LISTENING; AN ACADEMIC PUBLICATION BY ELIZABETH ADAM

LISTENING;

          Ever been in a situation where someone jerks you from your daydream asking "were you even listening to me?" Then quickly you tell the person the last word they said or the last sentence even though you weren't paying attention? This kind of situations are a result of passive listening where you're physically available but mentally away. 

      Listening isn't so easy nor is it so difficult. How we percieve listening stems from our deliberate or innocent lack of improvement on the skill of listening. Too often we simply hear but do not comprehend. This disability is strung as a result of various factors. 

Inability to properly listen affects our relationships at home, at work and our productivity to a certain extent, it goes adversely for some people. Missed instructions, informations don't always have savoury reactions from the speakers who're sometimes superiors, friends, family, strangers and so forth. 

      Many human beings speak an average of 80-150 words per minute but can process 500-800 words per minute and a person reads 100-400 (on average) words per minute. Listening, the act of hearing, perceiving, and retaining spoken information is by nature and the inefficient process. A classic study in listening behavior by Paul Rankin found that we spend nearly half (42%) of the business day's communicative activity listening. Other studies of our listening behavior further indicate that within eight hours we forget one-third to one-half of what we've heard.¹ 

  

     According to Patrick Collins, author of Speak with Power and Confidence, no one listens all the time.²  Having understood that no one listens all the time, it's up to the listener to develop means to listen at least to the most important points. Unlike Reading where bullets and dashes indicate important points, listening is quite perculiar. How then can a person improve the listening and comprehending abilities and obtain maximum results ?

1. Listen clearly for voice stress on certain sentences and repeated information by the speaker. In classrooms, seminars, lectures etc, teachers, speakers tend to reinterate and stress on certain pieces of information. Most likely they present examination questions or test questions from these areas. Some speakers go as far as exclaming "Listen attentively! Listen properly!" As a listener, listen attentively!

2. Know that you know nothing! This philosophy of Plato can't be overemphasized. A lot of listeners tend to always cut short the speaker because of the assumption that they know better or have more degrees and qualifications on the subject matter. Unfortunately, despite our qualifications and knowledge on a subject matter, we can't know everything. Listening with an open mind believing you can learn something to your advantage should be practiced. Don't interrupt and don't impose your "solutions."³ Hold the way urge to always want to argue or counter a person's opinion even if you're a presidential candidate or a prosecutor. Listening to an opposing views helps you elaborate and see the holes in your logic too. 

3. Manage distractions. Distractions could be mental or environmental. When an environment isn't conducive for a certain piece of information, you have the option of postponing the discussion or excusing yourself to a better space. If this isn't possible, you can also try to stop or prevent the distraction from going on, although some things are within our power. You could opt for the speaker to text what it is they have to say if that's more convenient for you. 

For mental distractions, no psychologist or researcher has found a way to completely eliminate mental distractions while listening. Since the human mind processes 500-800 words per minute, it's easy to wander off to whether the dog was fed or the driver picked Junior from school.

 To ease this kind of stress or mental drifts;

• Plan your day. 
• Make phone calls to persons who have responsibilities to you before you begin a meeting or class to make sure they're covering they're jobs. 
• Free yourself from anxiety and overthinking.
• Do not overload or procrastinate fuctions to overlap so much that you loose focus thinking of one while doing the other 

4. Pre-empting the speaker: We begin by listening to the speaker; then, as soon as we figure out what he or she is probably going to say, we tune out and think about something else until we hear a word or phrase that gets our attention once more.² Author Patrick Collins refers to this as "out listening." One way to solve this is also to keep an open mind. 

5. Emotional Stability: Very importantly, sometimes our emotional frames prevent us from properly listening to a piece of information. Might be too happy, too sad, top grumpy or too proud. Working on emotional reflexes helps in building an active listener. 

Other ways to attain effective and active listening is to Sit close to the speaker, maintain eye contact, pay attention to body movements, control emotions towards certain information as humanly possible. 

Daily practice of various rules of listening pave ways to building active and effective listening. 

Written by;

Elizabeth Adam.

Josephcallista2018@gmail.com