Page 43 - DENG101_Communication Skills-I

Communication Skills-I

Notes Effective listening is one of the critical skills related to effective communication. It requires more
than merely hearing the speaker. It requires grasping and understanding. It includes active,
empathetic and supportive behaviours.

Significance of Good Listening

1. An attentive listener stimulates better speaking by the speaker.
2. A good listener learns more than the indifferent listener.
3. A good listener learns to:

(a) Distinguish fact from opinion,
(b) Understand and evaluate inferences and reasoning,
(c) Detect prejudices, assumptions, and attitudes.
4. A good listener can often restructure vague speaking into clearer meaning.

Research has revealed the following facts about listening:
1. Listening skills can be improved by training and instructions.
2. When improvement in listening is achieved, it may not be permanent.
3. There is a distinct difference between speaking rate and listening rate.
4. Generally, there is a high correlation between listening and intelligence.

5. One quarter of our waking time is spent on listening.
6. Even if the rate of speaking is increased by as much as 100%, the listening rate does not
suffer.

4.5 Requirements of Effective Listening

The following are critical thinking skills useful for effective listening:
1. Perceiving: Abilities to listen and observe, to compare and contrast observations so as to
organize and interpret them come under perceiving. Further, it is important to understand

how one’s own point of view and its influence on perceptions also is included in it.
2. Arranging: Ability to group one’s perceptions, classify them, discover patterns in them,
and place them in order of importance come under arranging.

3. Reasoning: Abilities to make decisions, exercise judgments, arrive at conclusions from

specific examples, and recognize specific examples or draw specific conclusions relate to
reasoning.
4. Inferring: Abilities to recognize underlying assumptions, to make generalizations, to
understand cause-effect relationships, and to make predictions comes under inquiring.
5. Inquiring: Ability to ask questions about and to analyze meanings of perceptions, including
determining what is relevant and whether something is a fact or opinion come under
inquiring.

36 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY