Listening Skills and Listening Process - Essay Example

Running head: Listening Skills Listening Skills Good listening skills are essential for proper learning. Listening skills help a person to understand things properly and making sound judgments based on that. Maintaining eye contact with the orator, Focusing on the content, not delivery, Avoiding emotional involvement, Avoiding distractions, Treating listening as a challenging mental task, Staying active by asking mental questions, etc are some of the main listening skills. This paper briefly explains the various listening skills needed to understand a topic properly. Introduction Probably, majority of our times we used for listening purposes. From childhood onwards the listening process starts. Parents and the teachers are the major entities which speak to the children during their childhood and adolescence. “The average college student spends about 14 hours per week in class listening (or perhaps I should say "hearing"--there is a difference!) to lectures” (Listening Skills, 2006). After grown up, we usually listens the complaints and suggestions of our children, friends, and co-workers. Good listening skills, apart from orating skills are essential for a manager to take sound decisions. It is difficult to understand a topic clearly if we read or write about that topic. Along with reading and writing, listening is the third essential segment of learning process. It is not necessary that a person understands the topic simply listening to it. Listening is a complex task which has certain basic characteristics in order to understand the topic listened properly. Listening Process Listening is an active process which has three basic requirements like hearing, understanding and judging. (What does it mean to really listen?, 2009). A person said to be heard something if he was able to reproduce it. For example, we have often witnessed people sleeping at the hall when the politicians like speakers lengthen their speeches. Such sleeping people cannot be said that they heard what the speaker has told. So a mere presence alone may not guarantee proper hearing. Understanding is the second step of listening. Hearing will become meaningless if the audience does not understand anything. For example, suppose, a child of 6 years attending a college level class. Even if the lecturer tries too hard, the child may not understand anything because of his lack of awareness about the topic. In this case we can safely say that even though the child hears the full lecture, he understands nothing and his listening becomes meaningless. Judging is the third part of the listening process. “After you are sure you understand what the speaker has said, think about whether it makes sense. Do you believe what you have heard? You might think, "How could the stripes to be different for every zebra? But then again, the fingerprints are different for every person. I think this seems believable." (What does it mean to really listen?, 2009) It is difficult for some people to listen for a longer period. On the other hand some others listen to the speaker even for hours without many problems. Listening often depends on the orator’s style of speech and the listener’s interest in the topic. For example a student who is interested in Mathematics, may listen the Mathematics class without exhibiting any distractions. On the other hand, for people who have difficulty in understanding the theories of Mathematics, the mathematics class would be a boring one and they will lose their focus after some time. Listening Skills Listening skills are different for different persons. ‘Maintaining eye contact with the instructor, Focusing on content, not delivery, Avoiding emotional involvement, Avoiding distractions, Treating listening as a challenging mental task, Staying active by asking mental questions, Using the gap between the rate of speech and your rate of thought etc are some of the basic listening skills’ (Listening Skills, 2006) Keeping eye contact with the speaker or the instructor will help the audience to keep their focus on the topic. Shifting the eye contacts from the face of the orator means that the listener has started to get bored or the content of the lecture was too difficult to grasp. On the other hand, if the topic was interesting and easy to understand, the listener would focus his/her eyes on the orator’s face till the end of the lecture or the speech. The listener should focus on the content of the lecture rather than the delivery style of the topic. For example, some speakers or teachers may have peculiar styles of delivering the lecture, which may interesting to the audience or the students. The audience would keep their eyes on the speaker simply to watch his mannerisms rather than the topic. In such cases, proper listening is not taking place even though the audience kept their focus on the speaker. The listener should avoid any emotional involvement with the topic to listen it properly. For example, some teachers while teaching English literatures like Shakespeare dramas often present the topics emotionally. If the students forced to involve in the topic emotionally, he/she may lose the focus from the main theme of the topic. Emotions would rule the wisdom and the content might not be understood properly by the students in such cases and the purpose of listening would be lost. Avoiding distractions is another sign of good listening skills. A good listener always concentrates on the topic he listens rather than changing his attention at times. It is a fact that some of the schools are situated near the heavy traffic areas. The sound produced by the vehicle horns often distracts the attention of the students. If the student was a good listener he might not shift his attention by any external disturbances. “Listen for main ideas. The main ideas are the most important points the speaker wants to get across. They may be mentioned at the start or end of a talk, and repeated a number of times. Pay special attention to statements that begin with phrases such as "My point is..." or "The thing to remember is..." ” (What does it mean to really listen?, 2009) Treating listening as a challenging mental task is another good quality to strengthen listening skills. It is not necessary that all the topics listened are easily digestible. But if the listener changes his focus from listening, then it would be difficult for him to understand the topics well. A conscious and deliberate effort from the part of the listener is essential for keeping his attention focused on the topic he listens in order to make the listening process more meaningful. A good listener always asks mental questions, while he listen a topic. Such skills would enable the listener to understand the topic more profoundly. Asking mental questions can create doubts which can be cleared at the time of listening itself by self analysis or with the help of the orator. “Remember: time is on your side! Thoughts move about four times as fast as speech. With practice, while you are listening you will also be able to think about what you are hearing, really understand it, and give feedback to the speaker. Let the speaker finish before you begin to talk. Speakers appreciate having the chance to say everything they would like to say without being interrupted. When you interrupt, it looks like you arent listening, even if you really are”(What does it mean to really listen?, 2009) Conclusions Listening is a complex task which has mainly three essential requirements; hearing, understanding and judging. Without the above characteristics, listening cannot be termed as a useful one or active one. Maintaining eye contact with the orator, Focusing on the content, not delivery, Avoiding emotional involvement, Avoiding distractions, Treating listening as a challenging mental task, Staying active by asking mental questions, etc are some of the main listening skills. References 1. Listening Skills, (2006), Retrieved on 09 November 2009 from http://www.d.umn.edu/kmc/student/loon/acad/strat/ss_listening.html 2. What does it mean to really listen?, (2009), Retrieved on 09 November 2009 from http://www.infoplease.com/homework/listeningskills1.html Read More