Lesson III.

LISTENING
LISTENING
Listening is the active intellectual process of decoding, interpreting,
understanding, and evaluating messages. It is a mode of
communication just as important as the other modes like speaking,
reading, and writing. It is said to note, however, that this mode has
been observed to be the most neglected area in teaching English
towards communicative competence. This is lamentable
considering that we spend most of our waking hours
communicating, the greatest portion of which is spent in listening.
BEST KIND OF LISTENING
• According to McBurney and Wrage the best kind
of listening has the following characteristics:
Voluntary
• Good Listening begins with a willingness to
participate completely in a communicative
situation.
Purposeful
• You
choose to listen because of
some very good reason or reasons.
Motivated
• When you have good reasons for
listening, you are all keyed up for the
activity and nothing can stop you.
Cooperative
• Youkeep quiet and give your wholehearted
cooperation when you listen because you
hope for nothing but only the best from the
speaker.
Critical
• You follow the speaker’s ideas carefully and
get things clear so that in the end you may
be able to make intellectual judgments when
you evaluate his/her ideas before
responding.
WHY LISTEN?
The following are the things good listening does for you in a speaking
situation:
• It stimulates better communication between the parties involved.
• It contributes to and promotes better responses among members of the group.
• It makes you appreciate and enjoy what you hear. It increases and expands the
range of one’s enjoyment of life. It gives pleasure and even comfort.
• It assists you in understanding what is being said.
• It helps you make better decisions.
• It enables you to react to what is said.
• It
enlarges one’s experience. Listening broadens and
enriches the mind.
• It
enables you to correct your problems of vocalization.
Listening to your voice allows you to realize your faults
and defects which in time offers you chances to improve.
• It decreases the tensions of life.
Requisite to good listening is a purpose. You listen for a purpose or
several purposes. It may be any or all of the following:

• To obtain information and gain knowledge. You listen to learn and

benefit from the experience of others. Understanding and
retention are the primary goals.
• To appreciate and enjoy what is said.
• To be clarified and make intellectual judgments, fair criticisms,
and to evaluate ideas.
• To draw inspiration
• To improve oneself.
THE LISTENING PROCESS
The process of listening is made up of four stages. They are as follows:
The Physical or Attention Stage
• Listening begins with the ability to hear or to catch sounds
with the use of the auditory system. A person must,
therefore, be in the position or right mood to listen. He must
be ready to listen. He must be free from distractions. The
setting must, likewise, be conducive to listening. Then, can
mental concentration be expected.
The Logical or Auditory Discrimination Stage

• Sounds caught by the hearing mechanisms are transmitted to

the brain to be sorted out, interpreted, and given meaning.
This second stage involves the listener's ability to recognize,
categorize and discriminate sounds analyzing them based on
attributes of voice quality, pitch, volume, pauses, and rate. It
also includes his/her grasp of vocabulary.
The Semantic or Comprehension Stage
• This is the process of translating and interrelating sounds into
thought symbols. This involves the listener’s ability to understand
and give meaning to what he or she hears at the denotative and
connotative levels and to respond to the messages received. This
has also something to do with the affective context of the
language. The listener’s feelings and emotions will affect his or
her reaction and interaction with others.
The Retention Stage
• This refers to the listener’s ability to retain or
remember ideas conveyed and later to use these
ideas in reacting with others in a definite speech
setting.
LEVELS OF LISTENING
In listening, likewise, there are six levels a listener may go
through or prefer to settle with. They are as follows:

Ignoring
• The speaker is communicating but the
receiver, who may be preoccupied with
many other concerns, completely denies or
ignores him.
Pretending

• Thespeaker is communicating while

the other party shares at him blankly.
This is listening on eye-level for the
sake of courtesy.
Selective Listening
• The speaker is communicating but the other
party chooses whatever he or she wants to
listen to. It may be a joke, an anecdote, or a
story in the middle of a speech. This is
listening on the eye and ear levels.
Attentive Listening
• Thelistener looks at the speaker, hears his voice,
and follows his thoughts with his mind. He
concentrates on what he hears. This is listening
with the eyes, the ears, and the mind.
Sympathetic Listening

• Aside from seeing, hearing, and

understanding the message, affection or
emotion is involved. This is listening at the
levels of the yes, the ears, the mind, and the
heart.
Emphatic Listening
• This is the highest level of listening. It involves
the eyes, the ears, the mind, the heart, and the
action of the listener’s active response or
solution. It is not just on the pity level, but being
in the actual situation of the speaker. Emphasis is
on listening.
ROADBLOCKS OF LISTENING
The following are some bad habits in listening that should be avoided:

Hostility to the speaker

• This unfriendly attitude which may spring from
biases or prejudices makes a listener disinterested
and sends him or her criticizing the speaker and
his delivery.
Daydreaming
• As an internal barrier to the listener, this happens when
the listener gets bored after long listening or when he is
occupied with other things more interesting than the
speaker and what he is saying. The listener in this
instance enjoys distracting pleasant thoughts or
dreamlike fantasies. He tends to be a casual listener who
tunes in when something said catches his fancy and
whose mind wanders off afterward.
Prejudging
• Some listeners are given to making judgments
even before listening. Things like the subject are
uninteresting, the subject is not new or I know it
already dampens one’s flair for listening. This
jumping to a conclusion results in the wrong
interpretation of the message and the belief that
one listened effectively.
Selective listening
• A selectivelistener chooses channels. He turns on
and off whenever and wherever he pleases.
Usually, he selects subjects that have something
to do with him, those that he likes because they
interest him, and shuts off to those that do not
affect him. He may also be evading a difficult
subject.
Close-mindedness
• This occurs when the listener is over-confident,
finds a dislike for the speaker, or feels he knows
better than the speaker. He believes in himself
very much that he becomes non-receptive to the
opinions and views of others or he could be just
plain lazy to concentrate and absorb new ideas.
Listener’s background
• His culture, beliefs, mores, biases, and
prejudices can serve as obstructions to
effective listening.
Distractions
• These may come in varied forms like personal,
interpersonal, physical, environmental, temporal,
geographical, perceptual or semantic, unfavorable
setting and mannerisms, unpleasant voice,
physical appearance, and language of the speaker
are a few many things that may come in the way
of message sending and receiving.
HOW TO BE A GOOD LISTENER

• Listening is an all-important communication

skill. Like all other skills. It can be learned and
improved with painstaking effort through correct
practice. To do this requires the following basics
as recommended by experts. These are the golden
rules of listening.
• Set your mind for listening. Adapt a relaxed stillness and be ready
to listen. Relax and let go.
• Avoid distractions and overcome listening fatigue.
• Establish motivation. Have a purpose. Listen with the aim of
understanding so that you will comprehend the message.
• Don’t interrupt the speaker. Let him finish what he’s saying before
you butt in.
• Be generous. Concentrate on the speaker. Think less about
yourself by giving him the courtesy of your undivided attention.
• Maintain eye contact.
• Lean toward the speaker as you listen. This shows you’re
interested.
• Avoid doing most of the talking yourself. Let the other party be
heard.
• Use minimal encouragers such as: uh-huh, I see, really?, oh, and
the like to make the speaker continue.
• Establish empathy for the speaker’s position. Put yourself in his
shoes. Imagine how he is feeling and understand his emotions.
• Establish questions in your mind about the nature of the subject.
This will guide you in listening for the answers.
• Look for the main topic. Recognize central ideas. You don’t have
to remember everything that the speaker says.
• Focus on the structure of the message.
• Develop an efficient note-taking system. Learn to take notes.
Write only the important ideas.
• Don’t let your background and your personal biases cloud or
interfere with your point of view about the content of the
message.
• Control your emotional responses to language. Don’t lose your
temper or show signs of being upset. Be polite. In responding,
make the right noises and use appropriate facial expressions.
• Evaluate the message critically. Find out the speaker’s motives.
• Be alert to what lies behind a speaker’s words. Use your eyes as
well as your ears. Good listening involves reaching into the
thoughts behind the speaker’s words.
• Use active listening. Make you understand a person’s message by
paraphrasing what was said.
• Summarize or repeat what you think someone has said. This is to
have misunderstandings corrected.