Listening as a Process

Listening is a complex process—an integral part of the total communication process.

Many of us aren’t willing to improve our listening skills. Much of this unwillingness results from our incomplete understanding of the process and understanding the process could help show us how to improve. To understand the listening process, we must first define it.

Numerous definitions of listening have been proposed. Perhaps the most useful one defines listening as the process of receiving, attending, and understanding auditory messages; that is, messages transmitted through the medium of sound. Often, the steps of responding and remembering are also included. 

There are six basic stages of the listening process: hearing, attending, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding. 

1. HEARING - it refers to the response caused by sound waves stimulating the sensory receptors of the ear; it is physical response; hearing is perception of sound waves; you must hear to listen, but you need not listen to hear.
   
   
2. ATTENTION- brain screens stimuli and permits only a select few to come into focus- these selective perception is known as attention, an important requirement for effective listening; strong stimuli like bright lights, sudden noise…are attention getters; attention to more commonplace or less striking stimuli requires special effort.
   
   
3. UNDERSTANDING- to understand symbols we have seen and heard, we must analyze the meaning of the stimuli we have perceived; symbolic stimuli are not only words but also sounds like applause… and sights like blue uniform…that have symbolic meanings as well; the meanings attached to these symbols are a function of our past associations and of the context in which the symbols occur; for successful interpersonal communication, the listener must understand the intended meaning and the context assumed by the sender.
   
   
4. REMEMBERING- it is important listening process because it means that an individual has not only received and interpreted a message but has also added it to the mind”s storage bank; but just as our attention is selective, so too is our memory- what is remembered may be quite different from what was originally seen or heard.
   
   
5. EVALUATING- it is a stage in which active listeners participate; it is at these point that the active listener weighs evidence, sorts fact from opinion, and determines the presence or absence of bias or prejudice in a message; the effective listener makes sure that he or she doesn’t begin this activity too soon ; beginning this stage of the process before a message is completed requires that we no longer hear and attend to the incoming message-as a result, the listening process ceases.
   
   
6. RESPONDING- this stage requires that the receiver complete the process through verbal and/or nonverbal feedback; because the speaker has no other way to determine if a message has been received, this stage becomes the only overt means by which the sender may determine the degree of success in transmitting the message.
   
   

Listening can definetely be a very stressful activity for language learners, especially beginners; who are often unable to process information quickly enough to make sense of what is said. As teachers, we have the challenging task of helping learners improve in a skill which involves processes that are not observable. We should encourage our learners to take an active role in their own listening development.