What is listening?

Listening

1. Listening is the most important skill.
2. We spend more time using our listening skills than any other skills.
3. It is an active process.
4. It requires attention.

What is effective listening?

1. The process of analyzing sounds,organizing them into recognizable patterns, interpreting the patterns and understanding the message by inferring the meaning.
2. Many problems in life do occur due to ineffective listening or lack of listening.

Where does listening stand?

1. Listening is the foremost form of communication.
2. Listening -speaking- reading- writing.

Listening and hearing differ?

1. Hearing is the first stage of listening. 
2. Hearing occurs when ears pick up sound waves which are then transported to our brain. This stage is our sense of hearing.
3. Listening is an active process. we must be an active participant in this communication process.
4. In active listening, meaning and evaluation of a message must take place before a listener can respond to a speaker.
5. Therefore, the listener is actively working while the speaker is talking.
6. Out thinking speed is faster than our speech speed.
7. Our order of learning how to communication is such that we are first taught to read, write and speak. Listening takes the fourth stage.
8. Why should we listen ?
9. To learn.
10. To increase ones understanding 
11. To advise or counsel.
12. To receive boredom.

Importance of listening 

1. Communication is not complete without effective listening.
2. An attentive listening stimulates better speaking by the speaker.
3. A good listener learns more than an indifferent listener.
4. A good listener can restructure vague  speaking in a way that produces clear meaning. 
5. A good listener learns to detect prejudices, assumptions and attitudes.
6. Real listening has three basic steps.
7. Hearing- Hearing means listening enough to catch what the speaker is saying.
8. Understanding -Taking what you have and understanding it in your own way.
9. Judging - making sense of what you've understood, also includes believing what you hear.
10. Active listening process involves: hearing, filtering, comprehending, remembering, and responding.

• Hearing- Hearing is the first essential step in the listening process and relates to the sensor perception of sound. The listener further processes the perceived sound for learning to be effective, hearing needs to be done with attentiveness and concentration.

• Filtering- The next step involves sensing and filtering of heard sounds. The heard message is categorized as wanted or unwanted. The unwanted message is discarded.The sense of judgement of the individual comes into play, that is, the filtering process is subjective and a person chooses to retain what makes sense to him.

• Comprehending- The listener understands what the speaker has tried to convey. This activity can be described as absorbing, grasping or assimilating. The listener uses his knowledge, experience, perception and cognitive power.

• Remembering- The assimilated message is stored in memory to facilitate future recall.

• Responding- Responding to a message takes place at the end of the communication, immediately after or later, to show that the message is being received and comprehended.