Active Listening Essay

May 7, 2008
Active listening is a communication skill that facilitates understanding,
comprehension, and compassion between people. Good listeners
actively process information, make pertinent comments, and ask
relevant questions (Brent and Anderson 123). They are engaged in
the conversation and purposeful in listening, thereby creating
opportunities that improve relationships, increase cooperation, solve
problems, and build intimacy.
According to Philippa Cordingley, founder and Chief Executive Officer of
Canadas Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education,
there are four subsets of skills involved in active listening (5). They
include: valuing silence, listening to what has actually been said, using
affirming body language, and reframing what has been said to check
meaning. Silence is important because it shows the listener is
attentive, allows the speaker to finish what they are saying, and, to
some extent, provides the speaker with the opportunity to hear him or
herself talk. Its also important for the listener to fight the urge to
speak what is on their mind and listen to what is actually being said.
Listeners may want to add something to conversation, e.g., make
suggestions; in doing so, however, the listener might miss the real
meaning of what is being said. Using affirming body language is also
important in letting the speaker know the listener's attention, e.g.,
nodding and smiling. Finally, its important for the listener to repeat
back what they heard in their own words. This allows the speaker to
reconsider what they have said and clarify details.
Active listening is important in all situations where people are
communicating with each other. According to the National
Communication Association, effective communication is critical to
achieving high quality personal and work relationships (36). In the
workplace active listening allows employers to understand their
employees and create a workplace that is responsive to employee
needs. In service industries, active listening allows service providers to
better understand what customer expectations are and meet those
expectations. In the field of medicine, active listening allows doctors
and nurses to better understand their patients and provide better care.
In families, active listening builds intimacy and trust between husband
and wife and parent and child.
I worked for twenty years in the field of business as an administrative
analyst. My work revolved around analyzing workflow, writing
procedure manuals, and developing new hire orientation programming
and technology training materials. This work required that I meet with

and interview employees across all levels of the firm, from clerks to
upper management, so that I could better understand how processes
flow from person to person and how the efficiencies of the processes I
studied impacted productivity and profitability. My success as an
administrative analyst required that I employ exemplary active
listening skills so that I could understand each employees perception
about their job and their relationship with other employees. Often,
however, employees would complain about one another. It was
important that I remained neutral, even when I had an opinion. I had to
ask many clarifying questions, and when an employee was really
upset, I had to allow them to vent and respond to their venting in an
empathetic, nonjudgmental way. I then would take the information I
gathered from interviews and reinterpret it in the form of written
manuals and reports to management. I gave a copy of everything I
wrote to all vested individuals for review to ensure that I interpreted
the information accurately. At the time, I did not realize that I was
employing active listening skills. Knowing what I now know, I cant help
but think about how much better I would have been at my job had I
received training in actively listening.
Active listening is especially important in the classroom; teachers who
practice active listening connect with their students and engage them
in the participatory aspects of learning. Active listening promotes
understanding and sends the message to students that they are
important. When students internalize these positive messages,
communication and behavior in the classroom improves. When
teachers really listen, students intuitively feel that the teacher cares
about and believes in them (Wolfgang 208). Consequently, students
feel understood and empowered and are more likely to communicate
their needs appropriately.
Its not just the teachers who benefit from employing active listening,
students themselves benefit from learning these skills. Students who
have active listening skills are able to effectively process information
and use their knowledge to better understand concepts and develop
new ideas. Teachers should teach listening skills as part of their regular
curriculum so that students develop communication literacy skills. The
National Communication Association (NCA) has published K-12
standards for speaking and listening that outline the importance of
integrating effective communication skills across the curriculum.
According to these standards, competent listeners demonstrate:
Knowledge and understanding of the listening process
The ability to use appropriate and effective listening skills for a given
communication situation and setting, and
The ability to identify and manage barriers to listening.

While teaching listening skills is important, it is the teacher who

models effective listening skills that has the most influence. Teachers
can model active listening by giving undivided attention to students
when they are presenting information in class and by making
appropriate and timely comments on the presentation. Its also
important to listen and respond to students during everyday
interactions. Brent and Anderson acknowledge that it is unrealistic to
expect that a teacher drop everything to listen to students whenever
they have something to say, but that it is important that students
frequently see their teacher exhibiting good listening behavior (124).
In addition to presentations, class discussion and one-on-one
conferences are also excellent opportunities to model active listening
in the classroom.
Modeling active listening in the classroom is especially important in
building a cooperative classroom where students learn how to (a)
communicate their thoughts and feelings to each other in productive
ways, and (b) solve problems between each other and the teacher in
ways that lead to positive outcomes. When a student is angry and
sharing his or her problem with the teacher, for example, he or she
may say things out of anger that do not represent their ultimate need.
The appropriate teacher response in a situation like this would be to
first listen attentively. The teacher who is actively listening
understands that this is a necessary step in resolving the issue and lets
students communicate his or her feelings without judgment. Secondly,
the teacher should evaluate the situation by listening critically and
gaining additional information by asking open-ended questions such
as, Do you want to tell me more about the situation? Finally, the
teacher should use verbal and non-verbal cues so that the student
knows they are being heard and understood. This practice of active
listening makes the student feel that his or her feelings are important,
thus helping the student open up and communicate more honestly with
teachers and peers.
Of all the classroom management plans, assertive discipline is the
least likely to use active listening as a tool for communication.
Teachers who use assertive discipline establish non-negotiable rules for
the classroom and expect students to follow them. Specific rewards
and consequences are communicated and consistently and fairly
handed out to students who follow or do not follow the rules (Canter
1989). In classrooms that use assertive discipline a student who is
trying to communicate his or her feelings may be viewed as arguing
with the teacher; and, a teacher who stops instruction to listen to a
student talk about his or her feelings might be viewed by other
students as showing favoritism. In a classroom that employs assertive

discipline as a classroom management plan, teachers would almost

have to consciously not listen to children, especially if the situation
that required listening to was in conflict with one or more of the rules.
Active listeners let people know they care about what is being said and
help the speaker articulate the true meaning of their thoughts and the
true source of their feelings. The active listener seeks to understand
and remember what is being said, evaluates and interprets what they
hear, and communicates understanding by reflecting back to the
speaker in an empathetic manner. Active listening is very important in
the classroom where teachers who practice active listening empower
students to be better communicators and learners. Teachers who strive
to integrate listening skills in the curriculum and model active listening
in their every-day interaction with students connect with students in
ways that support open communication and build a cooperative culture
in the classroom.
Resources
Brent, Rebecca; Anderson, Patricia. Developing Childrens Classroom
Listening Strategies. Reading Teacher 47.2 (1993) 122-126. Retrieved
on May 5, 2008, from EBSCO.
Canter, L. "More Than Names on the Board and Marbles in a Jar." Phi
Delta Kappan 71(1989): 57-61. Retrieved from Professor Waltzs
homepage. DYouville College,
http://campus.dyc.edu/~drwaltz/FoundLearnTheory/FLT_readings/Cante
r.htm.
Cordingley, Philippa. Talking to learn: The Role of Dialogue in
Professional Development. Education Review 19.2 (2006): 50-57.
Retrieved on May 7, 2008, from EBSCO.
Jalongo, Mary Renk. Promoting Active Listening in the Classroom.
Childhood Education (1995). Retrieved in full text on May 6, 2008, from
BNET.com. <
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3614/is_199510/ai_n8712320/pri
nt>.
National Communication Association (NCA). NCA K-12 Standards of
Communication. Retrieved on May 7, 2008 from <
http://www.natcom.org/NCA/admin/index.asp?downloadid=119>.
Poole, Marshall S.; Walther, Joseph B. (Eds.). Communication:
Ubiquitous, Complex, Consequential. National Communication

Association. Retrieved on May 7, 2008 from <

http://www.natcom.org/nca/Template2.asp?bid=1342>.
Salem, Richard. Empathic Listening. (2003). Retrieved on May 6,
2008, from Beyond Intractability <
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/empathic_listening/>.