Importance of Listening

Listening is defined as the process by which a person pays attention to a sound. It is taking notice of what someone says. Listening is an active process. Listening can be said as hearing something intentionally. There is a big difference between listening and hearing. The hearing is just accidental but listening is intentional. Taking an example, we hear the neighbours fighting but we do not listen to it. We were not paying attention to the neighbours, but their sound is entering our years. This is called the hearing. We hear the noises coming from the vehicles moving on the road, we hear the people talking around us. But, when we listen, we actually pay attention to the sound entering our ears. For example, we listen to the teacher giving a lecture in a classroom, we listen to our parent’s instructions, and we listen to our favourite music. These all are intentional. This difference is similar to the difference between looking and seeing. We want these sounds to enter our ear. We listen for many reasons. Some of them are:

• For Pleasure: We listen to our favourite music or songs or the dialogues of a movie for our pleasure.
• While Conversing: When we are in a conversation, we listen to the person we are talking to. We do not hear what they say but we listen to them.
• For Information: We listen to the news, commentary of a sports match for information.
• For Understanding: We listen to a teacher for understanding a topic.
• For taking Instructions: we listen to our parents, teachers, trainer for taking instructions from them for doing certain tasks.

What are the Different Types of Listening?

On a broad classification, listening can be of the following types:

• Discriminative Listening: It is the most basic form of listening. It is developed at a very early age. This type of listening does not require the understanding of words or phrases spoken by someone. In this, we must distinguish between the different sounds produced. For example, a child, at a very early stage of his childhood, he does not know the meaning of the words spoken by his parent. But he can distinguish between the voice of his mother and his father because the mother’s voices are different from that of the father. That is, the child knows whom he is listening to but he does not know what his parents are saying. As the child grows, his ability to differentiate between different sounds also grows with him.  Another example could be that when we are in a different country, and we do not know the local language of the country, we are listening to the native population of the country, we can differentiate between male and female voices, we can get to know which person is speaking in what tone but we do not know the meaning of the words said by them.
• Comprehensive Listening: Comprehensive listening requires listening to what is spoken and interpreting it correctly. Due to a lack of understanding, many people interpret the same conversation in different ways. For correct interpretation, one should have the complete understanding of words and body language. The body language of a person can change the entire meaning of the sentence. Comprehensive listening requires a good command of the following things:
  • Vocabulary: the larger is your vocabulary, more words you can understand. Every person uses different words, to understand the meaning of various words used in a conversation, one should have a large vocabulary.
  • Concentration: to understand completely, what a person is saying, you need to have full concentration devoted to that person. If your mind flies to somewhere else in between a concentration, you will miss a part, and will not understand the conversation.
  • Memory: memory will give you the experience of understanding. You will retain your past conversation in your memory which will help you to understand the next conversation. Also, the large memory will help you to have a large vocabulary.

If these three things are achieved by a person, he can interpret correctly most of the conversation. It will make him a good listener.

• Relationship Listening: In relationship listening, we listen to develop a new relationship or to sustain an old one. This type of listening helps to improve the relationship between two people. Naturally, if their certain issues in a relationship, the two people have to talk about. One will speak and the other will listen. This type of listening is also termed as relationship listening. When two people keep on talking for hours just to keep their relations young, it is also sometimes referred to as relationship listening. There is a special kind of relationship listening called the therapeutic listening. This type of listening is generally used by counsellors, psychologists, or medical personnel. It requires us to listen to the problems of the speaker or any unwanted happening which occurred to them or any other thing which is disturbing their mind. Sometimes, this therapeutic listening is done by the friend and family members.
• Critical Listening: Critical listening needs very active participation from the listener. In this, the listener has to listen to the words spoken by a person, think upon the message conveyed by him and respond back by with his own views.  It requires active participation because the listener has to judge the words said by the speaker, give his own views or opinion or solve the problem discussed by the speaker. For improving critical listening skills, that is for responding to the conversation, one should think about the following things:
  • Can the speaker be trusted for whatever information he has given is right?
  • What are the speaker’s intentions? Are they for personal profit?
  • Do not think emotionally.
  • Decide yourself from the information used whether the conclusion taken out is correct or not.
• Appreciative Listening: This type of listening is purely for the purpose of enjoyment. Whenever we listen to music, songs, movies, radio, theatre or anything else for enjoying our time, it is called appreciative listening.

What is the Importance of Listening?

• Importance of Listening in Class: It is very important to listen to what is being taught or discussed in the classroom.  If the students listen properly, the teachers can teach well. Understanding the level of the student increases. They understand every minute detail of the topic if they listening attentively. Listening to the teacher in the class develops the overall listening skills of the student. It develops his understanding of the language used as a medium of conversation in class. A student who becomes a good listener at a very early stage will definitely be a good speaker at a later stage in life. Moreover, as the teacher is speaking in the class, the student listens to him and thinks about the topic being discussed or whatever the teacher is speaking. That is, the students think whatever the teacher says or discusses. This process develops the thinking ability of the student also. If the student is listening with his full mind devoted to the teacher, it increases his concentration power. Listening attentively in the class, therefore, helps in the overall brain development of the student as well as in the development of communication skills.
• Importance of Listening in the Communication Process: A good communication always starts with listening. In the time we are communicating with someone, we spend our 45 per cent of the time listening to them. When we attentively listen to a speaker it gives him an impression that we are interested in communicating with him. In return, when the speaker gets impressed by our listening skills, he will increase his communication with us. Moreover, when we listen to someone and understand what they are saying, we can pick up words, phrases or arguments from their speech which will later help to develop our own speaking skills. A good listening from both sides takes the communication process to a new level.
• Importance of Listening in Business Communication: Business requires good listening skills. Many times conflicts arise between the workers in a business. Sometimes, these conflicts can simply be resolved by just listening to them. Also, when the owner listens to the employees and understands them, the employees feel motivated to work more. This, in turn, increases the productivity of the business. Listening also plays an important role in the business meetings and deals. Attentive listening shows that we are really interested in the meeting or the deal. This could take the business at a higher level. 
• Importance of Effective Listening: Effective listening includes listening to someone and understanding what they speak. Effective listening increases our knowledge. We fully understand the knowledge delivered by the speaker to us. It makes a conversation successful. When we listen effectively, we will give a quick and correct response. This increases the success of conversation. It also reduces the chances of misunderstandings between people. If listen effectively, we will understand everything spoken by the speaker. The chances of misunderstandings are itself nullified.

How to Improve your Listening Skills?

Here are some tips which can make you an effective listener.

• Pay Attention: Listen only to the speaker. Remove all other thoughts from your mind. Do not pay attention to any other things happening around. Pay all your attention to the speaker.
• Show the Speaker that you are Listening: Use facial expressions to show the speaker that you are listening to him. Nod your head in between. These small gestures will show the speaker that you are willingly and attentively listen to him.
• Give a Feedback: Give your feedback to the speaker. Ask him questions regarding the point spoken by him in which you have some doubts. Summaries his points. Ask him to elaborate on a topic.
• Do not Interrupt: Do not interrupt the speaker while he is speaking. Ask him questions or talk to him when he gives you the time to do so.
• Respond Correctly: After the speaker has finished speaking, give him your response. The response should be very appropriate. The response should be such that it does not criticize the speaker.

Difference between a Good Listener and a Poor Listener

• The poor listener will criticize the speaker. He will pass negative comments regarding his voice or his looks or his dressing sense while the good listeners will focus on the speech and the information presented in the speech rather than the speaker and his looks.
• The poor listeners will try to find the mistakes of the speaker. Whenever they find some mistake in the speech or a point they disagree with, they will stop listening to the speaker at that very moment. The good listeners listen to the full speech. If they find any mistake or any point of disagreement, they will keep it in mind and will clarify it at the end of the speech.
• The poor listeners will find excuses for not listening. They will find distractions. While the good listeners will devote full concentration to the speech and will not pay any attention to the distractions around them.
• The poor listeners will give a fake attention to the speaker. That is, they will just look at the speaker but not listen to him. The good speaker will pay full attention.
• The poor listener will not listen if he finds the topic boring. A good listener will listen to the boring topics also and will note down any useful piece of information from it.

Conclusion
Listening skills is the first step on the ladder of communication skills. For a person to be a good communicator, he needs to be a good listener too. Listening plays a vital role in our everyday life. At childhood, when we started communicating, the first thing we did was discriminative listening. No matter what we do, every field requires us to be good listeners. Even for successful relationships, Listening is a must. In the absence of the process of listening, there will be a lot of misunderstandings between people. The process of educating people will become difficult if they will not be good listeners. Therefore, it becomes necessary for every person to be a good listener.