our logo - study4details

comprehensive study approach

Tag: Feedback

  • The Art of Listening

    The Art of Listening

    Listening is the active process of receiving audio message, constructing meaning from it and responding to both verbal and non-verbal communications.

    Definitions

    Oxford dictionary defines listening as paying attention to somebody or something that you can hear.

    Listening is the interpretative action taken by someone in order to understand and potentially make meaningful response to the message heard. (Roland Bathes)

    Listening is the active process of receiving audio stimuli (De Vito, 1987).

    Definition: Listening is a voluntary process that goes beyond simply reacting to sounds but includes understanding, analysing, evaluating and responding to audio messages.

    Listening is an active deliberate, selective process by which a message is received, critically interpreted and acted upon by a purposeful listener.

    There is always a big difference between hearing and listening. We should never mistaken between the two. It is possible to hear without listening but you cannot listen without hearing.

    Oxford dictionary describes hearing as being ware of the sounds with your ears.

    In hearing you may not be analysing or evaluating anything about what you are hearing. It is possible for your ears to be detecting sound without understanding or you responding to it.

    Unlike listening, hearing is a passive automatic process of simply perceiving sounds.

    Listening involves both verbal and non-verbal communication. Listening involves both verbal and non-verbal communications in that response to presented messages is influenced by a factors like presenters gestures, body movements, eye contacts , dress code,cultural background, venue, expectation of listeners and other physical phenomenons.

    Bathe in his paper ‘Listening’ says that hearing is a physiological phenomenon; hearing is a psychological act.

    Whereas hearing can be involuntary, listening must be deliberate and it is difficult for it to happen without us putting effort to listen.

    Difference between hearing and listening

    • hearing happens automatically where listening requires our effort
    • hearing can happen subconsciously, but listening requires decision to do it.
    • hearing is a physical function of the body but listening is an action we must choose to do
    • Hearing needs our ears only, listening needs both ears and our mind.

    Every good conversation starts with good listening and poor listening can cost us important things in life like jobs, customers in business, relationships etc.

    A doctor who does not listen can cause loss of lives. Imagine a plane operator who does not listen communications with the pilot. poor listening can be costly and even bring disastrous results

    Effective listening takes time and effort and sometimes may require training of mind. It costs time and energy to listen but profits of listening are worthy the efforts.

    Listening is very important in professional world, a judge need to listen carefully to both the prosecution team and the defense team in a law court if he has to make sound judgement. Similarly, a lawyer must listen to his/her clients carefully if he/she will represent their case effectively. students must listen to a teacher carefully if they have to benefit from a lecture. A customer care who does not listen to customers will cause future loss of business to the company.

    Active listening is a hard work because it requires concentration on the speaker’s communication yet our minds have tendency of wondering as it is easily distracted by physical or imaginary things . We must practice a discipline in listening but our natural inclination does not favor listening most of the time.

    Effective Listening will involves consciously dealing with things that are external or internal to us that interferes with our understanding of audio messages. For example if you have an issue disturbing you in personal life, you may find yourself thinking about it most of the time amidst a lecture and so you find yourself missing out on most of what is spoken.

    Levels of listening

    Listening is more than just a simple activity and happens in varying levels of concentration that are determine by factors like:

    • purpose of listening e.g whether to understand a thing or just an entertainment.
    • physical state
    • psychological state
    • physiological state e.g hungry person may not listen effectively
    • your background knowledge on what is being spoken
    • content of what is spoken etc.

    stages of Listening

    According to Joseph De Vito, listening occurs in five stages that includes receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating and responding.

    1. Receiving

    Also called sensing. It is the intentional on hearing a speaker’s message by filtering out other sources of communication so that we isolate the message from the speaker and avoid distractive stimuli from other sources. This is a stage we only hear what is being spoken.

    You must hear the message as the first step towards other stages of listening.

    2. Understanding

    This is a stage where we attempts to learn the meaning a message we have heard.If a speaker does not enunciate the message clearly, it becomes understand the message.

    Our brain is the main tool needed to help us understand the message . Our cultural backgrounds and personal experiences influences the kind of meaning to the words we hear so that the way understand is influenced by our own perception and experiences. When listening, we should be on the look out for areas of communication where our perception may differ from those intended by the speaker.

    3. Remembering

    Remembering is being able to bring back to mind what you have heard some few minutes after hearing it. Remembering is committing to memory what you have heard and it is an indication of listening. If you cannot remember what you heard,then your listening is not effective.

    The most common reason for not remembering a spoken message is because it was not really learned in the first place(Wolvin & Coakley,1996. Distractions during listening reduces greatly our ability to remember.

    4. Evaluating

    This involves making some judgement about the message heard to determine whether it is valuable to us, it is making sense or whether is wrong. Evaluation of the same message can vary widely from one person to another because of our perception, culture and experiences.The communication skills of the speaker will have a great role on how listeners will evaluate the message.One should avoid making skewed judgement on a message beacuse of personal prejudice on the speaker.

    5. Feedback

    It is when a listener indicates his/her involvement by reacting in a manner that can be detected by the speaker. For example students in class gives feedback to the teacher by making notes. Another feedback is when listeners looks for clarification by asking questions on what was said.

    Related topics

  • COMMUNICATION THEORY

    COMMUNICATION THEORY

    Introduction

    As  a human  being,   you  have  to   communicate because human beings are social beings that needs constant communication and interacts with each other through communication. Communication  helps  you   to  relate effectively with other people and human  beings depend on their  communication skills to  help them  meet  their needs,  find happiness  and attain  personal fulfillment.In the course of our life, we  get involved  in  many types  of communication. A challenge with human communication is to communicate as  effectively as  possible and to build communication  skills so that communication works for  you and not against  you. Your  knowledge  of communication  theory  will  help you  understand better the different  ways of communicating  first as a human  being and secondly  as scholar.

    Defining Communication

    Different people have defined communication variously.   Gamble and Gamble (1993) define communication  as a desirable  or accidental transfer  of meaning.  

    The Oxford Dictionary defines communication as  the activity or process of expressing ideas and feelings or process of giving information to people. 

     Wilber Schramm  defines  communication as  a  mechanism  through  which  human relations exist and develop through sharing of experience on basis of commonness.

    Another meaning of communication according to Oxford dictionary is methods of sending information especially telephones, radio, computers or other media or through roads, railway and air.

    Communication is more  than mere transferring of ideas  or thoughts.  It is  not a static act as  some definitions suggest  but it  is a dynamic  process of  action and interaction towards  a desired  goal.   Recent  definitions look  at communication  as  a process  of sharing or exchange  of ideas, information,  knowledge, attitude or feeling  among two or more persons through certain signs, symbols and behavior.

    Communication Between two persons

    Elements of Communication

    In every act or encounter of communication, there are certain common elements that together help define the communication process. If you understand these elements they will help you to develop your own communication abilities.

    Communication involves the following elements:

    Source

    This refers to the communicator or originator of a message. This person is also called the sender. The sender at times becomes the receiver of a message. Source is where communication process is initiated.

     Context

    This refers to place and time communication takes place in some context or setting. The setting or environment influences the way you act towards others or determines the nature of communication encounter you share with them. For example, you can change your posture, manner of speaking or attire due to environment. The environment can reduce your confidence, blur your thinking or increase tension and confusion. In other hand, environment can encourage you to communicate effectively if it is friendly.

    Message

    message is what is being communicated.

    In every communication, we all send and receive both verbal and non-verbal
    messages. A message is the content of a communication act.

    Channel

    Channel is where message will pass through in order to move from the sender to the receiver. It refers to the medium of transmission like, voice and radio. Messages may be sent and received through both verbal and non-verbal channels. In effect, we are multi-channel communicators. For effective communication, use more than one channel at any given time.

     Receiver

    This is the target of the message relayed by the sender through the communication channel and is the one who is supposed to receive and comprehends the message. The receiver can understand or misunderstand the message in totality or part of it. This can distort the whole communication process and even lead to misuderstanding and possible conflicts. A lot of conflicts among people have resulted from misinterpretation of messages. A receiver at times in communication becomes a source or sender.

    Feedback

    This is the response a message sender receives from the target as the reaction of the message sent. When we communicate with one or more persons, we also receive information in return. Verbal or non-verbal cues that we perceive in reaction to our communication are feedback. Feedback tells us how we are progressing. Feedback can be positive or negative.

    Barriers

    Anything that interferes or distorts our ability to send or receive messages is called a barrier. It could be created by physical state, psychological state, intellectual ability and environment. Barriers to effective communication can therefore be grouped as follows:

    • Physical:- for example, size of room, position or location, gestures of speaker in case of verbal communication.
    • Psychological:– for example predisposition of receiver, attitude to subject, speaker, race, education level. etc.
    • Intellectual ability: – level of education, background and knowledge on the subject.
    • Physiological state:- for example, sickness, hungry, tired.
    • Linguistic: – Ability of the receiver of the communication to understand words and expressions used in the communication.

    FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION

    Understanding And Insight

    We depend on communication to develop self-awareness. Communication helps us in understanding others and self.

    Meaningful Relationships

    It is through communication contacts that human beings basic physical and social needs are met. Psychology tells us that you need other people just as you need water, food and shelter. If you are cut from human contact, you become disoriented and maladjusted. Communication offers us the chance to satisfy our needs for inclusion, control and affection.

    Influence And Persuasion

    In every communication, people have ample chances to influence each other subtly and overtly. We spend much time trying to persuade one another to think as we think, do what we do, like what we like.

    Related Topics