LISTENING SKILL

Hearing must precede listening. Therefore, it is

essential to have a clear understanding of the human ear before we
proceed to discuss the listening process. The ear has three parts. They
are: the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear.
The Outer Ear: It consists of the Pinna, the auditory canal and the
eardrum. The pinna helps to direct the sound waves to the auditory canal.
Wax glands and hair are present in the canal which together protects the
ear from dust, germs and insects. They also control temperature and
dampness in the canal. The canal ends in the eardrum which separates
the outer ear from the middle ear. It is connected to the Ossicles (small
bones) of the middle ear.
The Middle Ear: It is chamber having air circulation, containing three
small bones called Malleus, Incus and Stapes. The oval which separates
the middle ear and the outer ear is connected to the stapes. The bones
are connected to each other by ligaments and they are capable of
vibrating. The middle ear is connected to the Pharynx by Eustachian tube
which helps to regulate air pressure on either side of the eardrum.
The Inner Ear: The inner ear comprises of three parts. They are the
semicircular canals, the vestibule and the cochlea. The cochlea is like
tubule like the interior of a snail shell. The semicircular canals stand
perpendicular to one another. Each canal has a swollen end called
Ampulla. The chambers found above and below vestibule are the Utricle
and the Saccule. They are connected with the tube. The semicircular
canals begin from the Vestibule, goes round and rejoins the Vestibule. All
these are filled with a fluid called Endolymph and are e surrounded by
Perilymph.
Sound is a physical phenomenon and hearing is perceptive. Sound
is made by vibration of objects and is transmitted through the
atmosphere. Sound waves will not travel in vacuum. The atmosphere
consisting of molecules is elastic. Vibration makes motion in the air.
According to the force of vibration sound moves forward in waves. The
auricle receives the sound waves and transmits them through the auditory
canal to the eardrum and makes it vibrate. This is the first stage of
hearing. When the membrane vibrates, the ossicles vibrate together. The
vibrations of the ossicles convert sound energy into mechanical energy
and the waves of mechanical energy reach the inner ear. The mechanical
energy is again converted into hydraulic energy and again electric
impulses are made. Thus sound energy through several stages is

converted to electric energy by the cochlear microphonic process. The

electric impulses reaching the hair cells move to the auditory nerves and
they carry them to the auditory cortex. Thus we experience sound as
hearing.

LISTENING PROCESS
Listening is hearing and perceiving a message. Hearing is a
physiological process while listening is a mental process. As the auditory
mechanism accepts a sound or a sequence of sounds, it sends it to the
nerve centre concerned for interpretation and to give meaning. For
communication there should be a speaker and a listener and a medium for
communication. The listener on hearing the sounds, with understanding
according to his experience, shapes the message. Listening is receptive
skill but it is an active process.
The listening process has three stages hearing, processing and
evaluating. If a person can repeat what the speaker has said, hearing has
taken place in him. And on hearing if the hearer thinks about how the
information can be interpreted against his background, it means
processing has taken place. In the third stage, the listener will assess the
validity of the information that is evaluation stge.
The objectives of listening are related to the levels of knowledge,
understanding, application and aptitude.
Their specifications are developing the ability to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Receive information general and specific.

Distinguish between sounds.
Formulate attitudes and opinions.
Arrange events in sequence.
Know the interests of the speaker.
Be familiar with functional categories.
Organise ideas

There are number of barriers affecting normal listening and

comprehension. They are given below.
1. Linguistic: If the speakers linguistic level is very high and the
listeners very low, the latter will understand only a low percentage
of what he heard.
2. Use of hard words/registers: If the speaker uses hard words or
registers of particular branch of study, an ordinary listener will fail to
grasp the ideas.

3. Noisy environment: In market place having noisy atmosphere

listening will be difficult. Or while the T.V or radio is working with
high volume, one will not be able to listen a phone call.
4. Psychological: When a person lacks interest, due to weariness,
impatience or other negative feelings one will not be able to listen
to a speech effectively.
5. Negative attitude: In case the speaker happens to be a person
whom we dont like to accept, we shall not be listening to him.
6. Physiological: This is the most unfortunate and most difficult of all
barriers to overcome partial or total hearing impairment. Hearing
is not possible due to damage to the hearing mechanism; listening
will not follow and speech will be a mirage.
Impatience, interruptions, preoccupation, etc..... are other barriers to
effective listening.
Good listeners will overcome the barriers. To make listening effective:
1. Practice note - making/ note taking.
2. Keep alert without distracting attention.
3. If handouts are available in advance, read them before the
speech starts.
4. Take a seat conducive to proper listening.
5. Focus attention more on the content of the speech than on
linguistic or non verbal language.
6. Identify the main ideas and the supportive ideas.

SUBSKILLS
Basic listening skills are the ability to hear clearly and to
discriminate the sounds heard. Of the four basic language skills, we
seem to be giving least important to listening forgetting that listening is
a pre requisite for speaking and that language is primarily speech. If we
want to train our pupils in oral communication, there is no other way
than giving those practices in listening ie.developing their listening skill
in advance. Not only that, the time we spend for listening is 50% more
than the time we spend for speaking. But it is the listening skill on which
serious studies and researches have not been conducted. James L Brown
has pioneered in this field. According to him reading has primacy over
listening for learning up to the seventh grade and that listening skill does
not improve long after. We are less critical while listening than while
reading. It may be because the listener is not able to take a reverse to a
speech to catch a part of it which has been missed, where as it can be
done in reading.
According to Miss Althea Beery, listening skill can be developed by
1. Sensing relationships of listening to the other phases of
communication.
2. Understanding the psychological process of learning.
3. Providing general conditions conductive to learning.
4. Utilising opportunities for children to listen.

5. Understanding the developmental levels of listening.

6. Keeping alert to new inventions which will aid the programme.
Sub - skills of listening are manifested in terms of behaviour.
Richard has identified about 50 micro level sub skills that learners of
English as L2 have to master to understand day to day conversational
English.
The sub skills of listening may be broadly divided into two classes
1) listening for sound perception 2) listening for meaning
(comprehension). In the former class, the sub skills are:
1. Distinguishing between the sounds of L1 and L2 which are identical,
non identical and partly identical.
2. Understanding the tone, melody, rhythm, stress and intonation of
L2.
3. Learning how to speak a word before learning how to write it.
4. Understanding the lack of concord between pronunciation and
spelling of words in English.
Listening for meaning (comprehension) has the following sub skills:
1. Predicting what the speakers main theme would be and guessing
the word he would use next.
2. Understanding the collocation of words (adjectives, adverbs etc...).
For example, Time is precious.
3. Grasping the mood of the speaker, his attitude and the meaning
implied by stress, intonation etc...
4. Understanding how the speaker develops his idea, logically and
subsequently and his stylistics.
5. Inferring and selecting information of interest to the listener.
6. Understanding the implications and suggestions contained in the
speech.

LISTENING ACTIVITIES FOR DEVELOPING

THE SUB SKILLS
The sound system of L2 will have to be got familiarized to the
learners. If each of the sounds of L1 were congruent to each of the
sounds of L2, there would have been problem with regard to learning the
sound system of L2. But there is no such one to one close
identification of sounds, in general among languages.
Therefore, it is the concern of the teacher to give enough
exposure to the learners to grasp the sound system of L2. With regard to
English, the sound system should be introduced much before the
graphics is introduced. This is because listening and speech have
primacy over reading and writing especially during the early stages of
language acquisition.
Therefore while introducing vocabulary or short utterances, the
teacher should be a model in his pronunciation, stress, and intonation. To

teach the learners how meaning changes on change of sound, the

teacher can use a number of words or pairs of words.
For example: cat/rat
During the initial stage, the learner should be given practice in
introducing sounds after the teacher.
Listening is not merely receiving sounds but construction of
meanings depending upon the listeners cultural background, mood,
attitude and so on. Listening will be more effective, if the speech is given
in meaningful phrases at normal speed and volume. Speaking with
gestures, eye contact and facial expressions, and making use of charts,
maps, graphs, etc.... will make listening more intense.
The teacher can give instructions to the learners to make them do
some physical movements. This is also a testing device for listening.
Exercises on making objects can be given. For example: the making of
paper boats or kites.
Grids can be used as tasks for testing. A passage is read out; say
information about two or three countries and filling out the boxes with
the information.
A resourceful teacher can find out numerous tasks to give the
learners to develop the sub skills of listening. The most important thing
is to motivate the learners for listening as it is a basic skill for language
acquisition especially a foreign language.

PHASES OF LISTENING ACTIVITY

The phases of listening activity can be broadly divided into three:
pre listening, on listening and post listening.
In the first phase Pre listening the learners role is not significant,
whereas the teacher has to think and plan for the speaking listening
activities in the class.
The teacher should detect whether there are any students with
hearing problems and plan to seat them in the front row of the class. The
students may be seated in the class so that the distance of the student
from the teachers position is uniform as far as possible. This can be
made possible by arranging the seat of the students in a semicircular
form. The classroom should be free from outside disturbances.
The teacher has to collect materials for information, gap filling
activities, functional purposes, recording facilities, grids, maps, riddles
etc...during this phase. The learners may be asked to bring
corresponding materials to the class.
In the second phase On listening the teacher should arouse interest
in the learners and motivate them to listen to something very interesting
and useful to them. The teacher makes the topic familiar to them and
gives instructions about what they are going to listen and act. Having
accomplished the task with the help of the teacher, he goes round and

understands how satisfactorily they have performed as a part of feed

back.
In the post listening phase, follow up tasks can be given with a
variety of materials to suit the learners home conditions, intellectual and
linguistic levels.

TYPES OF LISTENING SKILL

EXTENSIVE AND INTESIVE
According to purpose, listening can be extensive or intensive. The
chief objective of extensive listening is enjoyment in general without any
immediate specific purpose like facing an interview board or taking an
examination. As thinking speed is three times more than listening speed,
one can do other little intellectual exercises while listening is partially
casual. Intensive listening is with more concentrated attention and is
purposeful. For example: listening to the teacher, the radio, the
television etc... In discussions, seminars, debates etc...intensive listening
is required. Intensive listening is followed by some specific tasks.
FOCUSSED, SELECTIVE AND CASUAL LISTENING
Focussed listening means converging all attention to a specific
purpose at a time. While listening to the description of an experiment to
produce a required result, one has to focus ones listening faculty to its
process and product. In focussed listening, the listener has a purpose.
For example. In an unfamiliar city, if one asks the way to the bus stand,
one listens to the speaker who guides, with focussed listening. In the
listening process the listener can focuss his attention to intangiable
linguistic content areas and have a follow up. In classroom teaching
learning process the learner should render to focussed listening.
We do not react to all that we listen, but react only to that which
we are interested in or bound to. That is our selective listening.
Not purposefullynwe may happen to listen to a speech, a news, or
an announcement. This is casual listening. To a casual listening, we may
react or may not, depending upon our attitude, situation, culture etc...
Listening can be more subtly classified as:
1. Discriminative listening which helps develop logical thinking.
2. Critical listening helps to accept or reject an argument or opinion on
the basis of its validityor utility.
3. Comprehensive listening helps to understand a message clearly
providing for follow up action.
4. Therapeutic listening helps to grasp the meaning of a message
superficially without evaluating it.

5. Appreciative listening helps device enjoyment or appreciation for

delight.