English-medium lectures can be the source of much frustration for students at universities where most learners and lecturers use English as an additional language. Developing listening strategy awareness can help students traverse the difficulties they encounter in lectures. This study reports on the most challenging listening strategies for first-year undergraduates at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. Student reflections, an Academic Listening Strategy Inventory, and interviews were used as data gathering tools. Within a framework of perceptive, cognitive, metacognitive and socio-affective strategies, the most challenging items were technical vocabulary, inferencing and focus. In addition, some less commonly reported challenges were identified which highlight the complexities of academic listening in non-Anglophone English-medium contexts. Copyright © 2020 Asian ESP Journal. All rights reserved.

This paper presents data from a largescale ethnographic study into the perceptions, concerns, and preferred lecturer strategies of one group of Hong Kong secondlanguage (L2) engineering students who were attending lectures given in English. Although such investigations often focus purely on the 'problem' dimensions students have when listening to lectures, there are aspects to the lecture event which students identify as aiding their listening comprehension. These positive dimensions of lectures are the focus of this paper, and were identified using journals, interviews, and focus groups, and categorized under language features and pedagogical features. The data presented also suggests that lecturers need to adopt specific lecturing strategies in order to make the content materials more accessible to this type of student.
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