Listening behaviour is a deliberate process through which we seek to understand and retain aural stimuli for future use (Gamble and Gamble,1996:181). Furthermore, listening, according to the International Listening Association, is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or verbal messages. In the context of this latter definition, three key phrases deserve our attention.

In the main, process indicates a series or actions of operations(a)designed to achieve an end, especially a continuous operation or of actions, interactions and reactions, moving from the point of hearing to retention, and to recall.

Processes of Listening

Constructing Meaning

This underlies the fact that listening helps one to make sense of a message before communicating it to someone else.

Responding to spoken/non-verbal messages

This entails that in any listening encounter, goal setting is important. The goals are often characterised by different listening styles adopted. There are three main goals we often set in listening, and these are related to the specific objectives we would like to achieve during and after attending to a particular message. The three goals are outlined below:

Listening to understand ideas

When one listens to understand, one pays attention to the main ideas or central concepts, identifying keywords and phrases that will help to accurately summarise the concepts being discussed.

Listening to retain information

Some listeners only listen to retain information. However, if one is to retain what is heard, one must first learn to focus attention and then learn how to make sure that what is heard is understood.

Listening to analyses and evaluating content

Being able to analyse and evaluate what one listens to calls for a greater skill than listening for retention. When we listen to analyse and evaluate content effectively, we become adept at spotting fallacies in the arguments and statements encountered during discourse.

In summary, we listen to understand, to retain, to analyse and evaluate content and to develop relationships with others. However, one way to set goals in listening is to identify which level of listening is most appropriate in a particular situation. This may vary from a lecture situation to a jocular-friendly situation.

Some Unlistening Behaviours

Unlistening behaviours include the following:

Nodding

This is a pretentious attitude that individuals exhibit in the process of listening. At this instance, individuals look at disagreement, uttering some remarks, such as“mum”, and “uh”, and nodders adopt the outward appearance of a listener, but in reality, they are only pretending to listen.

Ear Hogging

Ear hogs desire others to listen to them. Often, monopolise discussions. They are in love with their voices.

Gap Filling

Gap fillers do not always get the whole story when they listen; they often manufacture information to fill in the gaps.

Beeing

Bees only concentrate on those aspects of a speaker’s remarks that interest them. Other areas of the speaker’s speech are considered irrelevant and thus rejected.

Ear Muffing

Earmuffs close their ears to information they would rather not deal with. In some instances, they pretend not to understand what you tell them, or they act as if they do not hear the speaker at all. They sometimes forget what they are told.

Dart Throwers

They only wait for the speaker to make a mistake. In short, they search for errors or any slight mistake on the part of the speaker so that they can take him/her on, based on what the speaker has said.

Other unfavourable listening attitudes include:

• Premature consideration of a topic as uninteresting
• Unnecessary emotional involvement
• Fact hunting/narrow listening/lack of concentration
• Superimposition of personal prejudice
• Mentally jumping ahead of the speaker, and
• Criticism of delivery rather than the message

Because human beings do not engage in serious listening all the time, Social Listening is also employed in dialogues, chit-chats, conversations, friendly arguments, discussions, gossip and others. The listening behaviours often associated with social listening are appreciative, conversational, courteous, and affectionate/respectful.

Hearing and Listening: Divergences and Convergences

The differences between listening and hearing are obvious. A person hears if he/she is conscious of having received the sound waves produced by the speaker. A person, on the other hand, listens if, in addition to being aware of such stimuli, he/she attach appropriate meanings to them.

Listening is, in fact, the psychological counterpart of necessarily “listening” to them. The difference between the two processes depends on the degree to which the interpretation of messages becomes conscious.

Listening can be an active process in which the listener assumes the major responsibility. The receptive skill of listening calls for a response on the part of the listener.

The response may be in the form of a reply(oral), an action, a facial expression, and applause, something concrete to indicate that the message has been assimilated – this is known in communication as feedback.

Therefore, the listening activity can be said to be a conscious effort of attention. Good listening is an intention to understand and to make information. Listening must be consciously cultivated as a personal and professional skill.

Factors Affecting Active, Efficient Listening

Listening is the most frequent communication behaviour of human beings. A person does more listening than any other kind of communication. The result of the research has had a serious impact on creating awareness of the need for men to be skilled in the art of listening. Poor listening, he emphasised, is a major barrier to communication.

Efficient listening can, however, be exhausting and demanding because in the process of listening, the brain waves, then, that not listening, sometimes serve as necessary protection information. The following factors are important in considering effective listening:

The Listener’s Attitude

Probably, no single factor affects efficient and active listening more than the listener’s attitude. Efficient and active listening requires an objective, unprejudiced, cooperative attitude.

If the listener has a biased attitude, he may hear only those facts and opinions that conform to his beliefs. Opinionated people normally make poor listeners. They refuse to “listen” to opposing views because of their prejudices.

Quite often, a person’s knowledge and experience may influence their attitude towards the subject matter under discussion.

Lack of Knowledge

A perceptive listener relates what he listens to with his knowledge and experience. On the contrary, individuals with little knowledge or a lack of knowledge often become passive listeners. This could be because they possess little knowledge to which to relate the speaker’s ideas. Hence, they only hear and do not listen.

The Listener’s Emotional State An individual’s willingness and ability to listen may depend in part on may be the result of an emotional upset, reluctance, in the first instance, to attend the speaking occasion, or lack of interest in the subject.

Sometimes, failure to listen may result from the attitude towards and Stevens (1957: 90- 91) has underscored this point as follows.

In different degrees and many ways, the listening ability in all of us often reaches up and turns off what we don’t want to hear; we open our ears wide, accepting anything -truth, half-truth or fiction. Then, a man’s emotions act as a filter to what he hears and listens to.

Lack of Concentration

Individuals who are engaged in the act of listening should do so with concentration. To concentrate, one must prepare oneself to listen, adopt a cooperative and objective attitude, create an interest in the subject, realise how the subject matter of a speech can be of help, and turn off one’s emotional blocks.

To improve listening, one must realise that concentration requires effort. If we spend our time thinking of other matters, daydreaming, or solving personal problems, concentration becomes impossible.

Improving Listening Behaviour

If meaning is to be imparted in voice communication, then the concept of listening assumes special importance. It should be reiterated that listening is a partnership between the source and the receiver.

It is a dual responsibility of the speaker and the listener. Listening is a conscious, positive act requiring willpower. It is not a simple, passive exposure to sounds.

It has to be emphasised that listening consumes a large part of people’s time because it is the main way we learn about situations.

Focus 1

Experience has shown that listening is one of the weakest points of most people in oral communication, especially when they are talking to subordinates within an organisation. Many people wear “listening ear muffs”.

In summary, a good active listener does the following things:

• He must realise the value of listening
• He must analyse his faults and correct them
• He must eliminate the barriers to effective listening.
• He must dispel his prejudices while listening.
• He must listen to understand
• He must listen alertly, and
• He must listen for the purpose and main ideas

Focus 2

The following checklist should be found useful in analysing and is often referred to as “feed-forward” in communication jargon. It helps

• Make a preliminary guess concerning the listeners’ reactions to and knowledge of the subject and goal.
• Try to determine what your credibility with your listeners is. Do you have any? Have you earned their respect in your previous contacts with them? What do they think or know about you?
• Consider the physical setting of the place where you will speak. Are you familiar with it? Can everyone hear you?
• Be sure you know the true purpose of your speech.
• What are your listeners’ occupations? Are they students, for example, and what are their majors? (Agriculture students may hold different views about things from Arts students, for example)
• What do you know about the social conditioning of your listener? Education, economic status, religion, social class and living style may all make a difference in their reaction, for example, to a speech about success and money. This leads to learning as much as you can about the strongly held attitudes and beliefs of your listeners, and your listeners’ behavioural patterns.
• What are your listeners’ predominant physical characteristics(demographic details) -are they young, old, mixed, male, or female?

Summary and Conclusion

Good listeners are hard to find. To improve one’s total communicative behaviour, one needs to improve one’s listening behaviour. We listen much more than we speak, so the opportunity for constructive practice exists every day, everywhere. Read similar posts on our reading and writing page of the site.