MODULE: OLENG01 – PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION

CONNECTING LISTENING AND THINKING IN THE COMMUNICATION

PROCESS

At the end of this chapter, students will:

A. Recognize the importance of listening;
B. Create own guidelines for listening improvement; and
C. Use technology to take better notes and organize work.

Listening is defined as the active process of receiving,

constructing meaning from, and responding, to
spoken or nonverbal messages. Listening, just like
reading, writing, and speaking, is an art. Just like the
other forms of art, it requires practice and techniques,
but this is an art which is taken for granted.

The ability to understand and respond between

the speaker and the receiver depends on how both of
them heard and interpreted message.
Communication fails if the receiver also fails to understand the message being conveyed. Listening is
not simply hearing. Listening involves intellectual and emotional response.

Since communication is a process, listening is an integral part of this process. As a student, you
have been exposed to listen to teachers talking for several hours. And as student, have you
experienced getting low grades because you did not understand the instructions given by the teacher?
Has your teachers call your attention because you were not paying attention? All of these failures are
cause by poor listening. Listening requires attention not just hearing sounds without understanding the
message.
The Importance of Effective Listening
As students, you get better grades because you understand the lecture more than those who
are inattentive. For working professionals, they can perform their job better since they understand the
instructions well and this saves time, effort, and cost since they don't have to redo the work given to
them.

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Most misunderstandings that arise in our daily lives occur because of poor listening habits. Poor
listening skills can create serious personal, professional, and financial problems. Students with poor
listening can result in misunderstood information, and directions, incorrect or incomplete assignments,
hence, result to lower grades.
Skills in listening, analyzing, processing, and recording information are often neglected during
formal education. How many have ever had any formal training in listening? Students have completed
course work in reading, writing, and speaking but few students have ever enrolled in a listening course.
Not only are there few opportunities for formal listening instruction, but informal listening training is not
generally provided either.
To communicate effectively, listening and speaking should work hand in hand. In order to
understand the important role of listening, the different types of listening must be considered:

1. Listening for information

Listening for information require listeners to get facts,
knowledge, ideas and opinions from others. This is usually
common in lectures, symposia, conferences, fora, meetings
and panel discussions in the academic community.
This type of listening requires you to give extra effort to pay
attention to the topic especially the details given by the
speaker. You should set aside any bias or prejudice against
the speaker or the topic; otherwise, this will hinder your
privilege to listen to new ideas being shared. Give your
individual attention to the speaker and you can jot down noted to help you focus on the ideas being
shared.
2. Critical listening
Critical listening involves assessing the ideas of the
speaker. Listeners try to evaluate the ideas presented by the
speaker.
This type of listening requires you to listen to the speaker's
idea and find out what the speaker's motives are. Good
examples of this type is a speech delivered by politicians,
union leaders, sales people, and others. This also requires
your ability to relate the speaker's ideas to your own or ideas
you previously heard or learned. Critical listening eventually requires your decision, Prior to making this
decision, you have to make sure that you have fully weighed all the ideas presented.
3. Listening for enjoyment
This is the type of listening which appeals to listeners. Listeners enjoy the topics being delivered
since they are not obligated to assess, evaluate, consider or to make decision.

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Example of this type is listening to talk shows (especially interviewing

of actors and actresses), listening to oratorical contest, poetry
reading, and other stage performance.

4. Reflective listening
Reflective listening requires intimate listening since the
speaker's topic challenges the listener's values, beliefs, and
practices. This type of listening is done by priests, ministers,
and other religious persons, guidance, or marriage counselors,
and others.
This type requires the listeners to question reassessing,
reevaluating, reconfirming their own values, beliefs, and
practices. You, as the listener, is required to do two things
while you are listening, one is to recall previous ideas and second to consider in your mind what has
been said.
Speakers are beset with the problem of how to get the attention of the listeners up to the end of the
presentation. This is beyond the speaker's control.

Before listening to a lecture or a speech, there are different situations you should consider:
1.Set a positive attitude. Even before the speaker or lecturer starts to deliver Set her topic, start telling
yourself that you are to learn something from des delivery.
2. Avoid pre judging the lecturer or speaker based on personal appearance or past experience. Pre-
judging a lecturer or speaker clouds your purpose or listen. Remember "Do not judge a book by its
cover."
3. Listen attentively to the content not to the errors committed by the speaker,
4 Be an active listener. You may want to participate by mentally processing the ideas that you hear.
Mental processing allows you to absorb or to reject the information.
5. List down important points you wish to clarify. Very often an open forum follows a lecturer or a
speaker. This is where you ask questions or clarity points unclear to you. With this in mind, you can
avoid unkind nonverbal communication such as shaking your head, smirking or pouting.
There is one important thing you have to remember when you listen to lecture or speech. You, too, will
be in the shoes of the speaker one time or another. Remember the old adage - "Don't do unto others
as you don't want others do unto you."

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Listening and Hearing, Is There a Difference?

Most of us take listening for granted, we tend to think of it as a simple task.
Listening is a process that is closely linked to the thinking process. Listening is close link with reasoning,
comprehension and memory.
What is the major difference between hearing and listening? Hearing is passive. If you have normal
hearing, your ears receive sounds. You don't have to work at hearing; it just happens. People can have
excellent hearing but a terrible listener. Listening, on the other hand, is active and requires energy and
action.
Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken or
nonverbal messages.
The Stages of Effective Listening
Listening is a highly complex behavior. Many people have tried to determine what happens when
people listen. What is involved? What happens from the time someone makes sounds to the point
where you make meaning from those words and the accompanying nonverbals? Six stages for effective
listening:
1. Hearing
Hearing is the passive physiological process in which
sound is received by the car. Example of this is listening
ca music. When you play music, while you study, do you
hear the music one to you listen to in? The sounds
provide background that you hear; your hearing
becomes listening only when you also carry out the
remaining stages of the listening process.

2. Understanding

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Understanding might also be labeled comprehension and simply means that you assign meaning to the
stimuli that you hear or otherwise perceive. Understanding involves the processing of information. The
ability to accurately follow directions is one of the ways in which you can measure whether or not you
understand what you hear.

3. Remembering
As a student, you are aware of the importance of remembering, or recalling
something from stored memory. Most of your professors expect you to recall
and apply what you have heard in lectures, discuss, assignments, and
activities. As you may have noticed, you tend to remember only information
that supports your own view. Other information is forgotten. Remembering
helps your complete class assignments. Memory will also be very
important in your work responsibilities when an employer expects you to
acquire and apply knowledge.

4. Interpreting
In the interpreting stage, the listener simply tries to make
sense of the information received. This is the stage when the
specific situation and nonverbal aspects of communication
come into play. An effective listener knows that facial
expressions, posture, eye contact, silence and even
paralanguage affect messages. Good listeners will work to
develop greater sensitivity to these dimensions of
communication.

5. Evaluating
In the evaluating stage, the listener analyzes
evidence, sorts facts from opinions, determine the intent
of the speaker, judges the accuracy of the speaker’s
statements and conclusions, and judges the accuracy of
personal conclusions. Once you begin to assess the
message you received and understood, you might no
longer hear and attend to other incoming messages.

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6. Responding: Sending Feedback

Responding is the listener's overt behavior that indicates to speaker
what has and has not been received. Examples of such behaviors are
toad silence (didn't hear the message, ignored the message, or was
angry about what the message said), smiling or frowning (agreeing or
disagreeing with the message), and asking for clarification of what was
received.

Giving feedback is an important part of being an effective listener. Feedback is the response to
a message that a receiver sends back to a source Feedback helps to ensure understanding and also
helps speakers determine whether they have been successful in communicating. Feedback should be
appropriate to the situation, deliberate, thoughtful, and clear. When it is important that you grasp every
detail of a message, you should paraphrase of repeat the information for the sender to verify your
reception, understanding. and recall of it. This also indicates to the sender that you are actively listening
and are committed to receiving the intended message.
Listening is more than merely paying attention. Listening is an active, complex process. The six
interdependent stages are necessary for effective listening. As competent listeners, you need to reflect
on what works best for you, both as listener and learners.

Barriers to Effective Listening

Why are most people poor listeners? The answer to this question is surprisingly complex. The
quality of our listening changes from time to time and from situation to situation. A number of barriers
contribute to our ineffectiveness as listeners Some of the barriers that
reduce our listening effectiveness are under our control whereas hers
are not. There are six barriers to effective listening as identified by
Ralph Nichols, who is considered the “father of listening research.”
Although these six barriers may not be the only ones, they are the
most common.
1. Considering the Topic or Speaker Uninteresting
The level of interest and the amount of importance we place on a
subject or a speaker usually govern how amount fort we put into
listening. Deciding that a subject of person is uninteresting or boring
often leads us to the conclusion that the information being presented
is not important. However, this snot necessarily true. What appears to

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be dull or insignificant might very well be vital for passing an exam, doing an assignment correctly,
learning something supervisor's instructions, making a sale or learning a new way of doing something
on the job. In other words, a competent listener keeps an open mind
2. Criticizing the Speaker Instead of the Message
How many times have you judged a speech by the number of "ahs" and
"ums" the speaker used? How many times has a speaker's volume,
mispronunciations, or accent influenced your opinion? Have you ever
missed a message because you were focusing on a mismatched shirt
and tie, bizarre earrings, or the speaker's facial expressions or nervous
behavior?
Of course, when possible, speakers should do everything in their power
to eliminate personal quirks that may distract attention from their
message, but listeners must also share responsibility for receiving the
message. An effective listener must be able to overlook the superficial elements of a person's delivery
style or appearance to concentrate on the substance of the presentation. In short, the listener must
stay involved in the message, not the speaker or the speaker's attire or behavior.
3. Concentrating on Details, Not Main Ideas
Many of us listen for specific facts such as dates, names, figures,
definitions, locations, assuming that they are the important things to know.
But are they? Specific facts are needed in some situations, but we often
focus too much on details. As a result, we walk away with disjointed details
and no idea how they relate to each other and to the total picture.
Competent listeners focus on the main or most important ideas, not on every
single word. All stages of the listening process are affected adversely when
you forget that general ideas can be more significant than the details that surround
them. Listen carefully to your professor or your supervisor for clues to what is most important and note
when they ask you to carefully select what to write in your notes, or include in your work tasks.
4. Avoiding Difficult Listening Situations
Concentration and energy are needed to overcome the
temptation to ignore or avoid what might seem difficult and
confusing. When you are faced with difficult listening
situation, the best approach is usually to ask questions. For
example, physicians often use complex medical
terminology when talking to patients, and patients can take
responsibility for gaining understanding. They can ask the
physician to explain terms, to review procedures, and to
supply missing information. The same principles apply to
the classroom or to the workplace. You should never

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hesitate to ask about something when you don’t understand it, because without understanding you
cannot learn.
5. Tolerating or Failing to Adjust to Distractions
Distractions constantly disrupt your concentration. As listeners, you
the responsibility to adjust to, compensate for, or eliminate
distractions and n focus on speakers and their messages.
You can control some distractions. If noise from another room
competes with a speaker, for example, the listener can close the
door, ask the person who is creating the noise to be quiet, move
closer to the speaker, or ask the speaker to talk louder.
6. Faking Attention
At one time or another, everyone pretends to pay attention to
something or someone. You appear to listen intently, but your
mind is somewhere else. You might even smile in agreement
when all you are really doing is maintaining eye contact. In class,
you might pretend to take notes, although your mind might not be
following what is being said.
Pretending to pay attention can become a habit. Without even
realizing what you are doing, you might automatically tune out a speaker and let your mind wander. If
after a speech, you cannot recall the main purpose or the essential points presented by the speaker,
you were probably faking attention. Although it might seem harmless, such deceptive behavior can lead
to misunderstanding and cause people to question your credibility and sincerity.

Technology and Intercultural Listening

Technology can be used to students’ advantage, if it is used as a tool. Taking notes helps
students to become better listeners, and appropriate technology as a delivery tool can also serve the
same function. An increasing use of computer-enhanced presentations (such as PowerPoint) and an
expanding student’s ability to take better notes help students perform better on exams when technology
and note-taking instruction are provided early and reinforced throughout the semester. Listeners must
listen with their eyes, their minds, their bodies, their hearts and their ears. Students need to listen to
determine where the instructor's emphases are and take notes accordingly.
Research in intercultural listening is fairly new, so there is not a great deal of information available. In
some cultures, people value listening. In Eastern cultures, children are taught to listen to others in a
respectful way. Much of the teaching is done through examples and specific statements of expectations
to be courteous and to attend to what others are saying. Students in Asia and in Mexico are taught to
listen first and ask questions later. The Chinese symbol for the term to listen is made up of symbols for
eyes, ears, and heart and corresponds with the Chinese view that people must listen with their entire
beings: their eyes, their ears, and most especially their hearts. The Chinese believe that listening is

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important and that when one listens, nothing else should occur because listening should take one's
entire attention and energy. In places such as Hongkong, China, Taiwan, Japan, Mexico, and
Valenzuela, if you interrupt, the person will be branded as discourteous, and the local residents will
avoid speaking with you. The best advice for communicating with people from other cultures is to:
(1) respectfully ask questions and
(2) be aware of cultural differences.
Listening requires energy and commitment with whomever we communicate.
Students spend a great deal of time listening and the function of that listening is often to gain information
for future use. They also need to learn and apply thinking skills to evaluate the messages they receive.

 Sebastian, E. L. (2019). Purposive Communication (0th ed.). Mind shapers Co., Inc

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