Learning to Listen

In speech class I took a self-evaluation listening test. The test had a list of ten bad habits; that which I will list below. Regarding the ten bad habits, there was a frequency chart from almost always, usually, sometimes, seldom, and almost never. I had to place an check mark on the frequency I thought was correct. The following list of ten habits were:

1. Giving into mental distraction.

2. Giving into physical distractions.

3. Trying to recall everything a speaker says.

4. Rejecting a topic as uninteresting before hearing the speaker.

5. Faking paying attention.

6. Jumping to conclusions about the speaker’s meaning.

7. Deciding a speaker is wrong before hearing everything she or he has to say.

8. Judging a speaker on personal appearance.

9. Not paying attention to a speaker’s evidence.

10. Focusing on delivery rather than on what the speaker says.

After taking the test I had to use their grading chart. For every “almost always” checked, I gave myself a score of 2. For every “usually” checked, I gave myself a score of 4. For every “sometimes” checked, I gave myself a score of 6. For every “seldom” checked, I gave myself a score of 8. For every “almost never” checked, I gave myself a score of 10. Then I would count all the check marks and add them together. In this test I got a total of 84. 

Now according to my score, I was given three score interpretations. Below 70 meant that I need lots of training in listening. From 71 to 90 meant I listened well. Above 90 meant I listened exceptionally well. 

Next we took another test. This time it was a verbal test. The teacher gave us a series of questions which we wrote down our answers accordingly.

Questions similar to these for example: 

1. If you were a baby calf, who would you go to? Your mama bull or papa bull?

2. If you were a pilot, and your first son is 8 years old, your second son is four years older than your first son, what is the age of your third son who is six years younger than your second son, what is the age of the pilot if he is twenty years older than the third son. 

3. If a widow was married for 56 years and her husband wanted to give her something for their oncoming anniversary, what should he give her? 

4. Moses took in how many of each species of animals into the ark?

As you hopefully noticed, the questions aren't what you think they are. A bull can only be male, you are the pilot, and a widow can’t have an anniversary if her husband is dead, it was Noah not Moses that took the animals into the ark. 

As I examined the answers on my verbal test, it came clear to me that I wasn't as good of a listener as I thought I was. Thus, for that reason, I am including an article about listening in my blog. 

First what is listening? Are there any ways to improve listening skills? For the duration of the article I will list the concept that are used in listening how one can improve their listening skills. 

To begin, listening is defined as a process of receiving, attending to, and assigning meaning to stimuli. The concepts of listening are: selecting, attending, understanding, remembering, and evaluating. 

Selecting – means to choose one sound to listen to, among the many competing for one’s attention.

Attending – means to focus on a particular message of sound. 

There are ways you can improve the skill, such as: Eliminating personal distraction; get physically and mentally ready to listen; make a shift from speaker to listener; and avoid prejudging what others would say.

Understanding  - is the ability to decode a message by correctly assigning meaning to it.

The ways to improve this skill is to: Organize key ideas; pay attention to non-verbal communication; asking questions to gain further information; mentally paraphrase what has been said; and relate it to what one already knows. 

Remembering – is the process of retaining and saving information. Information is stored in short-term memory (which can only attend to 7+/-2 items at once). Important information is moved into long –term memory. This is the capacity that is infinite, but is not always accessible or to have the ability to recall stored information. I personally have an awful short term memory, but I do have the ability to recall long term information such as when I was a child. For example, when I was a child, I remember playing in the snow. The world was enormous to me and everything was exaggeratingly bright and blurry. It turns out I was three years old at the time when I first encountered snow according to my mom. 

To improve how to remember, we can: repeat information for long-term memory; make up memory aids (to call memories); or take well written short notes. 

If I may add to this, in psychology I learned that the brain works well when pairing items in groups of six, for example learning six items on individual flash cards at a time. Another interesting tactic is storing information in mental variables. This is like assigning an item to another item or thought you think has similarities. For example, in my Japanese class I assigned the word tokei and jikanto clock. Tokei in Japanese means clock and jikan means time. By assigning tokei and jikan to a clock, I was able to wake up in the morning and remember the words tokei and jikan as I hit my alarm clock. Later, I began applying sentence structure, so that when I woke up in the morning I would ask myself, “kore wa nan jokan desuka?” I would respond to myself with “kore wa…” and the correct time. So as you can see assigning mental variables helps with recalling information one assigns to a particular object or instance. Another very useful tactic is to use self-talk. You can talk to yourself with a deep focus and use it to recall information later. By doing this you are not just talking to yourself, you are also talking to your subconscious. Controversially this is the idea many well-known books that focus on motivation and success uses. For example, “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill emphasizes the value of self-talk and how it can be used to mentally prepare an individual to be successful, never have the idea of failure, and always have a plan. 

Responding – involves confirming your understanding of a message.

To improve this skill, you can use non-verbal cues, such as eye contact and gestures; Use verbal communication, such as asking questions or paraphrasing; avoid unnecessary details; and be descriptive when responding rather than using evaluation. 

Evaluating – which involves analyzing the message for how truthful or believable you judge it to be. 

Evaluating is also referred to as critical thinking/ listening. 

To improve one’s evaluation skills, one can separate factual statements from unconfirmed observations or listen critically. 

I probably should emphasize on that last part. Listening critically means to pay attention to the speaker’s words in tremendous detail. A good example of using this would be like the test I stated at the beginning of the article. 

If I may also add to this, I’m sure there are individuals with perhaps not so great verbal communication skills, such as people who stutter, stammer, or have difficulty finding the appropriate or accurate words. In such case, I think it’s important to focus on the message if not the underlying message or idea they are trying to state. 

Also regarding improving one’s evaluation skills, I would also consider unconfirmed observations as information worth retaining. The reason is because I believe all information can be useful depending on circumstance. I also believe such unconfirmed observations should be stated with a source of where the information came from. For example, according to theoretical scientists, space anomalies could be the result of unexplored interstellar activity. With the use of unconfirmed observations as resources, one can explore different ideas and possibilities. 

In conclusion, I could see how the test in the beginning of the article led to the idea of how I thought how well I listened to further examining how well I actually listened using the verbal test. By examining the various concepts of listening, I further gained insight on how to become a better listener. Furthermore, by creating this article I hopeful could provide better understanding or knowledge of how one can become a better listener and to introduce the platform in which one can improve communicating effectively.