Table of Contents Page No.

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1.0 Introduction 3

2.0 Analysis Of The Listening Guidelines 3

2.1 Listening Guidelines 3-4

3.0 Analysis Of The Listening Styles 5

3.1 Participatory and Passive Listening 5
3.2 Empathic and Objective Listening 5
3.3 Non-Judgemental and Critical Listening 5
3.4 Surface and Depth Listening 5
3.5 Active and Inactive Listening 5

4.0 Analysis Of The Listening Obstacles 5

4.1 Situational Obstacles 5 -6
4.2 Internal Obstacles to listening 7
4.3 Bad Listening Habits 7-8

5.0 Recommendation To Improve The Listening Skill 8

5.1 Control Emotions and Biases 8
5.2 Observe the Speaker 8-9
5.3 Understand What We Just Listen And Provide Feedback 9
5.4 To Avoid Miscommunication 9 - 10
5.5 Identifying supporting material 10

6.0 Summary 10

7.0 Reference 11

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1.0 INTRODUCTION

Interpersonal Communication is the process we communicate with others people

every day like friends, family members, colleagues, Business Partner and etc. by
giving information or message in verbal or non verbal, face to face and online
interaction via e-mail, WhatsApp, Facebook, Line, Twitter, Skype and etc. Listening
is the ability to understand message given accurately during the communication
process. Listening is important to all effective communication to understanding the
message and prevents misunderstanding. Good listening skills can help to make work
done more effective, efficiently and success.

Listening skill can be used to give and received message and information, influence
the attitudes and behavior of others, form contacts and maintain relationships,
decisions making and problems solving, express personal needs and understand the
needs of others people, give and received emotional support, make sense based on
experience and knowledge.

Television talk show: Clayton Moss, a boy who was chained up and tortured by his own
Family, host by Oprah Winfrey.

2.0 Analysis Of The Listening Guidelines

2.1 Listening Guidelines
The main guideline for effective listening is to adapt to specific communication
objectives and situation. Among the functions of listening are to:

a) Listen - When listen, need to suspend assumptions. Do not assume

others people also have same experience with us. Only listen
for understanding not need to believe or agree with what the
speaker said.

b) Learn – To acquire knowledge of others people or world to avoid

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 problem and more reasonable decisions

Example : Listen to the problem face by your employee can help to

improve quality and efficiency of work.

c) Entertain – To give attention or consideration to and idea, suggestion or

feeling of the speaker.

Example : To pay attention to your friend when they try to share some
idea or suggestion to solve the problem.

c) Relate – Form and maintain friendships and love relationship on the

basic of social acceptance and popularity because people
come to like those who are attentive and supportive.

Example : Your colleagues will increase their liking to you if they know
you take care and concern about him or her.

d) Influence – Have effect on the attitudes and behavior of the others

because people are more likely to respect and follow those
who they feel have listened to and understood them.

Example : The staff will follow instruction from the manager if they feel
him or her listen to their points of view and concern.

e) Help - Be able to assist to others people because you hear more,

empathise more and come to understand others more deeply.1

Example : To listen properly the problem face by your friend and help
him or her to solve the problem.

3.0 Analysis Of The Listening Styles

Difference people have difference way of listening styles to analysis the contents of

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Yap Khiam Hong, Massila Hamzh (2010) , OUM, BDKO1103, p84
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the conversation. Figure 3.0 show the five appropriateness of difference listening
modes for difference communication situation.

Figure 3.0
Yap Khiam Hong,
Massila Hamzah (2010)

3.1 Participatory and Passive Listening

An effective participatory listening is expressive. To response to listener non-
verbally e.g. maintain eye contact focus concentration on the speaker and express
feeling facially or verbally e.g. response with “I see” or “yes” , asking appropriate
questions.

Passive listening is allowing speaker to completed the conversation without

interrupting and reacting. With passive listening, will provide a supportive and
receptive environment.

3.2 Empathic and Objective Listening

Empathic listening is to understand what the person means and feel the same
feeling with them.

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 3.3 Non-Judgemental and Critical Listening
Listening non-judgementally with open mind to understand and listening critically
can help to make a good evaluation or judgement. Making judgment during
listening consider as a barrier to understand the person. To apply critical listening
when you still want to understand and evaluate what is being said by the person.
We need to try to understand the person first before we make the evaluate.

3.4 Surface and Depth Listening

Surface listening is an obvious meaning, we will miss out the important
information if we just focus on the surface taking and not focus on the whole
meaning.

Depth listening is a subtext, we focus on what the speaker said on their verbal and
Non-verbal messages and use the information to understand what means actually
deliver by the speaker.

3.5 Active and Inactive Listening

Active listening can help a listener to understanding what the speaker said and
meant. With active listening also can let the speaker knowing that you
acknowledge and accept the same feeling with his or her.

Inactive listening is only simply hearing but not understands what the speaker tries
to said and meant.

4.0 Analysis Of The Listening Obstacles

The following are some obstacles will affected the effective listening i n
communication.

4.1 Situational Obstacles

a) Message Complexity
Listening may be impeded by message complexity due to a lot of information
and complicated idea. With effective communication can reduce the
complexity of message and avoid unnecessary jargon.

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 b) Environmental Distractions
Environmental distractions also one of the obstacles of effective listening. If
the environment is very noisy e.g. Television sound, music and Telephone
will affect us cannot concentrate and listen clearly.

4.2 Internal Obstacles to listening

Beside situation impediments, following factors also can hinder listening:-

a) Preoccupation
Preoccupation is the very common obstacles listening. When we have a lot of
things to absorb in our mind and concern, we cannot focus on that others
people is talking or saying.

b) Prejudgement
Sometimes we did not listen carefully what someone said because we think
we already know what he or she will said.

4.3 Bad Listening Habits

Bad listening habits will affect to listen effectively, following are some bad
listening habits:-

a) Over Listening
Over listening occur when listener attempt to take note or to memory a lot
of details they miss the speaker’s points.

b) Failing to observe Non-Verbal Aids

To use eyes as ears to expressions the facial and body motions to
accompany the speech and contribute to the message.

c) Getting Overstimulated

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 Listening efficiency drops to zero when the listeners react so strongly to one
part of the conversation. This bad habit is so critical and to remember
that “ Withhold evaluation until comprehension is complete - hear the
speaker out”. It is important that we understand the speaker's point of
view fully before we accept or reject it.

5.0 Recommendation To Improve The Listening Skill

5.1 Control Emotions and Biases

The listener should able to control their emotions and not to involve the
personal issue during the conversation. Be sympathetic to the people who
infortunes and congratulate to people who success. Do not afraid to ask if
in doubt and seek opinions for better understanding before make the
decision or judgement. Consider what you say will influence or affect
others people emotions.

5.2 Observe the Speaker

To have an effective listening and be a successful listener, we must be
physically and mentally in tune in mode. This means, facial expressions and
maintaining eye contact may indicate sincerity or firmness.

In another side, we have to turn off any mind chatter because before start
the listening, we still thinking about something else. Goods listener will
listen and wait until the person finished the conversation and just give a
feedback, judgment or response. If not, we might forget some important
note.

We can also show that we are listening to the speaker by using our body
language e.g. smiling, talking rapidly etc.

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 For example, if someone is smiling and talking rapidly
they’re likely to be genuinely excited and interested in
the topic. If you notice slumped shoulders and a chin
tilted toward the ground perhaps the person is
experiencing sadness or a lack of self-esteem. The clues can
be very subtle. It might be that you barely notice a slight side
to side “no” headshake at the same time the person is saying,
“Sure, we can do that.” 2

To make sure only one person speaks at a time. To pay full attention to the
conversation and give each person an opportunity to speak.

5.3 Understand What We Just Listen And Provide Feedback

We need to translate and interpret what we just listen and observed, then
analysis based on own experiences to understand what the speaker was tying
to communicate and provide feedback accordingly. The listener should
response with feedback through facial expressions, offer empathetic
comments, sound and gestures. Sometimes we will ask some question to
confirm we really understand the communication.

We also need to pay attention to understand non-verbal communication were

the tone of voice, gestures and words all in agreement? Did the body
language the word says is equal?

5.4 To Avoid Miscommunication

Need to paraphrase what we hear including the content and emotion to
confirm understanding what speaker tying to express. Asking question to
clarifly and understanding well to explore assumptions.

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Lisa B. Marshall (2012), Smart Talk
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 For example, the speaker might say : “It seen like you still not understand
how completed the work even I already repeat the instruction for many
times”

The structure of paraphrasing is:

 lead-in

 plus feelings summary

 plus content summary

Another example might be, “It seems (lead in) that you are angry
and perhaps resentful (feelings summary) because you’re being
asked to work overtime (content summary), is that right?” Be
careful to be accurate and not overstate what you heard. By
repeating back the other’s person’s meaning in your own words,
you are letting the other person know you understand what they
are telling you. In short, it prevents miscommunication. 3

5.5 Identifying supporting material.

Try to identify a speaker's supporting material. After all, a person can't go on
making points without giving listeners some of the evidence on which the
conclusions are based, and the bricks and mortar that have been used to build
up the argument should be examined for soundness

6.0 Summary
Accuracy in listening plays a very important part in our communication with
other people either in verbal or non-verbal every day in our life. We still
need to learn how to have a good listening skill to communication because
difference type of people we need to use the difference type of listening style
to make sure we are really understand what the speaker tying to
communicate to avoid miscommunication and misunderstanding.

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Lisa B. Marshall (2012), Smart Talk
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References
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbKJlSRxGgk

http://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/interpersonal-communication.html

http://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/listening-skills.html

http://www.managementstudyguide.com/effective-listening-skills.htm

http://www.ask.com/wiki/Empathy

web site http://work911.com/communication/listencritically.htm

Detian Chen (2010), Speech Blog

Website:http://springflower2010.blogspot.com/2010/11/surface-and-depth-
listening.html

Lisa B. Marshall (2012), Smart Talk

Website: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/business-career/public-speaking/how-to-
improve-listening-skills

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