As I have already mentioned earlier in part 1 of assignment 1 that listening is my

weakest communication skill in English. Because of this weakness, I faced certain

difficulties on a number of occasions in my life for example attending a boring lecture,
understanding a difficult subject, listening to someone in distress. But over the years I
have improved my listening skills to a great extent. I undertook a few simple but very
effective strategies to make myself a good listener. To improve my listening skills, at first
I asked myself what is listening? Many people think listening is merely hearing. But there
is far more to listening than hearing. Listening is actually receiving something verbally,
constructing meaning and responding to it. After understanding the meaning of listening,
I tried to know how the listening process takes place. The listening process takes place
through a couple of steps which include prediction, receiving messages, attending,
assigning meaning, remembering and assessing. It is not necessary that these steps take
place chronologically. But knowing this much was not good enough for becoming an
active listener. I adopted some techniques to become a good listener. For academic
purpose, whenever I listened to my lecturers speaking about any topic at first I tried to
identify the central or main idea. Then I referred to the materials which supported that
idea. After that I formed a mental outline of the topic. By doing so it was easier for me to
predict what was coming next. If the topic was somewhat similar to what I have
experienced or known, I tried to relate it with my life and find out similarities and
dissimilarities. It made the topic quite clear and as such I could remember the
highlighting or key points of the topic. At last, I asked questions to myself related to the
topic to check whether I understood it completely. If I could not convince myself that I
understood the topic properly, I asked questions to the lecturers. To enhance my listening
skills in English, I applied these techniques in my everyday life mostly for academic
purpose and started getting positive results in a few months. Another problem was my
occasional short attention span due to which my listening skills were not up to the mark.
It was a barrier not only in academics but also in day-to-day communication. It took a bit
to time but finally I managed to overcome this problem. I thought the best way to get rid
of this problem was watching movies and TV series. Watching these stuffs and properly
understanding them requires a lot of attention. Listening to something and at the same
time visualizing it is the most effective way to increase attention span. Gradually my
attention span increased and now it is no more a barrier in the way of developing and
furnishing my listening skills. In this way within a year I improved my listening skills
which enhanced my communication skills in English.