DISCRIMINATIVE AND EFFERENT LISTENING

Listening, like the other language arts, involves a process. It is more than just hearing, even though we often
use the terms hearing and listening synonymously (Lundsteen, 1979). Actually, hearing is only one step; the
crucial part is comprehending what was heard. The listening process has three steps: receiving, attending,
and assigning meaning (Wolvin & Coakley, 1995). In the first step, listeners receive the aural stimuli or the
combined aural and visual stimuli presented by the speaker. Next, listeners focus on important stimuli while
ignoring other, distracting stimuli. Because so many stimuli surround students in the classroom, they must
attend to the speaker’s message, focusing on the most important information in that message. In the third step,
listeners comprehend or assign meaning to the speaker’s message. Responding to the message is not
considered part of the listening process; the response occurs afterward, and it sets another communication
process into action in which the listener becomes the message sender.

There are many accounts as to the process of listening, Rost has also introduced a similar concept. In the
process, there are still processing phases, decoding, comprehension, and interpretation. In his words:

l  Decoding involves attention, speech perception, word recognition, and grammatical parsing;

l  Comprehension includes activation of prior knowledge, representing propositions in short term

memory, and logical inference

l  Interpretation encompasses comparison of meanings with prior expectations, activating

participation frames, and evaluation of discourse meanings

These processes are important as these will dictate how the receiver of the message respond or react
the messages transmitted.

Why do people listen? People often answer that they listen to learn or to avoid punishment, but according to
Wolvin and Coakley (1995), people actually use different types of listening for these four purposes:

◆ Discriminative listening to distinguish sounds

◆ Aesthetic listening for enjoyment

◆ Efferent listening to learn information

◆ Critical listening to evaluate information

In relation to the purposes of listening, these terms are similar to Verderber and company.

l  When you listen to enjoy like music or watching your favorite series, that is appreciative listening.

l  When a person tries to discern linguistic codes like speeches or when talking to someone that is
discriminative listening.

l  When a person tries to recall information (from seminar or lecture) that is comprehensive listening.

l  Finally, when a person evaluates the value of the message, he/she practices critical listening.
In the short exercise you had earlier, it was a brief introduction to what discriminative listening is. When you
were young, you actually developed phonemic awareness that is to blend and segment sounds.

l  Blending- this is your ability to combine sounds and eventually make words

l  Segmenting- this is your ability to chunk the sounds and make meaning to these sounds

l  savoring word play- this is when you try to play with the words and revisiting your mental lexicon
for words related to what you are hearing

l  noticing verbal and nonverbal cues- fillers like ‘ahm’ ‘okay’ or gestures also provide a listener hints
to what the message is.

Another type of listening is efferent listening, when you listen efferently, you focus on the big ideas. You
employ specific strategies in order to and use strategies that help them recognize these ideas and organize them
so they are easier to remember. For example, they use the questioning strategy to help them pick out what’s
important and understand the relationships among the big ideas.

l  Organizing- You put into order your understanding

l  recognizing big ideas- You identify the salient points from the message

l  Questioning- You ask yourself for clarifications and have them cleared

l  Summarizing- You create a gist of the entire message for easy recall

One active listening strategy that harnesses the power of discriminative and efferent listening is attending.
Attending is the process of intentionally perceiving and focusing on a message (O’Shaughnessey, 2003). Poor
listeners do not have this as they allow their minds to wonder and focus on the message. Do you find yourself
dreaming or thinking of something else while in class? Or may be now while you are listening to this?

To improve this strategy, there are simple techniques:

1.  Get physically ready to listen. This simply means you as the listener eliminates anything that could
potentially distract you from listening, your cellphones, gadgets, social media, tv, and more.

2. Resist mental distractions. Always have control of what is in your mind. Focus. Yes, it is easier said
than done, but practice and determination makes it happen (e.g., a classmate who enters the room

e you while your supervisor is giving instructions), or a physical distraction (e.g., wondering what
you’ll eat for lunch because your stomach is growling).

3.  Hear the person out. At times, attending is not observed when we already have biases toward a
person. Practice arguing with the person in mind and let him/her make his point and wait for the time
you can respond. 
 Additional Inputs

“Remembering is being able to retain and recall information later. We may find remembering
difficult, for instance, because we filter out information that doesn’t fit our learning style, our
listening anxiety prevents us from recalling what we have heard, we engage in passive listening, we
practice selective listening and remember only what supports our position, and we fall victim to the
primacy–recency effect of remembering only what is said at the beginning and end of a message. “

Verderber, K  Sellnow, D., & Verderber, R., 2017

There are three techniques to develop:

1. Repeat the Information: try to recall the information and repeat it either in your head or by saying it
out loud. This helps you in remembering important information. For example in an emergency call,
you must remember vital information in order to provide the need of the caller.

2. Construct mnemonics: this is a common way of taking down notes. In conversations though you do
not take down notes unless it is a formal meeting. Speaking of which, when you communicate with
your boss and requires you to do numerous tasks, the best way to go about it is perhaps employ
mnemonics to recall all instructions.

3. Take notes: Although note taking may not be an appropriate way to remember information when
engaged in casual interpersonal encounters, it is a powerful tool for increasing recall during lectures,
business meet- ings, and briefing sessions. Note taking provides a written record that you can go back
to later. It also allows you to take an active role in the listening process (Dunkel & Pialorski, 2005;
Kobayashi, 2006; Titsworth, 2004).