LISTENING

By Davique Joseph and Grace Joseph

WHAT IS LISTENING?

 Hearing is a biological process created when sound waves hit your eardrum.
 Listening is an active process that includes receiving, interpreting, evaluating
and responding to a message. It takes effort and concentration.
Effective listening occurs when the message sent by the speaker is the same
message decoded by the listener. There are four steps of effective listening.
 Receiving Interpreting Evaluating Responding
This involves taking in This involves using your This involves examining a This involves giving a
sense data by using ears own experiences to give message and making a verbal or non-verbal
and eyes to gather meaning to what you just judgement. feedback to a speaker.
information. heard.

STEPS IN EFFECTIVE LISTENING

TYPES OF LISTENING
Informational Listening: this is listening solely for the purpose of gaining information.
For example: listening to instructions given by your lecturer about an assignment.

Critical Listening: listening to analyze a message containing opinions, points of view

and attempts at persuasion and then making decisions based on your analysis.
Sometimes this type of listening requires questioning to gain more information before
you decide on you position.

Creative listening: listening while using your imagination as you interpret a message.

Emphatic Listening: listening to another’s feelings.

  Your desire to talk: talking too much can cause a person to not hear
important details and necessary information about a situation, since they
aren’t completely listening to what the speaker is saying.
 Personal Bias: this causes a person to hear only what they want to hear on
certain topics and issues. This may cause a person to block out information
from that specific topic if it’s
 Pseudo listening falsely telling the speaker you understand when you have
no idea of what they are talking about.
 External Distractions: factors outside the listener that interfere with
listening.
 Internal Distractions: factors inside the listener that interfere with listening.

BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE
COMMUNICATION
STRATEGIES TO
EFFECTIVE LISTENING
  Listeners have one major advantage over speakers that
allows them to be active thinkers while listening. It is
called thought speed.
 Thought speed is the amount of words a listener has the
USE THOUGHT potential to understand in set period of time.

SPEED  Thought speed provides the extra time listeners gain

because they can process words faster than speakers can
produce them. This time can be used to review the
speaker’s ideas, phrase a question, or form argument.
 Use your eyes very carefully. On the bias of
PAY ATTENTION facial expression, how does the speaker appear
passive, determined, and silly? What do his or
TO NONVERBAL her gestures and body movements tell you? Also
note the tone of voice. Try to read the nonverbal
CUES cues.
 When you keep your mouth shut, you often hear things you
never would have heard if you kept chattering. Silence
USE SILENCE makes some individuals anxious, and they will talk to fill in
the gap with useful information he or she otherwise might
not have thought to mention.
 When speakers talk about personal problems, you may wish to
paraphrase their comments. When you paraphrase what
someone says, you feed back to that person in your own
words what you heard.

USE A PARAPHRASE RESPONSE

 When listening to someone who has a problem, try to create a
sense of focused attention. Empty your mind of distractions,
concerns and plans so that you can truly be attentive. This will
allow you to be an emphatic listener.

BE MINDFUL