UNIT-1 ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE SKILLS

Listening skill

Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process. Effective listening is a skill that underpins all positive human relationships. Spend some time thinking about and developing your listening skills – they are the building blocks of success. Listening is the ability to comprehend verbally communicated information and providing appropriate feedback. It can be described also as the ability to pay attention to sound. Though it seems a simple natural activity, it is a skill that has not been mastered by many. Everyone, except deaf people, hears but it is listening that makes the difference.  Hearing is the effect of vibrations in the eardrums caused by sound waves, but listening goes beyond this process

Listening Process

Listening within a work context is the process by which you gain an understanding of the needs, demands and preferences of your stakeholders through direct interaction.

·        To be a good active listener in the workplace, there are two components for success: attention and reflection.

·        Attentive listening includes eye contact, posture, facial expressions, gestures and genuine interest in what the person is saying.

·        Reflection includes repeating and paraphrasing what you have heard, showing the person that you truly understand what has been said.

Types of listening

When we engage in listening we are doing so for many different reasons depending upon the goals in which we are trying to achieve. There are four different types of listening that are essential to know when deciding what your goal as the listener is. The four types of listening are appreciative, empathic, comprehensive, and critical. Familiarize yourself with these different types of listening so you can strengthen and improve your ability to critically think and evaluate what you have heard.    

 Discriminative  listening

Discriminative listening is the most basic type of listening, whereby the difference between difference sounds is identified. If you cannot hear differences, then you cannot make sense of the meaning that is expressed by such differences.

We learn to discriminate between sounds within our own language early, and later are unable to discriminate between the phonemes of other languages. This is one reason why a person from one country finds it difficult to speak another language perfectly, as they are unable distinguish the subtle sounds that are required in that language.

Likewise, a person who cannot hear the subtleties of emotional variation in another person's voice will be less likely to be able to discern the emotions the other person is experiencing.

Listening is a visual as well as auditory act, as we communicate much through body language. We thus also need to be able to discriminate between muscle and skeletal movements that signify different meanings.

Comprehension listening

The next step beyond discriminating between different sound and sights is to make sense of them. To comprehend the meaning requires first having a lexicon of words at our fingertips and also all rules of grammar and syntax by which we can understand what others are saying.

The same is true, of course, for the visual components of communication, and an understanding of body language helps us understand what the other person is really meaning.

In communication, some words are more important and some less so, and comprehension often benefits from extraction of key facts and items from a long spiel.

Comprehension listening is also known  as content listening, informative listening and full listening.

Critical listening

Critical listening is listening in order to evaluate and judge, forming opinion about what is being said. Judgment includes assessing strengths and weaknesses, agreement and approval.

This form of listening requires significant real-time cognitive effort as the listener analyzes what is being said, relating it to existing knowledge and rules, whilst simultaneously listening to the ongoing words from the speaker.

Evaluative listening

In evaluative listening, or critical listening, we make judgments about what the other person is saying. We seek to assess the truth of what is being said. We also judge what they say against our values, assessing them as good or bad, worthy or unworthy.

Evaluative listening is particularly pertinent when the other person is trying to persuade us, perhaps to change our behavior and maybe even to change our beliefs. Within this, we also discriminate between subtleties of language and comprehend the inner meaning of what is said. Typically also we weigh up the pros and cons of an argument, determining whether it makes sense logically as well as whether it is helpful to us.

Evaluative listening is also called critical, judgmental or interpretive listening.

Appreciative listening

In appreciative listening, we seek certain information which will appreciate, for example that which helps meet our needs and goals. We use appreciative listening when we are listening to good music, poetry or maybe even the stirring words of a great leader.

Empathetic listening

When we listen empathetically, we go beyond sympathy to seek a truer understand how others are feeling. This requires excellent discrimination and close attention to the nuances of emotional signals. When we are being truly empathetic, we actually feel what they are feeling.

In order to get others to expose these deep parts of themselves to us, we also need to demonstrate our empathy in our demeanour towards them, asking sensitively and in a way that encourages self-disclosure.

Sub skills of listening

·         Listening for gist: It is extensive listening for skimming. 

·         listening for specific information

·         Listening in detail 

·         Listening for attitude.

·         Extensive listening.

·         Listening for individual sounds.

·         Exercises

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Importance of listening in English 

Language teachers discuss the importance of the listening skill. Listening is also important because it: occupies a big chunk of the time we spend communicating in the language promotes non-linear processing of language and encourages learners to develop "holistic" strategies to texts.

Purpose of Listening

There is no doubt that effective listening is an extremely important life skill. Why is listening so important?

Listening serves a number of possible purposes, and the purposeof listening will depend on the situation and the nature of the communication.

·        To specifically focus on the messages being communicated, avoiding distractions and preconceptions.

·        To gain a full and accurate understanding into the speakers point of view and ideas.

·        To critically assess what is being said. (See our page on Critical Thinking for more).

·        To observe the non-verbal signals accompanying what is being said to enhance understanding.

·        To show interest, concern and concentration.

·        To encourage the speaker to communicate fully, openly and honestly.

·        To develop an selflessness approach, putting the speaker first.

·        To arrive at a shared and agreed understanding and acceptance of both sides views.

Active Listening

Active listening is a kind of listening communication the place listeners actively listen and reply to the speaker. It is not going to be essential that when two people are communication, they’re listening each other actively. Half listening and half contemplating are widespread distractions that occur. In every personal and expert life, listening is among the many most experience that a person might want to have. It can have an effect on in your job effectiveness and the usual of relationships with others. To improve the extent of energetic listening, it is important to be aware of the alternative specific particular person. Make it sure you are trying to not distract merely. Business analyst signifies that if you happen to want to improve your focus stage on what’s saying on by the speaker, then he ought to try repeating speaker’s phrases mentally as he says them – this will reinforce his message and allow you to maintain focused. To enhance the listening or energetic listening experience, you would possibly wish to allow the alternative specific particular person that you simply’re listening to him. Active listening not stands for specializing in what speaker is speaking about however as well as actively exhibiting verbal and non-verbal indicators of listening. This kind of listening is broadly utilized in quite a lot of circumstances like group organizing, public curiosity advocacy, tutoring, counseling, and so forth.

 Passive Listening

Passive listening is the listening the place a person although take heed to the others nonetheless not with full consideration, he usually distract himself from the persevering with dialogue. He is sitting quietly with out responding to what speaker is saying. An ordinary occasion of passive listening is listening to music or radio if you find yourself doing one factor. In this state of affairs, although the music is working listener is paying full consideration to completely different work. To get work together with speaker, fairly often passive listening would possibly require quite a lot of open-ended replies from the listeners, nonetheless, this technique requires focused focus and minimal verbal solutions from the listener. Passive listening occurs when the listener has low self-motivation stage, low engagement and avoids obligation for learning and draw back fixing. In passive listening, the listener accepts and retain information as-is with no intention to question or downside the idea for enchancment. He disconnects himself from others or displays minimal curiosity. By doing this, he creates the impediments for himself on account of in a time of need he forgets about what was talked about earlier. Overall, passive listening requires the listener to sit down down once more quietly and take up information contrasting energetic listening that requires engagement with the speaker as successfully.

You can develop better listening skills by improving on the five stages of the listening processes.

Hearing or Receiving: 
At this stage, a lot of attention is required but anything that vibrates the eardrum can cause distractions, especially when it is a very loud sound. Hearing problems such as earaches, surrounding environmental factors such as bright lights and funny comments etc. may cause distractions. Tips: If necessary, use hearing aids, naturopathic ear drops, oil drops or warm compressors for earaches. You may see an otolaryngologist for peculiar hearing problems. Pay attention to and gaze at the speaker or sound source to avoid visual distractions. Avoid multitasking when listening.

Understanding (Comprehension): 
The stage where you try to decipher the meaning of the message or sound you have just heard. Your ability to understand depends on various factors including language, knowledge etc. Tips: Get yourself accustomed to the work-place-language(s) by learning the meaning of certain jargons, technical words, acronyms, sirens etc. Ask questions for clarity if necessaryand try not to stop the speaker in his tracks.

Remembering: 
This is the stage where information is not only absorbed but retained also. Main points must be absorbed into the long-term memory whiles trivial ones should be discarded. Tips: Rehearse the main points in your mind. Memory pills or memory retention courses may be helpful.

Evaluating: 
 Here, you sort information and dissect them into facts and opinions, make your judgment  on what is prejudice or what is exaggerated, which part was biased and what was the intent of the speaker’s message etc. Tips: Be objective in your judgment.

Feedback: At this stage, you are still a listener and not the speaker. Tips: Focus on addressing the most important issues. Do not complete the speaker’s statements nor deviate from the subject.

8 Tips To Improve Your Listening Skills For Better Communication

Demonstrate Your Listening Skills By Paraphrasing. ...

Make Consistent Eye Contact. ...

Adopt An Open Posture. ...

Ask Open Questions. ...

Remember Past Details. ...

Show You're A Good Listener By Nodding. ...

Communicate Active Listening With Mirroring. ...

Listen To Understand.