I have always found listening to be more challenging than reading! Personally, my focus and comprehension are a lot stronger when presented with a written text rather than during listening comprehension. In my limited experience as a teacher, I have found the same to be true for students learning English as a second language. Often, the speed of native speakers is what students find the most difficult. I also struggled with understanding native speakers when learning a new language. When I started learning French, I found that having a transcript of a listening task to go through after the exercise was very beneficial. The listening would test my knowledge and ability to follow native speakers' conversations, and the transcript gave me the opportunity to read the conversation in detail and understand what I had previously missed.
For my context - teaching B1 Italian adults online - the short answer is: Listening is significantly more challenging than reading for my learners, but reading becomes more challenging than listening when we move from comprehension to critical thinking.I will explain why.Why Listening is more challenging at B1 level:Listening and reading are both receptive skills, but they have fundamentally different processing demands. For my learners, listening is harder for 4 reasons:1. Listening is temporary, reading is permanent.When my learners read a text on a Google Doc, they control the pace. They can stop, reread, look at a word, translate it, go back. When they listen, the speech disappears. If they miss one word, they panic and miss the next three. This causes high anxiety. In my online classes, I see it clearly: in a reading task, everyone finishes; in a listening task, half of them write in the chat "Teacher, too fast!"This is related to Field's theory of listening processing. Listening happens in real-time with no chance for the listener to control the input.2. Listening has phonological barriers that reading does not have.Reading is visual. Listening is full of features that make it difficult for Italian learners:Connected speech: The text says "What do you want to do?" but they hear "Waddaya wanna do?" My students know all 6 words on paper, but they hear it as one unknown sound.Weak forms and schwa: "I have been to Rome" - on paper, easy. In speech, "I've bn to Rome" with two weak forms. Italian is syllable-timed (every syllable clear), English is stress-timed (some syllables almost disappear).Homophones and lack of word boundaries: "I scream" vs "ice cream" - in reading there is a space, in listening there is not.For these reasons, my learners can read a B1 text at 80% comprehension but understand the same text as audio at 50%.3. Listening carries more cognitive load.According to Cognitive Load Theory, listening requires simultaneous processing:Decoding sound -> Recognizing words -> Parsing grammar -> Building meaning -> Storing in memory -> All while new information keeps coming.Reading allows sequential processing. That is why my learners get exhausted after a 3-minute listening and need a break, but can read for 20 minutes.4. Affective factors are stronger in listening.Listening failure feels more public. If you don't understand a reading, you can quietly look it up. If you don't understand listening in a breakout room and your partner asks you a question about it, you feel exposed. This increases the affective filter (Krashen).So why is reading sometimes MORE challenging?Paradoxically, as learners move to B2 and beyond, reading becomes the harder skill, but for a different reason: depth of processing.Listening at B1 is mostly about catching gist and specific information. You don't need to understand every word.Academic reading at B2/C1 requires inferring implied meaning, understanding complex syntax, recognizing writer's attitude, distinguishing fact from opinion, and dealing with a much larger range of low-frequency vocabulary.My learners can often understand a B1 podcast if I play it twice and give them a transcript. But they struggle enormously to read a B2 article from The Guardian and identify the writer's bias or to summarize the argument in their own words. Reading requires more critical literacy, not just linguistic decoding.Also, reading has its own hidden difficulty: false confidence. Because Italian and English share many cognates due to Latin, my students think they understand a reading when they actually have misread it. They see "actually" and think "attualmente" (currently), or "sensible" and think "sensibile" (sensitive). In listening, they know they don't understand. In reading, they think they understand when they don't, which leads to bigger misunderstandings.What does this mean for my teaching?For listening, I have learned I need to teach it as a skill, not just test it:I don't just press play and ask questions. I teach listening strategies: predicting vocabulary before listening, listening for stressed words only, and using the three stages: pre-teaching key words, while-listening for gist then detail, and post-listening for connected speech analysis.I use short, 60-90 second clips, not 5-minute audios. And I use transcripts as a learning tool after the first listen, not as cheating.For reading, I need to move beyond comprehension questions:I now teach reading sub-skills explicitly: skimming, scanning, inferring, and understanding text structure.I use extensive reading: I encourage them to read 20 minutes a week for pleasure at their level (graded readers), not just intensive reading for exercises.Conclusion:If you ask me what my B1 students find more challenging in the moment, they will say listening, without hesitation. It is faster, more stressful, and more transient.If you ask me what is more challenging for their long-term academic and professional success, I would say reading - because superficial comprehension is easy, but deep, critical reading is very difficult and takes years to develop.For my teaching in Naples, my priority for the next course is to reduce listening anxiety and to teach them HOW to listen, not just give them more listening tests.
As both a language learner and a teacher I think listening is much harder to get good at than reading. Even though both skills need you to understand what you hear or read listening takes away the control that reading gives you.
Key Reasons Why It’s Hard
Being in Control of Speed: A person who is reading can stop, go back or check a word they don’t know without missing anything.. When you are listening, especially in real conversations the person speaking decides how fast they talk. That leaves time to think about what they are saying.
Things That Happen in Spoken Language: Unlike words, on a page spoken words can be shortened, mixed together or pronounced differently. A student may know a word when they see it. It can sound completely different when someone says it out loud.
Using It in Life: In real situations you often have to respond right away. That makes listening very important but stressful for people learning a new language.
In my opinion, listening is more challenging than reading. When I was learning English, I felt more comfortable with reading activities because I could take my time to understand a text. Listening was different. I often struggled with the speed of conversations and different accents, even when I knew the vocabulary being used.
I have noticed something similar with my students because they also tend to find listening more difficult than reading. I think one of the main reasons is that, when we read, we can go back to a sentence as many times as we need. When we listen to someone speaking, however, we have to understand what they are saying while the conversation continues.
To help my students, I choose listening activities that are suitable for their level and gradually introduce more difficult recordings. I also remind them that they do not need to understand every single word straight away. I think it is important for them to focus on the general meaning rather than getting discouraged when they miss something.
I believe that learners at different levels can face similar difficulties. For example, both beginners and B2 students may struggle with fast speech or unfamiliar accents. However, a B2 student will probably understand more because they have a wider vocabulary and more experience with the language.
I think regular listening practice and patience are essential for improving this skill.
