Listening is more than merely hearing words. Listening is an active process by which students receive, construct meaning from, and respond to spoken and or nonverbal messages (Emmert, 1994). As such, it forms an integral part of the communication process and should not be separated from the other language arts. Listening comprehension complements reading comprehension. Verbally clarifying the spoken message before, during, and after a presentation enhances listening comprehension. Writing, in turn, clarifies and documents the spoken message.
Teachers can help students become effective listeners by making them aware of the different kinds of listening, the different purposes for listening, and the qualities of good listeners. Wolvin and Coakley (1992) identify four different kinds of listening:
Traditionally, secondary schools have concentrated on the comprehensive and critical kinds of listening. Teachers need to provide experiences in all four kinds. For example, listening to literature read, listening to radio plays, and watching films develop appreciative in addition to comprehensive and critical listening. When students provide supportive communication in collaborative groups, they are promoting therapeutic listening. For example, the listening behaviour can show understanding, acceptance, and trust, all of which facilitate communication. Students benefit from exposure to all four types of listening.
Listening is a general purpose in most learning situations. To be effective listeners, however, students need a more specific focus than just attending to what is said. See the following chart which contrasts effective and ineffective listening habits.
| Contrasting Effective and Ineffective Listening Habits | The Listening Process | Assessment of Listening | Informal Assessment | Formal Assessment |
| Effective Listeners | Ineffective Listeners |
| Pre-listening | |
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| During Listening | |
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| After Listening | |
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Listening requires conscious mental effort and specific purpose. The purposes for listening relate to "types" of listening:
Students should be able to determine what their purpose should be in any given listening situation.
| Contrasting Effective and Ineffective Listening Habits | The Listening Process | Assessment of Listening | Informal Assessment | Formal Assessment |
Students do not have an innate understanding of what effective listeners do; therefore, it is the responsibility of teachers to share that knowledge with them. Perhaps the most valuable way to teach listening skills is for teachers to model them themselves, creating an environment which encourages listening. Teachers can create such an environment by positive interaction, actively listening to all students and responding in an open and appropriate manner. Teachers should avoid responding either condescendingly or sarcastically. As much as possible, they should minimize distractions and interruptions.
It is important for the teacher to provide numerous opportunities for students to practise listening skills and to become actively engaged in the listening process. The three phases of the listening process are: pre-listening, during listening, and after listening.
Pre-listening
During the pre-listening phase, teachers need to recognize that all students bring different backgrounds to the listening experience. Beliefs, attitudes, and biases of the listeners will affect the understanding of the message. In addition to being aware of these factors, teachers should show students how their backgrounds affect the messages they receive.
Before listening, students need assistance to activate what they already know about the ideas they are going to hear. Simply being told the topic is not enough. Pre-listening activities are required to establish what is already known about the topic, to build necessary background, and to set purpose(s) for listening. Students need to understand that the
... act of listening requires not just hearing but thinking, as well as a good deal of interest and information which both speaker and listener must have in common. Speaking and listening entail ... three components: the speaker, the listener, and the meaning to be shared; speaker, listener, and meaning form a unique triangle.
(King, 1984, p. 177)
There are several strategies that students and their teachers can use to prepare for a listening experience. They can:
Before a speaker's presentation, teachers also can have students formulate questions that they predict will be answered during the presentation. If the questions are not answered, students may pose the questions to the speaker. As well, students should be encouraged to jot down questions during listening.
An additional strategy is called TQLR. It consists of the following steps:
T -- Tune in
(The listener must tune in to the speaker and the subject, mentally calling up everything known about the subject and shutting out all distractions.)
Q -- Question
(The listener should mentally formulate questions. What will this speaker say about this topic? What is the speaker's background? I wonder if the speaker will talk about...?)
L -- Listen
(The listener should organize the information as it is received, anticipating what the speaker will say next and reacting mentally to everything heard.)
R -- Review
(The listener should go over what has been said, summarize, and evaluate constantly. Main ideas should be separated from subordinate ones.)
During Listening
Students need to understand the implications of rate in the listening process. Nichols (1948) found that people listen and think at four times the normal conversation rate. Students have to be encouraged to use the "rate gap" to actively process the message. In order to use that extra time wisely, there are several things students can be encouraged to do:
They can run a mental commentary on it; they can doubt it, talk back to it, or extend it. They can rehearse it in order to remember it; that is, they repeat interesting points back to themselves. They can formulate questions to ask the speaker ... jot down key words or key phrases ... They can wonder if what they are listening to is true, or what motives the speaker has in saying it, or whether the speaker is revealing personal feelings rather than objective assessments.
(Temple and Gillet, 1989, p. 55)
This kind of mental activity is what effective listeners do during listening.
Effective listeners:
Several strategies such as the following have been developed to help teachers guide students through the listening process.
Teachers can use the Directed-Listening Thinking Activity (Stauffer, 1980). A description of this activity follows.
Teachers can create listening guides to focus students' attention on the content, organization, or devices used by a speaker. The following is an example:
| Sample Listening Guide
Name of student: ______________________________ Nature of spoken presentation: ___________________ Where heard: ________________________________ Name of speaker: _____________________________
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"Comprehension is enormously improved when the speaker's schema or organizational pattern is perceived by the listener" (Devine, 1982, p. 22). Teach students the various structures (e.g., short story, essay, poetry, play), organizational patterns (e.g., logical, chronological, spatial), and transitional devices. Effective listeners can follow spoken discourse when they recognize key signal expressions such as the following:
Usually found in: generalization plus example (but may be found in enumeration and argumentation)
Usually found in: narration, chronological patterns, directions (and whenever events or examples are presented in a time sequence)
Usually found in: Enumeration, description, and sometimes in generalization plus example
Usually found in: Cause and effect
Usually found in: comparison and contrast (and whenever speaker makes a comparison or contrast in another pattern)(Devine, 1982, p. 24).
Most students need practice in making inferences while listening. A simple way to help students become aware that there is meaning between the lines is to read a passage from literature which describes a character's actions, appearance, or surroundings. From this information, students make inferences about the character's personality. Teachers should keep in mind that the purpose of an exercise such as this is not to elicit the exact answer, but to provide opportunities for students to make various inferences. Students also need to be aware of the inferences they can make from non-verbal cues. A speaker's tone and body language can convey a message as well.
Teachers can also encourage guided imagery when students are listening to presentations that have many visual images, details, or descriptive words. Students can form mental pictures to help them remember while listening.
Although listeners need not capture on paper everything they hear, there are times that students need to focus on the message and need to record certain words and phrases. Such notemaking ("listening with pen in hand") forces students to attend to the message. Devine (1982) suggests strategies such as the following:
Transcribing or writing down live or recorded speech can sharpen students' listening, spelling, and punctuation skills.
This task is best used as a diagnostic or teaching aid.
Palmatier (1973) suggests students can benefit from the Verbatim Split-page Procedure [VSPP]. Students divide their notebook paper so that 40% of each page lies to the left and 60% to the right. Students take brief notes on the left-hand side only. The right-hand side is used after listening for reorganizing and expanding on the scribbles to the left.
| 40% |
60% |
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Heroic Superhuman Universal Enduring Typical of Time/Culture Recurring |
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Critical thinking plays a major role in effective listening. Listening in order to analyze and evaluate requires students to evaluate a speaker's arguments and the value of the ideas, appropriateness of the evidence, and the persuasive techniques employed. Effective listeners apply the principles of sound thinking and reasoning to the messages they hear at home, in school, in the workplace, or in the media.
Planning and structuring classroom activities to model and encourage students to listen critically is important. Students should learn to:
Critical listeners are concerned first with understanding accurately and completely what they hear (Brownell, 1996). Students should identify the speaker's topic, purpose, intended audience, and context. The most frequent critical listening context is persuasion. They should keep an open-minded and objective attitude as they strive to identify the main idea(s)/thesis/claim and the supporting arguments/points/anecdotes. They should ask relevant questions and restate perceptions to make sure they have understood correctly. Taking notes will enhance their listening.
Critical listeners must understand the reliability of the speaker. Is the speaker credible? Trustworthy? An expert? Dynamic?
Critical listeners must understand the nature and appropriateness of the evidence and reasoning. What evidence is used? Expert testimony? Facts? Statistics? Examples? Reasons? Opinions? Inappropriate evidence might include untrustworthy testimony; inadequate, incorrect, inappropriate, or irrelevant facts, statistics, or examples; or quotations out of context or incomplete.
Critical listeners must understand the logic and reasoning of the speaker. Is this evidence developed in logical arguments such as deductive, inductive, causal, or analogous? Faulty reasoning might include hasty or over-inclusive generalization, either-or argument, causal fallacy (therefore, because of this), non sequitur (confusion of cause and effect), reasoning in a circle, begging or ignoring the question, false analogy, attacking the person instead of the idea, or guilt by association.
Critical listeners must understand that persuaders often rely on emotional appeal as well as evidence and reasoning. Critical listeners, therefore, must recognize effective persuasive appeals and propaganda devices. A skilled critical listener identifies and discounts deceptive persuasive appeals such as powerful connotative (loaded) words, doublespeak, appeals to fears, prejudice, discontent, flattery, stereotype, or tradition. The listener must also identify and discount propaganda techniques such as bandwagon appeals, glittering generalities, inappropriate testimonials, pseudo-scientific evidence, card-stacking, and name-calling.
By understanding and practising the principles of objective thinking, students can prepare themselves to listen effectively in most situations.
Listening affects our ability to make good decisions, our appreciation of the world around us, and our personal relationships. Effective communication begins with listening and with listeners carrying 80 percent of the responsibility in the interaction (Brownell, 1996, pp. 6-7). Whether at home, in school, or in the workplace, effective listening is important for the development and maintenance of healthy relationships.
After Listening
Students need to act upon what they have heard to clarify meaning and extend their thinking. Well-planned post-listening activities are just as important as those before and during. Some examples follow.
| Contrasting Effective and Ineffective Listening Habits | The Listening Process | Assessment of Listening | Informal Assessment | Formal Assessment |
Listening is one of the more difficult aspects of the language arts to assess. It cannot be easily observed and can be measured only through inference. However, there are both informal and formal strategies and instruments that teachers can use to help them in their assessments.
| Contrasting Effective and Ineffective Listening Habits | The Listening Process | Assessment of Listening | Informal Assessment | Formal Assessment |
The most effective assessment of listening may be teachers' observations and students' self-assessments. Students initially may not be aware of how well they listen and, therefore, need teacher guidance.
Self-assessments should be followed with one-on-one discussions about student progress. Teachers can also videotape students while they are listening and follow up with discussion.
The following forms can be used or adapted for informal assessments:
The following assessment forms are provided as examples. To be able to view and copy these files the user must have a viewing program such as Acrobat Reader. If you do not have such a program, click on the Acrobat Insignia provided below.
| Contrasting Effective and Ineffective Listening Habits | The Listening Process | Assessment of Listening | Informal Assessment | Formal Assessment |
More formal listening assessments can be prepared by teachers based on objectives and perceived needs. Some examples follow.
Questions can also be designed to determine if students are comprehending critically and creatively.
Even though listening is a difficult language strand to evaluate, assessment must take place to validate its place in a curriculum and to provide feedback to students. The feedback should be specific, concise, and as meaningful as possible. As with all evaluation, it needs to be continuous.
