Listening Skills

• What is listening? Differentiate between hearing and listening. Explain the types of listening.

• How do you differentiate active and passive listening? What are the main traits of good listeners?

• Paraphrasing and Reflecting Implications – These two are signs of a good listener. – Explain briefly.

• Write a note on three barriers to effective listening. Offer your suggestions for removing those barriers.

• “Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.” Keeping this statement in mind, discuss in detail, the traits of a good listener.

• What are the traits of a good listener? How can you make out if the other person is listening to you properly or not?

Communication includes four different skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. We must have good command over all the skills to improve communication. No communication process is completed without listening. Several studies have indicated that business people spend almost 45% of their working time in listening. According to Management Guru Tom Peters, listening is an essential management and leadership skill.

                    

Listening is a process of receiving, interpreting and reacting to a message received from the speaker.

Hearing vs. Listening

You can either hear or listen. Hearing is the function of the ear and Listening is the action of the heart.

Hearing is only depends on the ears, is a physical act, everyone can hear without deliberate effort.

Listening requires voluntary attention and then making sense of what is heard. It requires a conscious effort to interpret the sounds, grasp the meanings of the words, and react to the message.

Active or Reflective listening is the most useful and important listening skill. In active listening we are also genuinely interested in understanding what the message means, and we are active in checking out our understanding before we respond with our own new message. Listener sends verbal and non-verbal signals to speaker to show activeness in listening. We repeat or paraphrase our understanding of their message and reflect it back to the sender for verification. During Reflective listening, listener not only actively listens to the speaker but also tries to interpret the speaker’s feelings.

Passive or Attentive Listening: Listeners are genuinely interested in hearing and understanding the other person’s point of view. We listen passively and attentively. We assume that we heard and understood correctly, but stay passive and do not verify it. Passive listening occurs when a listener does not verbally respond to the speaker and listener may deliberately or unintentionally send non verbal messages through eye contact, smiles, yawns, or nods. However, there is no verbal response to indicate how the message is being received. 

Appreciative listening includes listening to music for enjoyment or aesthetic pleasure as we do when we listen to a comedian, musician or entertainer. It appreciates and supports the speaker. The listener encourages and motivates the speaker to speak more and more.

Comprehensive listening: To comprehend speaker’s meaning one requires a word list, all rules of grammar and syntax by which we can understand what the speaker’s intention is. Listener can understand speaker’s intention in a better way through the visual components of communication and non-verbal communication i.e. body language. Comprehensive listening is needed in the classroom when students listen to the faculty to understand the message.

Critical listening: When the purpose is to accept or reject the message or to evaluate it critically, one requires this type of listening skill. Critical listening is used in seminars, conferences, group discussion, debate, etc., for example; read a book to write a book review.

Pretentive listening is also called False listening. When someone is pretending to listen to a person but actually he is spending more time on thinking something else. Even listener may nod his head, smile, lean forward, note down important points, etc.

Casual listening is to listen to someone or something without much attention and concentration for example, listening music in a free time; listener just enjoys music. 

Barriers of Listening

Physical Barriers to listening could be Noise and Physical Discomfort or any Physical Factor, for example, A person is talking on his or her mobile phone and queer shrilling sound disturbs the transmission.

Psychological Barriers: Any psychological or emotional disturbance can prove to be a barrier to effective listening because it leads to lack of interest and concentration. The listener should be tension free and should not be upset himself by too much thinking. ‘Thinking is the biggest obstacle in listening process which diverts mind from the original track’.

Linguistic Barriers: While decoding an oral message, listener should concentrate on the linguistic code. If one listens to something in a language or dialect that he is not able to follow, a communication will breakdown. Any language barrier is going to create misunderstanding that makes communication effective.

Cultural Barriers: If the speaker and listener belong to different cultures and share different values, listening and comprehension could become a difficult process, for example, When the Japanese says Yes they mean ‘Yes, I’m Listening.’ The American may take it to mean ‘Yes, I Agree’

Traits of a Good Listener

It is said that while listening, concentration can be maintained only for twenty minutes. So whether we wish or not, there may be discontinuity in listening, hearing may continue. Still one can be effective listener by following the traits of a good listener

It is good to be a speaker but difficult to be a good listener. If listening is done carefully it can help us learn a lot. The greatest mistake made by most of human beings: “We listen half, understand quarter, think zero, react double and  remember forever.