Content I. Introduction II. Main body

General information about listening skill

To listen is to give attention to sound or action. When listening, one is hearing what others are saying, and trying to understand what it means. The act of listening involves complex affective, cognitive, and behavioral processes. Affective processes include the motivation to listen to others; cognitive processes include attending to, understanding, receiving, and interpreting content and relational messages; and behavioral processes include responding to others with verbal and nonverbal feedback.³
Listening can be a useful skill for different problems, but it is essential to solve conflict, poor listening can lead to misinterpretations thus causing conflict or a dispute. Other causes can be excessive interruptions, inattention, hearing what you want to hear, mentally composing a response, and having a closed mind.
Listening is also link to our memory, according to a study during a speech some background noises that were heard by the listeners could help listeners recall information by heard it again. For example, when we’re doing something like reading or following steps while hearing music, we can recall what that was by hearing the music again later.
Listening differs from obeying. A person who receives and understands information or an instruction, and then chooses not to comply with it or not to agree to it, has listened to the speaker, even though the result is not what the speaker wanted. Listening is a term in which the listener listens to the one who produced the sound to be listened. A Semiotician, Roland Barthes characterized the distinction between listening and hearing. "Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act." We are always hearing, most of the time subconsciously. Listening is done by choice. It is the interpretative action taken by someone in order to understand and potentially make meaning of something they hear.
Listening may be considered as a simple and isolated process, but it would be far more precise to perceive it as a complex and systematic process. It involves the perception of sounds made by the speaker, of intonation patterns that shows the focus of the information, and of the relevance of the present topic discussed.
According to Roland Barthes, listening can be understood on three levels: alerting, deciphering, and an understanding of how the sound is produced and how the sound affects the listener.
Alerting, being the first level is the detection of environmental sound cues. This means that certain place has certain sounds associated with them. This is best explained using the example of someone's home. Their home has certain sounds associated with it that makes it familiar and comfortable. An intrusion, a sound that is not familiar (e.g. a squeaking door or floorboard, a breaking window) alerts the dweller of the home to the potential danger.⁴
Deciphering, the second level, describes detecting patterns when interpreting sounds. An example of this level is that of a child waiting for the sound of his mother's return home. In this scenario the child is waiting to pick up on sound cues (e.g. jingling keys, the turn of the doorknob, etc.) that will mark his mother's approach.
Understanding, the third level of listening, means knowing how what one says will affect another. This sort of listening is important in psychoanalysis , the study of the unconscious mind. Barthes states that the psychoanalyst must turn off their judgement while listening to their patient in order to communicate with their patient's unconscious in an unbiased fashion. This is the same way that listeners must turn off their judgment when listening to other.
All of the three levels of listening function within the same plane, and sometimes all at once. Specifically the second and third levels, which overlap vastly, can be intertwined in that obtaining, understanding and deriving meaning are part of the same process. In that the child, upon hearing the doorknob turn (obtaining), can almost automatically assume that someone is at the door (deriving meaning).
Active listening is listening to what someone is saying, and attempting to understand what is being said. It can be described in a lot of ways. Active listening is having good listening skills. The listener is attentive, nonjudgmental, non-interrupting. An active listener analyzers what the speaker is saying for hidden messages, and meanings contained in the verbal communication. An active listener looks for non-verbal messages from the speaker in order to indicate the full meaning of what is being said. With active listening, a person must be willing to hear what someone is saying and the intent to try to understand what the meaning of what the other person said. When active listening is used, there can be multiple benefits. Being an active listener means that you have the possibility to become a more effective listener over time, and your leadership skills will strengthen.
Active listening is an exchange between two or multiple people. When those people are active listeners, the quality of the conversation will be better and more clear. They connect with each other on a deeper level with each other in their conversations. Active listening can create more deep, and positive relationship between the individuals.
Active listening is important in bringing changes in the speaker's perspective. Clinical research and evidence show that active listening is a catalyst in a person's personal growth. The growth is specific with personality change and group development. A person will more likely listen to themselves if someone else is allowing them to speak and get their message across.
Active listening allows for us to be present in a conversation. Listening is a key factor in cultivating relationships because the more we understand the other person, the more connection we create, as taught in nonviolent communication Dharma teachings. As someone recently stated, "we should listen harder than we speak."
In language learning
Along with speaking, reading, and writing, listening is one of the "four skills" of language learning. All language teaching approaches, except for grammar translation, incorporate a listening component. Some teaching methods, such as total physical response, involve students simply listening and responding.
A distinction is often made between "intensive listening", in which learners attempt to listen with maximum accuracy to a relatively brief sequence of speech, and "extensive listening", in which learners listen to lengthy passages for general comprehension. While intensive listening may be more effective in terms of developing specific aspects of listening ability, extensive listening is more effective in building fluency and maintaining learner motivation.
People are usually not conscious of how they listen in their first language unless they encounter difficulty. A research focus in facilitating language learning determined, what L2 (Second Language) learners need to do when listening is to make conscious use of the strategies, they unconsciously use in their first language. Such as, inferring, selective attention, evaluation, etc.
Several factors are activated in speech perception as phonetic quality, prosodic patterns, pausing and speed of input, all of which influence the comprehensibility of listening input. There is a common store of semantic information (single) in memory that is used in both first language and second language speech comprehension; however, research shows that there are separate stores of phonological information (dual) for speech. Semantic knowledge required for language understanding (scripts and schemata related to real-world people, places, and actions) is accessed through phonological tagging of the language that is heard.⁵
In a study involving 93 participants about the relationship between second language listening and a range of tasks, there was a discovery about how listening anxiety played a big factor as an obstacle for the execution of the speed and explicitness of second language listening tasks. Additional research explored whether listening anxiety and comprehension are related, and as expected by the researchers it yielded negative correlation.
We take in words, their sounds and their meanings all the time during our waking hours. We also often ‘overhear’ or ‘catch’ what people are saying to each other. It is not necessary or required that we grasp or register all that is said on these occasions. What we are doing most of the time is merely ‘hearing’ language being used in speaking. However, at other times, we are expected to listen, understand and respond to spoken language, for example, in a conversation or during a lecture. Here we are not just ‘hearing’ people but ‘listening’ to them with attention.
Although listening is cultivated naturally and without specific instruction, it is one of the most important skills in language learning as also in social interaction. We often hear the complaint that someone is not a good listener or, conversely, the compliment that someone is a very good listener. Obviously, this does not mean that some people can hear better, but rather that some people come across as more attentive and more empathetic in conversation than others. They also seem to process information more keenly and fully than those who are poorer listeners.
Is it possible to improve our own listening skills? Can we become better listeners than before? How can listening better prove beneficial to us? These are some of the questions we seek to answer in this module. It includes some points you can ponder over and practice as well as some activities you would be required to engage in as you go through what follows.
While listening to a story or to a lecture we need to listen not only for specific information but also to overall message and the relationship of one idea with another. For this we need to follow the speaker's train of thought. The tone of the speaker often indicates what is coming. Think of the many ways in which you can say "Okay, I will come." The way you say it will show if you are enthusiastic about going somewhere or you are doing it as an obligation or you are angry about going somewhere. The speaker's tone can help us anticipate what is to follow in a passage. It also adds meaning to what we hear.⁶
It’s worth pausing for a moment to consider what we mean when we ask children to listen. We are really saying: can you hear my voice; can you listen to the words.
Clearly, there is quite a lot going on in this simple question and so it is no surprise that some of our children struggle to listen. We are actually asking them to take part in a complex process that at any point can be disrupted by factors such as the child’s stage of development, cognitive ability, state of mind or health.
Children don’t acquire the ability to listen overnight. As with any skill, it has to be practised and encouraged. Understanding the process and developmental steps can help us to nurture these skills and plan appropriate activities.
When children ‘listen’ they are actually drawing on three separate processes:
1. Hearing
A child’s sense of hearing starts to develop at a very early stage in life. Research has shown that babies develop the ability to hear within the womb and will respond within days of birth to their mother’s voice. The majority of children should be able to use this sense of hearing (although some do have a specific hearing impairment and others may suffer from intermittent hearing loss). However, just because a child can hear us that doesn’t mean that they are listening!
2. Listening
Babies start listening and reacting to noises, sounds and voices at a very young age. By the time they are four months old, a baby will turn towards the sound of a voice. As a child grows they learn to listen to different sounds and discriminate between them, and to recognise voices and sounds from the world around them. Eventually, children will develop the ability to detect, discriminate between and identify sounds, and understand them (in words and sentences). These skills are absolutely crucial for the development of speech, phonological awareness and, ultimately, reading.
However, whilst children may be able to hear and listen to sounds and voices, they also need to be able to attend to this ‘listening’ for sustained periods.
3. Attention
In the 1970s, psychologist Joan Reynell defined the different stages of attention a child will move through from birth to the age of about five as follows:
● Distractibility, 0–1 years: babies can only hold their attention for a few moments and they are easily distracted by new sounds or objects.
● Single-channel attention, 1–2 years: children begin to focus their attention on one activity and do not like a spoken or visual distraction. We have all spoken to a child so engrossed in an activity that they appear not to hear us at all.
● Single-channel attention with more flexibility, 2–3 years: children continue to focus on one activity and still find it difficult to shift their attention when spoken to. However, they do begin to respond to interruptions and distractions if their name is called or a visual distraction is offered. At this stage, children still find it difficult to pay attention to a visual and verbal task at the same time.
● Attention under voluntary control, 3–4 years: children begin to control their own focus of attention and can shift this between an activity and the speaker. However, children still have to look at the person speaking.
● Two-channelled attention, 4–5 years: children can now move their attention between an activity and a speaker without stopping to look at them. Their attention span may still be short, but children are now ready to pay attention within a group. Children can now attend to a visual and verbal activity at the same time.
● Fully integrated attention, 5 years onwards: children can now carry out a task, focus their attention in various sized groups, ignore distractions and maintain their attention for a reasonable length of time.
It is important to note that not all children will follow these stages rigidly. Also, as mentioned earlier, other factors can temporarily affect children’s ability to listen and attend.
There are also some words/phrases that indicate what is coming next. For instance, "however" suggests there is going to be contrast while "besides" suggests addition to the same point. A good listener pays attention to what is being said, what is connected to what and how something is being said. According to Tony Lynch, while listening to a lecture in a foreign language, we could use certain macro-strategies such as:

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   Predicting: Thinking about the possible content of the lecture before you listen
   
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   Monitoring: Noticing your problems as you listen and identifying areas of uncertainty
   
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   Responding: Giving your own opinion on the ideas presented by the lecturer
   
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   Clarifying: Preparing questions that you can ask the lecturer so as to get a clearer understanding
   
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   Inferring: Making hypotheses when you aren't sure of something, such as the meaning of an unfamiliar word or expression
   
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   Evaluating: Assessing how well you have understood the lecture⁷
   

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