Chapter 2: Listening Skills

Chapter Two: Listening and Its Skills

• This chapter aims to equip students with the ability to:
  • Define listening.
  • Explain the importance and types of listening.
  • List the goals of teaching listening.
  • Explain the challenges and etiquette of teaching listening.
  • Outline the principles and criteria for teaching listening.
  • Explain how to teach listening.
  • Highlight modern approaches to teaching listening.
  • Identify listening comprehension levels and how to measure them.
  • Apply one of the teaching strategies for listening (planning, execution, and evaluation).

First: Defining Listening

• Language:

  • Hearing (سمع): The sense of the ear.
  • Listening (استماع): Paying attention.

• Concept of Listening: Listening is a mental process requiring effort from the listener to follow the speaker, understand their message, retain their ideas, and retrieve them when needed. It also involves connecting multiple ideas. It is the deliberate act of receiving any audio material with the intent to understand, analyze, process, and potentially critique it. In essence, it's an intentional human process aimed at acquisition, comprehension, analysis, interpretation, deduction, and ultimately, mental construction.

• Levels of Listening:

  • Hearing: Simply receiving sound vibrations by the ear without deliberate attention (e.g., listening to birds chirping or the sounds of a city).
  • Listening: Paying deliberate attention to sounds (e.g., attending to a speaker and then getting distracted).
  • Analyzing: Paying meticulous attention to understand and analyze sounds with a specific goal (deep engagement and constant focus, akin to close listening.)

• Importance of Listening:

  • Listening is a crucial linguistic skill among the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
  • It's the first skill a child develops in interaction with the external world.
  • It plays a significant role in learning.

• Importance within Quran: The Quran highlights listening as essential to receiving spiritual wisdom and promoting attentiveness during devotion ("And when the Quran is recited, then listen to it and pay attention that you may receive mercy.") —It is emphasized as a value more significant than sight.

• Importance in Heritage Transmission: Listening played a vital role in preserving and transmitting human heritage, language, thought, and knowledge in pre-literate societies.

• Listening and Language Development: Listening is crucial for vocabulary acquisition, understanding sentence structures, receiving ideas, and developing other language skills (speaking, reading, and writing).

• Listening in Early Childhood. Listening is the child's primary gateway to the external world. Through listening, children learn language.

• Listening and Educational Stages:

  • Listening is a fundamental aspect of learning, taking approximately half of the time dedicated to study at all educational levels from elementary school to secondary school.
  • Active, critical listening is crucial in lectures, discussions, and educational settings, regardless of technological advancements.

Types of Listening

• Non-Focused Listening: Common listening style; listening to media or conversations without in-depth engagement or judgment. Common in daily social interactions. Includes listening from children as well.
• Enjoyable Listening: Listening for pure enjoyment or pleasure; comprehending and evaluating the material, but with a primary focus on enjoyment. (e.g., poetry readings and engaging presentations.)
• Intentional Listening: Focused on understanding, analyzing, and evaluating audio input. Typically employed in lectures, educational settings, and situations requiring careful comprehension.
• Critical Listening: Listening critically involves judging the message received in light of pre-existing knowledge, principles, or beliefs, followed by evaluation or discussion.
• Attentive Listening: Listening to absorb and process the full message.

Objectives for Listening Instruction

• Mastering effective listening habits (attentiveness and concentration.)
• Developing the ability to extract implications and conclusions from the listened-to material.
• Developing the ability to understand connections between different aspects of a conversation or discourse.
• Encouraging imaginative engagement with the content of the listened material.
• Educating individuals on how to critically analyze and categorize ideas and arguments.
• Improving comprehension skills through listening.
• Promoting a deeper understanding of instructions.
• Distinguishing between main and secondary ideas from the auditory input.
• Promoting respect for others and considering their viewpoints.
• Promoting engagement and understanding in conversations.

Prerequisites and Good Listening Etiquette

• Choosing a quiet place to avoid distractions
• Paying close attention to the speaker
• Adjusting to the speaker's pace
• Maintaining accurate listening
• Interpreting and presenting the received messages
• Discerning between multiple sounds and different body language cues.

Principles of Listening Instruction

• Selecting listening activities relevant to learners' needs.
• Maintaining balance among different listening skills.
• Linking listening skills to other language skills and areas of study.