable the English instructors to help learners develop effective learning strategies and improve their listening comprehension abilities.


Introduction
The emergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) has been deemed crucial, where its role in education has been of great interest to many practitioners. The integration of ICT in education supports the enhancement of teaching methods, allowing a more active and collaborative learning environment among the learners (Bindu, 2016;Mafuraga & Moremi, 2017;Sangrà & Sanmamed, 2010). With the current state of the Covid-19 pandemic, ICTprecisely distance education of online learning -has gained popularity due to the closure of educational institutions worldwide. Students are no longer confined to traditional physical classes and can now be anywhere (independent) to learn and interact with instructors and other students (Singh & Thuman, 2019). This shift has forced the need to teach and learn English in Malaysia to be conducted on the medium of online learning for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners.
According to Pourhosein Gilakjani and Seyedeh Masoumeh Ahmadi (2011), out of the four primary communication skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, listening is remarked to be the most important of all. Pourhosein Gilakjani and Mohammadreza Ahmadi (2011) further expressed that listening has a vital role in communication. Although listening has long been neglected as it is regarded as a passive and challenging skill for EFL speakers to master, people now realize that it is prominent in learning the language (Ummi Umara & Ika Lestari, 2020). In fact, according to Mendelsohn (1994), listening takes up around 40-50% of the total time spent on communication, speaking between 25-30%, reading between 11-16%, and writing about 9%. This proves that listening is not a passive skill because communication occurs when listening and speaking are involved. So, why do EFL learners still find it challenging to be a good listener? Hamouda (2013) notes that EFL learners have crucial problems in listening comprehension due to the lack in focus as universities and learners often pay more attention to grammar, reading, and vocabulary. Furthermore, he emphasized that comprehending speech is a very complex activity for students. EFL learners face many problems when they listen to an unfamiliar language, especially in a stressed environment such as an examination setting of a listening test. These problems might arise from the aspects of the content, the speaker, the listener, or even the EFL learners' environment (Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, & Tugrul, 2014;Boyle, 1984;Teng, 2002;Yagang, 1994).
Furthermore, the technology-driven setting of online learning is particularly difficult when addressing individual differences as it may directly facilitate or even inhibit their overall learning experience (Russell, 1997). This misunderstanding may also stem from the fact the learners' perspective of passive learning of only sitting through the online class and completing tasks without caring much about the content and correct answer to the questions. There are undoubtedly various factors in play that may affect learning performance (Martinez, 1999), and overlooking these key psychological aspects would make learning ambiguous and isolated from reality (Snow & Farr, 1987). To address this, the three dimensions of metacognitive knowledge of person, task, and strategy by Flavell (1976) are argued to be relevant. If learners themselves change their perception towards learning the listening skills, they will improve their listening comprehension strategies to solve their listening comprehension problems.
In this paper, the researchers aimed to investigate the listening difficulties and strategies encountered by Intensive English learners at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) in preparing themselves for the listening part of the English language test, International English Language Testing System (IELTS).

Definition of Listening and its Significance
According to Nunan (1998), listening refers to the active process of deciphering and constructing meaning from verbal and non-verbal messages. It involves comprehending spoken speech in a dynamic, complex, and wise process consisting of perception, language, and pragmatic skills. The listeners need to recognize speech sounds, word meanings, structures, stress, and intonation patterns, and further decode the sound waves into understandable meanings, and finally interpret and construct the meaning of spoken messages heard from the speakers into a meaningful message to respond (Underwood, 1989;White, 1998;Byram, 2004). If the listener learns through the comprehension texts, they will understand what they heard and make it significant for their purpose. To listen well, listeners must use their ability to decode the message they hear or listen from the speaker and apply various listening strategies to make sense of their study context.

Definition of Online Learning and its Significance
The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed all education systems from traditional teaching and learning to a new digital ecosystem named e-learning. The pandemic led to a TEKNOSASTIK ISSN 2656-6842 Volume 20 (1), 2022 Teo, Gani, Ummah massive classroom shutdown in 2020, forcing over a billion learners and millions of teachers worldwide to adopt digital learning (NurHaiza Nordin & NurNaddia Nordin, 2020). Relatively, it is seen as the best method to continue the education system; or else everyone will be left behind. The concept of e-learning, commonly known as online learning, is a form of education facilitated through the Internet to assist the instruction and delivery of the course content (Fahmeeda Adib Azhari & Ming, 2015). Precisely, it is an approach of teaching and learning using Internet technology to communicate and collaborate in an educational context. Students will be using a web-based learning website where the learning process is carried out online. Following the Movement Control Order (MCO), the Malaysian government had enforced the closure of all educational institutions since 18 March 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19. Being a provider of Malaysian tertiary education, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) participates in the government's initiative to promote the learners' online learning environment. International learners who wish to study at UUM must fulfill a certain level of English requirement. Those who cannot achieve or meet the specified needs are given conditional offers. They must take the Intensive English course offered by the University and sit for the International English Language Testing (IELTS) at their hometown. The Intensive English course runs daily through online learning and exposes learners to all the skills in the IELTS examination consisting of listening, reading, writing, and speaking.
As technology advances, so does the popularity of online learning. It has proven that online learning is a thriving learning method and offers many benefits than traditional education as it offers meaningful learning experiences and opportunities to collaborate with peers (Costley, 2014). Some of the most important ones are connecting learners and teachers internationally, offering flexible learning hours, considering individual learning patterns, and allowing learners to create their learning environment (Coman et al., 2020). What has received most of the attention is providing students with more control over their learning. Unlike traditional learning methods, online learning offers more flexibility in learning. Learners have more freedom to learn at their own pace, build their understanding of the learning content and simultaneously improve their learning experience.

Listening Comprehension and Listening Difficulties
Listening entails special attention as the input was given in a setting and where the input is presented to the listener. Renukadevi (2014) denotes "listening tasks were fundamental to improve language competence in an EFL language" (p. 61). The task allows the learners to expand their knowledge of the language through developing activities. Kim (2004), Holden (2008), and Jin (2002) stated that listening tasks are vital to assist learners in becoming knowledgeable in grasping the auditory language. In addition, Kim and Maeng (2012) and Benson and Voller (1997) believe that fluency tasks allow learners to experience different audios of the target language input, leading them to understand the message being conveyed. Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul (2014) argue that learners may face several significant problems when dealing with a listening comprehension task. Yagang (1994) summarised the four sources for listening comprehension problems as 'the message', 'the listener', 'the speaker', and 'the physical environment'. Although these may be termed slightly differently by other scholars, the gist remains the same for Boyle (1984) and Teng (2002); though they have used terms such as 'medium', 'stimulus factors', and 'context factors.
Relating to the content of the listening text, familiarity with the meaning of the words (i.e. vocabulary) can arouse their interest and motivation, which will positively impact the student's listening comprehension ability (Azmi et al., 2014). Factors such as restricted TEKNOSASTIK ISSN 2656-6842 Volume 20 (1), 2022 Teo, Gani, Ummah vocabulary, poor grammar, and misinterpretations about listening tasks are also argued by Graham (2006) to be among the listening comprehension problems. Next, the failure to concentrate might hinder lower-level EFL learners as they are required to process rapidly and listen to oral passages in real time while leaving a mental representation of the information when the text is over (Vandergrift, 2004;Walker, 2014). Looking into the duration of the spoken text, students can often become bored and unfocused. They will not be able to stay focused to attentively listen to the keyword as they answer the questions or attempt to get the gist of the text.
The level of the listeners can have a significant role when they listen to long parts and keep all information in their mind (Azmi et al., 2014). Underwood (1989) notes that speed can make listening difficult. If the speakers in the listening recording speak too fast, EFL learners may struggle to understand the L2 words being uttered as they are unable to control how quickly they are being said. This is even more, a struggle for EFL learners when the pronunciation of words is different from how they appear in print (Bloomfield et al., 2010;Walker, 2014).
On the other hand, the problem may also arise from the unfamiliarity of the speaker's accent. Goh (1999) found that 66% of learners in his study mentioned a speaker's accent as one of the most significant factors that affect listener comprehension. This is evident in a study by Buck (2001) where EFL listeners who were studying only American English in his study encountered critical difficulties in listening to an unfamiliar accent such as Indian English for the first time.
The last difficulty faced by the learners may be the quality of the recorded materials, in this case relating to the environment and surroundings of EFL learners at the time. The lack of quality of some recorded materials or sound system used during the classes may impact the learner's listening abilities (Azmi et al., 2014). The listening quality may include the background noise on the recording, which resulting in poor-quality audio recording.

Strategies of Listening Comprehension
Past studies have often overlooked the psychological factors that address an individual's learning differences (Martinez, 2001). As learners shift to online learning, it is essential to consider how learners may want or intend learning differently, including study independence or accomplishing specific learning goals. This is particularly difficult as individual differences in a technology-driven setting may directly facilitate or inhibit their overall learning experience (Russell, 1997). Dismissing diverse factors, such as passion, striving, competition, desires, learning enjoyment, frustration, and need for independence may directly affect learning performance (Martinez, 1999), and overlooking these key psychological key psychological aspects would make learning ambiguous and isolated from reality (Snow & Farr, 1987).
The current study takes on helping learners develop their metacognitive knowledge and strategies on learning how to listen, rather than just what to listen for (Goh, 2008;Goh & Taib, 2006). Metacognition is understood as an awareness of one's processes in learning and the appraisal and regulation of these processes. In other words, it refers to the "active monitoring and consequent regulation and orchestration of these processes concerning the cognitive objects or data on which they bear, usually in the service of some concrete goal or objective" (Flavell, 1976, p. 232). This is important to increase and develop practical skills regarding their self-regulating listening comprehension and overall listening development, especially in a distant online learning platform that the learners are involved in. TEKNOSASTIK ISSN 2656-6842 Volume 20 (1), 2022 Teo, Gani, Ummah e-mail: teknosastik@teknokrat.ac.id Flavell (1976) asserts three dimensions of metacognitive knowledge: person, task, and strategy (see Table 1). A person's knowledge includes the knowledge of our perception, beliefs of our abilities, and factors that affect the success or failure in our learning. This involves age, aptitude, personality, gender, and learning style. Meanwhile, task knowledge concerns knowledge on the purpose, demands, and nature of the learning tasks. And strategy knowledge involves knowledge on which strategies are deemed helpful in achieving learning goals. This includes having the ability to choose which strategies are ineffective and to be avoided. Types of cognitive and metacognitive strategies General and specific strategies to facilitate comprehension and cope with difficulties Strategies appropriate for specific types of listening task Ineffective strategies

Objectives and Research Questions
This study aims to examine the listening difficulties that Intensive English learners face in Universiti Utara Malaysia in preparing for the IELTS listening test using an online learning approach and the strategies used to overcome the issue. For this study, the following research questions were addressed: 1. What are the listening difficulties of intensive English learners preparing for the IELTS listening test in online learning? 2. What are the strategies used for intensive English learners in preparing for the IELTS listening test using an online learning platform?

Respondents
The population for the study was selected based on simple random sampling, where each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. The sample comprised 16 international learners (8 males, 8 females) undertaking an Intensive English course in Universiti Utara Malaysia. 11 learners were from Indonesia, while the remaining five learners were from China, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, and Somalia, respectively. In terms of personal experience in learning English, 4 (25%) have 0-5 years of experience, 5 (31.3%) within 6-10 years, and 7 (43.8%) have more than ten years of exposure in learning English.

Data Collection Method
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the online questionnaire has been used as the main instrument for this study. The questionnaire was sent as a link to the respondents during the first semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. Before conducting the data collection, this study received approval from the Dean of School of Languages, Civilisation and Philosophy (SLCP), UUM, and Professional Development Unit, SLCP. The average time needed for respondents to answer the questionnaire was approximately 15 minutes. Research

Instrument and Data Analysis
The main instrument for the study is an online questionnaire that included items corresponding to the two research questions; (1) learners' difficulties based on the aspects of the content of the listening text, failure to concentrate, listener, speaker, and environment; and (2) strategies to overcome the issue. The items of the questionnaire were adapted from Ali (2020). Some modifications were made accordingly by rephrasing them to cater to the purpose of this study. The questionnaire consists of three parts, as illustrated in Table 3 below. For data analysis, descriptive statistics were made by recording the mean values, standard deviations, and percentages of the results. These were then reported and discussed with relevance to past literature.

Findings and Discussion
What are the listening difficulties of intensive English learners preparing for the IELTS listening test in online learning?

Problems Related to The Content of the Listening Text
The first research question concerned with the problems related to the content of the listening text. As shown in Table 4, the results depicted that the highest mean score is 5.33 where most students agree that long-spoken text makes them tiring to listen, and they get distracted easily. In the meantime, the unfamiliar words and jargons scoring 3.20 mean indicated the students are not in the agreement that those factors are affecting their listening comprehension. The calculation shows that: Being not familiar with the words or jargons used in the listening text hinders the students from answering the questions in their listening. According to Azmi et al. (2014), as listening text comprises words that are within the students' vocabularies, it will be much easier for them to comprehend. The finding of the current study is in line with the study conducted by Demirkol (2009) who found that the length of the text is the most common comprehension problem in listening.

Problems Caused by Failure to Concentrate
Table 5 indicated the problems caused by concentration. The highest mean score of 5.3 shows audio quality as the highest contributor that hinders the students to concentrate. Long audio again in this section also influences the students' comprehension with listening with = 3.6. Most of the students stated that the poor quality of audio affected their concentration level when answering listening questions. Some materials used are not of good or high quality. Azmi et al. (2014) signified that the quality of the sound system might influence the learners' comprehension in listening. The length of audio, being too long as identified by Brindley and Slatyer (2002) is a factor leads to difficulty in listening and a barrier for students to utilise the listening strategies they learnt.

Problems related to the Listener
The following table (Table 6) depicted the problems related to the listener. Most respondents agree that they will stop listening once they are unable to comprehend the audio (x = 3.2). Meanwhile, the lowest =1.15 being not interested to listen to the audio. Pronunciation is one of the obstacles in listening as the pronunciation may differ significantly from the way they appear in the question paper (Bloomfield et al., 2013). The spoken language varies dramatically from the written language. Hence, the students do not have the luxury of regular spaces signaling where the words begin or end (Vandergrift, 2007). This is difficult enough for the students as they were also at the same time try to decipher the definition of the word according to its prosodic characteristics of spoken discourse to understand the played audio.

Problems related to the Speaker
Students mostly have trouble to recognise the stress and intonation of the audio as the result yielded highest value of =3.79 whereas short pauses as the lowest value of  at 1.83. On the other hand, not being able to understand the meaning without seeing the body language, unfamiliar accent, speaking pace, and short pauses have the lowest mean of 4.00. As displayed in Table 7: The pace is another issue that requires attention as "oral texts exist in real-time and need to be processed quickly; when the text is over, only mental representation remains" (Vandergrift, 2004:18). During listening, students must process the input instantaneously. However, they are not capable of controlling the speed of the speaker, pressuring them with structural and grammatical challenges as they try to decipher the spoken texts in the audio. This is supported by Ghaderpanahi (2012), saying although students are competent in speaking and reading, they might encounter problems when listening to the quick audio recording. Unfamiliarity with the accents hinders listening comprehension as it makes it impossible for the students to grasp the listening.

Problems related to the Environment
In relation to the environment, students are in agreement that noise, audio quality, conditioned room, and surrounding affect their listening (x = 4.00). However, poor surrounding has the most effect with =3.37 while conditioned room with the lowest effect =2.58. Based on table 8 above, it can be seen that the room with no air conditioner may affect the students' ability to listen. A room temperature without good air circulationtoo warm or too cool can raise discomfort to the extent of distracting the students from listening.

What are the strategies used for intensive English learners in preparing for the IELTS listening test using an online learning platform?
After gathering the feedback from the participants, some suggested strategies are found to be beneficial for intensive English learners in preparing for the IELTS listening test. A summary of this is based on the Flavell's (1976) three dimensions of metacognitive knowledge; namely person, task, and strategy.

Person knowledge
As a person's knowledge involves our perception, beliefs of our abilities, and factors that affect the success or failure in our learning, learners should try to improve on their English vocabulary knowledge. Learners should individually be able to realise the concepts that seemed foreign to them since their lack of vocabulary familiarity becomes a significant obstacle for them to understand the text during the listening activities. The awareness on the attainment of new vocabulary knowledge is an active monitoring of the learner's perception and personal abilities.

Task knowledge
Task knowledge deals with knowledge on the purpose, demands, and nature of the learning tasks. Therefore, learners should try to take notes while listening. This strategy TEKNOSASTIK ISSN 2656-6842 Volume 20 (1), 2022 Teo, Gani, Ummah could help learners to organize their answers, and it is a key affecting the quality of listening skills. Secondly, learners should be familiar with the accents of different native speakers such as American, British and Australian accents. This is in agreement to Ghaderpanahi (2012), as learners will find it difficult to grasp and comprehend the quick audio recording with unfamiliar accents.

Strategy knowledge
As strategy knowledge involves knowledge on which strategies are deemed helpful in achieving learning goals, learners should do lots of listening practices with different input and using authentic materials. This includes listening to BBC podcasts, announcements, documentaries, lectures, news, radio, TV, English songs, and everyday conversation. Moreover, listening using authentic materials would enable learners to connect to the real world and assist them in understanding better the natural speech by a native speaker. Furthermore, learners should learn how to develop listening strategies such as listening for the main and supporting ideas as well as predicting answers in the listening test. This will train the learners to be able to choose which strategies are ineffective and to be avoided. This strategy can be employed in the pre-listening and while listening because learners need to understand and predict what the speaker will say next.

Conclusion
The study results show that many difficulties may affect the learners' performance in listening, such as listening text content, failure to concentrate, listener, speaker, and environmental factors.
The listening levels of learners are different from each other. Therefore, to be successful in listening, learners should develop their metacognitive knowledge and strategies on the listening process, which will later help them control their learning (Nguyen & Abbot, 2016). The metacognitive strategies help learners to organize and manage their listening comprehension processes. This includes taking personal knowledge, task knowledge, and strategy knowledge. Learners should apply the strategies according to their learning as there is no ideal method that could fit all types of learners and English classes. Here, learners themselves play an important role in selecting and applying suitable listening strategies in preparing for the IELTS test.
This study provides only from the learners' point of view, which involved specifically intensive English learners in one of Malaysia's public universities during the pandemic. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized to the entire Malaysian Higher Education Institutions system. Furthermore, this study focuses on improving learners' listening skills in preparing them for IELTS using an online learning approach. It would be useful to broaden the sample to other universities in Malaysia so the relevant information regarding exclusively online learning could be improved for future use. There is a hope that online learning will provide a world-class education to anyone, anywhere, and anytime as long as they have access to the Internet. Task I find it difficult to understand the meaning of words which are not pronounced clearly.
Task I find it difficult to understand the meaning of the spoken text without seeing the speaker's body language.
Task I have difficulty understanding speakers with unfamiliar accents.
Task I find it difficult to understand when the speaker speaks too fast.
Task I find it difficult to understand the recorded audio if it is not repeated.
Task I find it difficult to understand the listening text when the speaker does not pause long enough.