Page 221 - Foundations of Learning, 4th Edition (Revised)

Active Listening

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be
understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”

Ralph Nichols, author of Effective Listening

Listening is not the same as hearing. You may hear a conversation but
that doesn’t necessarily mean that you were listening. Without making
this distinction, it’s easy to take the skill of listening for granted and
assume that we are all at the same level of skill. However, as with any skill, some are better at listening
than others. Why is this so and what can you do to improve your listening ability?

Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or
nonverbal messages (ILA, 1996). It includes hearing words and sounds and noticing non-verbal cues
to ascertain the meaning that others are trying to convey. Listening also involves the recall of what has
been presented. A listener identifies his or her purpose and tries to understand the sender’s purpose. Good
listening results in effective feedback to the sender.

Table 8.1 contains ten criteria that provide some insight into what distinguishes different levels of listening
ability. Five levels of listener performance are described in detail in the rubric on the next page.

Table 8.1

Criteria that Affect the Quality of Listening

concentration focusing on the message

comprehension interpreting meaning accurately

perception understanding the sender’s nonverbal cues and hidden meaning

motivation wanting to learn new material/knowledge

background knowledge relating prior information/theories to current context

classifying organizing current information into an existing framework

targeting sampling key words and phrases

empathy willingness to understand underlying issues and values of others

paying attention to details inventorying important specifics

compare and contrast using prior knowledge to evaluate and differentiate ideas

Studies have shown that listening is critical to academic success. An entire freshman class of more
than 400 students was given a listening test at the beginning of their first semester. After their first
year of studies, 49% of students scoring low on the listening test were on academic probation, while
only 4.42% of those scoring high on the listening test were on academic probation. Conversely,
68.5% of those scoring high on the listening test were considered Honors Students after the first
year, while only 4.17% of those scoring low attained the same success (Conaway, 1982).

Chapter 8 — Living in the Information Age 215