2. LISTENING MEANS
■ to pay attention to sound
■ to hear something with thoughtful attention
■ to give consideration
■ to be alert to catch an expected sound
(Merriam-Webster)
■ Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages
in the communication process.
………………………………………………………………………………(Skills You Need)
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3. IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING SKILL
■ Listening is key to all effective communication.
Without the ability to listen effectively, messages
are easily misunderstood.
■ Listening skills allow one to make sense of and
understand what another person is saying.
(Skills You Need)
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4. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LISTENING AND
HEARING
■ Hearing is the physical ability, while listening is a skill.
■ Hearing refers to the sounds that enter your ears. It is a
physical process that happens automatically.
■ Listening requires focus and concentrated effort, both
mental and sometimes physical as well.
(Skills You Need)
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5. ACTIVITY
Difference Between Listening and Hearing
■ Make a group of listener and speakers, give speaker 3 minutes to talk about themselves.
■ Then switch their positions and let listener become speakers and speak for 3 minutes about
themselves.
■ Then bring back the group together and ask the listeners to introduce the speaker.
■ Then ask all of them what have they learned from this activity about difference between
listening and hearing.
■ To help the discussion ask the following questions:
How well did your partner understand you?
If they made any mistake what was the reason?
What is the difference between listening and hearing?
(Routes: interpersonal communication)
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6. TYPES OF LISTENING
The three main types of listening most common in
communication are:
1. Informational Listening (Listening to Learn)
2. Critical Listening (Listening to Evaluate and Analyse)
3. Therapeutic or Empathetic Listening (Listening to
Understand Feeling and Emotion)
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7. 1. Informational Listening
■ Whenever you listen to learn something, you are engaged in
informational listening. This is true in many day-to-day
situations, in education and at work, when you listen to the
news, watch a documentary, when a friend tells you a recipe .
■ Informational listening, especially in formal settings like in
work meetings or while in education, is often accompanied by
note taking – a way of recording key information so that it can
be reviewed later.
(Skills You Need)
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8. 2. Critical Listening
■ We can be said to be engaged in critical listening when the goal is to
evaluate or scrutinize what is being said. Critical listening usually involves
some sort of problem solving or decision making. critical listening is about
analyzing opinion and making a judgement.
■ Critical listening means engaging in what you are listening to by asking
yourself questions such as, ‘what is the speaker trying to say?’ or ‘what is
the main argument being presented?’, ‘how does what I’m hearing differ
from my beliefs, knowledge or opinion?’. Critical listening is, therefore,
fundamental to true learning.
■ It is often important, when listening critically, to have an open-mind and not
be biased by stereotypes or preconceived ideas. By doing this you will
become a better listener and broaden your knowledge and perception of
other people and your relationships.
(Skills You Need)8
9. 3. Therapeutic or Empathic Listening
■ Empathic listening involves attempting to understand the feelings and
emotions of the speaker – to put yourself into the speaker’s shoes and share
their thoughts.
■ Empathy is a way of deeply connecting with another person.Empathy is not
the same as sympathy, it involves more than being compassionate or feeling
sorry for somebody else – it involves a deeper connection – a realisation and
understanding of another person’s point of view.
■ Counsellors, therapists and some other professionals use therapeutic or
empathic listening to understand and ultimately help their clients.
■ We are all capable of empathic listening and may practise it with friends,
family and colleagues. Showing empathy is a desirable trait in many
interpersonal relationships – you may well feel more comfortable talking
about your own feelings and emotions with a particular person who listens
empathetically to you than others.
(Skills You Need)
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10. ACTIVITY
■ Divide the students in three groups.
■ Assign one type of listening to each group: Informative, Critical and Empathic.
■ Give them 10 minutes to plan an act demonstrating their type of listening skill.
■ Ask the group to come one by one in front of class and demonstrate their acting
on their given type.
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13. SIX STAGES OF LISTENING PROCESS
■ Hearing
■ Attending
■ Understanding
■ Remembering
■ Evaluating
■ Responding
(Malgaj, 2009)
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14. ■ HEARING - it refers to the response caused by sound waves stimulating the
sensory receptors of the ear; it is physical response; hearing is perception of
sound waves; you must hear to listen, but you need not listen to hear
(perception necessary for listening depends on attention.
■ ATTENDING -Attending is the process of accurately identifying and
interpreting particular sounds we hear as words. The sounds we hear have
no meaning until we give them their meaning in context. Listening is an
active process that constructs meaning from both verbal and nonverbal
messages.
■ UNDERSTANDING- to understand symbols we have seen and heard, we must
analyze the meaning of the stimuli we have perceived; symbolic stimuli are
not only words but also sounds and sights that have symbolic meanings as
well; the meanings attached to these symbols are a function of our past
associations and of the context in which the symbols occur; for successful
interpersonal communication, the listener must understand the intended
meaning and the context assumed by the sender.
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15. ■ REMEMBERING- it is important listening process because it means that an
individual has not only received and interpreted a message but has also added
it to the mind”s storage bank; but just as our attention is selective, so too is our
memory- what is remembered may be quite different from what was originally
seen or heard.
■ EVALUATING- it is a stage in which active listeners participate; it is at these
point that the active listener weighs evidence, sorts fact from opinion, and
determines the presence or absence of bias or prejudice in a message; the
effective listener makes sure that he or she doesn’t begin this activity too soon ;
beginning this stage of the process before a message is completed requires
that we no longer hear and attend to the incoming message-as a result, the
listening process ceases.
■ RESPONDING- this stage requires that the receiver complete the process
through verbal and/or nonverbal feedback; because the speaker has no other
way to determine if a message has been receivedHealth Fitness Articles, this
stage becomes the only overt means by which the sender may determine the
degree of success in transmitting the message. 15
16. LISTENING ESSENTIALS
1. Stop talking so much!
2. Don’t interrupt unnecessarily - Cultivate patience
3. Be slow to disagree, argue or criticize
4. Avoid “should-ing” on people
5. Stop when your energy flags
6. Be genuinely curious
7. Identify defensiveness; practice non-defensiveness
8. Listen for differences (respect them)
9. Become someone who can hear hard truths
10. Be mindful of age, race and bias
(Brady & Leigh)
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17. LISTENING STRATEGIES
■ Focus attention as completely as possible on what is being said.
■ Relax and let the ideas flow into your mind.
■ Don’t be upset if you don’t understand everything.
■ Try to connect what you hear to what you already know.
■ Listen for key words and ideas.
■ Ask the speaker to repeat or to speak more slowly, if necessary.
■ Try not to be afraid to ask questions about meaning when it seems all right to do so.
■ Make guesses about what is being said.
■ During conversation, check out your understanding by using confirmation checks. (is this what you are saying?)
■ Whenever possible, pay attention to the forms fluent speakers are using. Write down what you have learned—
new words, meanings, concepts, structures, idioms, etc.—in a notebook.
■ Compare lecture and discussion notes later with someone.
■ Find opportunities to listen outside class by watching television shows and movies, going to lectures, etc.
(Richard-Amato, 2003)
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19. BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE LISTENING
■ Environmental and Physical
Barriers to Listening
■ Cognitive and Personal Barriers
to Listening
■ Difference between Speech
and Thought Rate
■ Lack of Listening Preparation
■ Bad Messages and/or
Speakers
■ Prejudice
■ Bad Listening Practices
■ Interrupting
■ Distorted Listening
■ Aggressive Listening
■ Narcissistic Listening
■ Pseudo-listening
(Jones, 2013)
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20. Famous Quotes
■ “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
- Epictetus
■ “Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people don’t know the difference.”
– David Augsberger
■ “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes
us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.”
– Brenda Ueland
■ “The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most
important thing we ever give each other is our attention.”
– Rachel Naomi Remen
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21. REFERENCES
■ Brady, M., & Leigh, J. A. (n.d.). A Little Book of Listening Skills.
■ Jones, R. G. (2013). Communication in the Real World: An Introduction to
Communication Studies. Flat World Knowledge.
■ Malgaj, L. (2009, October 05). Stages of the listening process explained. Retrieved
from ArticlesFactory.com:
http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/communication/stages-of-the-listening-
process-explained.html
■ Richard-Amato, P. A. (2003). Making it Happen: From Interactive to Participatory
Language Teaching : Theory and Practice. Longman.
■ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/listen
■ https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/listening-skills.html
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