Listening is the most important skill in communication. It is a mental operation involving processing sound waves, interpreting their meaning, and storing their meaning in memory.

It is a communication technique that requires the listeners to understand, interpret, and evaluate what they hear of. It paves the way for other skills to tower communicatively over the others because of its significance in terms of speech, confabs and freedom of expression.

They serve as an approach to make everybody comprehend which is originally derived from the given talk or utterance. It is closely related to speaking and it enables the persons to soak in any information that is given to them; consequently, the information can be passed on to another party later on after the conversation.

On the other hand, students will develop prediction and anticipation skills in listening. They will recall previous savvy or experience about the topic of the listening text before to the text, and will recall the cause-effect relationships in the listening text.

Without listening, communication can also be crippled. It is vital and should be part mainly in communication.

Speaking

Speaking is the act of talking to someone, of making an utterance with intentional and unintentional dealings, or of a discourse of a person who really speaks. It refers also to literary works and artistic communications that are composed of daily recitations, as ancient poetry and oral literature regardless of a language spoken by the people worldwide. Oral communication is a vicious cycle which always involves two persons or more: a decoder and an encoder; the message, the channel and the feedback. The teachers should create situations in which the learners could exercise their ability of oral expressions. Besides, in a blog release published online, it said speaking is one of the most direct and useful forms of communication. It said also two people can speak with each other yet still not be able to communicate anything – they could be speaking different languages. Speaking is used mainly when people are having face-to-face communication, but it can also be over the phone and now over technology such as webcams and video calling.

Listening

Listening is the most important skill in communication. It is a mental operation involving processing sound waves, interpreting their meaning, and storing their meaning in memory. It is a communication technique that requires the listeners to understand, interpret, and evaluate what they hear of. It paves the way for other skills to tower communicatively over the others because of its significance in terms of speech, confabs and freedom of expression. They serve as an approach to make everybody comprehend which is originally derived from the given talk or utterance. It is closely related to speaking and it enables the persons to soak in any information that is given to them; consequently, the information can be passed on to another party later on after the conversation. On the other hand, students will develop prediction and anticipation skills in listening. They will recall previous savvy or experience about the topic of the listening text before to the text, and will recall the cause-effect relationships in the listening text. Without listening, communication can also be crippled. It is vital and should be part mainly in communication.

Reading

Reading  is another important skill in communication. It is a multifaceted process involving word recognition, comprehension, fluency and motivation. Reading is the way a person gets information from written letters and words. Reading approach is also based on the philosophy and theories concerning the meaning, nature, and structure of reading. Further, it consists of a set of decisions to carry out an objective that results in a plan and its wise implementation. Many people think of reading as a skill that is taught once and for all in the first few years of school.  Reading enables man to ponder the mysteries of the world, explore accumulated knowledge, and contemplate the unknown. All the enigmatic symbolisms will be divulged through reading. No one can question it because it gives emphasis to the importance of global communication.  In the past, books and newspapers were the most commonly read items; now emails and text messages form a lot of normal day’s communication activities.

Writing

By all accounts, writing means much more than using orthographic symbols. It is a thinking process which is characterized by a purposeful selection and organization of experience. It is an act of discovery, of communication, of joy. It connects us to work, to culture, to society, to existing knowledge, and to the meanings of our lives. Without it, poor communication will occur as far as written communication is concerned. It is the act of putting sentences together in connected discourse, but the main focus is on basic communicability. It is designed to give beginning learners the feeling that they are able to write and that what they write has a profound value. Most people rely on writing because they can’t express themselves and it is better for them to write in order to fulfill their wishes to the persons they love or long for in order to communicate effectively. Writing is closely linked to reading as, like speaking and listening, they really work in harmony to ensure successful communication. Again language can be a potential barrier with writing. Writing activities consist of exposing the learners to diverse rhetorical forms through extensive reading and providing intensive practice in the actual writing or compositions. In conclusion to this, good writing can be taught by teachers who provide frequent and challenging chances or opportunities for writing to enable the learners to develop their skills and confidence.

Viewing

Viewing is one of the most important skills in communication because it is a way of portraying information in the database, thus giving more emphasis to the importance of mental faculty that allows a perceiver to delineate or give details about a target that is inaccessible to normal senses due to time, distance or shielding. Of all the skills in communication, viewing can help the global audiences watch their favorite shows either in movies or in televisions, as well as other forms of viewing devices.  According to Center for Media Literacy, the literate reader, however, does not stop with converting printed words into ideas. He/she contemplates those ideas, and carries on an internal dialogue with the author, congratulating the latter for brilliant insights or condemning him/her for outrageous opinions. The literate TV viewer carries on a similar dialogue with the creators of a program, congratulating or condemning them for everything from the sublime to the ridiculous. At this point, reading and critical viewing, literacy and television literacy, become synonymous. Both the reader and the viewer learn to be active – to challenge, analyze, react, explore, and understand the medium, whether it’s a printed page or an illuminated TV set.

The five macro-skills in English language teaching are very important in the learning process and in the teaching performance of the concerned students and teachers. These skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and viewing will use as the main vehicle to come by a certain language and to serve as a conduit to encompass widely the interrelated realm of communication and community.

All human beings bring into the world an innate faculty for language acquisition, language use, and grammar construction. It is the internalization of the rules of grammar in one’s first language from a more or less random exposure to various utterances. The language learners are very able to construct new, grammatically acceptable sentences from material they have already heard. Unlike the parrot in human society, they are not limited to mere repetition of utterances.

Language acquisition could not take place “through habit formation” because language is far too complicated to be learned in such a manner, especially given the brief time available. There is an innate capacity of human beings who get possessed and predisposed them to look for fundamental patterns in language. People could create utterances they could not have possibly encountered in a language that was spoken to them.

In first-language acquisition, young children have certain innate characteristics that predispose them to learn a language. These characteristics include the structures, which enable the children to make the sounds used in language, and the ability to understand a number of general grammatical principles, such as the hierarchical nature of syntax.  Children acquire whatever language is spoken around them, even if their parents speak a diverse language.

An interesting feature of early language acquisition is that children seem to depend more on semantics than on syntax when speaking. Furthermore, the acquisition of language facility is one of the most interesting but perplexing phenomena in learning. The learners’ ability to speak is marvelous and his mastery in other areas of learning such as listening, reading and writing gives a clear indication that he has the distinct opportunity of being a learner of a fantastic classroom teacher.

Constant practice under the proper guidance of the teachers makes the students feel at home with any language. The teacher sees to it that the learner can imitate and speak the correct English patterns that are taught to him in the classroom. It is a psychological fact that young people can learn a new language easily and idiomatically. In the language lessons, exercises take the forms of repetition, pattern drills and accompanied reinforcements by the teachers just to learn the language.

It is not a facile undertaking to simplify a process in the four walls of the classrooms an atmosphere of self-confidence and enthusiasm in learning a language. It is energy-consuming and time-consuming. It involves failures and successes. It involves an acceptance of individual’s strengths and weaknesses – including one’s own. The teacher needs to face the exciting and creative experience in the classrooms while in the process of teaching the language. Errors should be avoided. If an error is committed, quick correction is desirable in order to prevent the establishment of bad habits.

The presence or manifestation of various teaching strategies for use in the field has perplexed a lot of public secondary English teachers whose students come from different educational backgrounds. These students come from exclusive schools which have different English books and students come from the remote or far-flung barangay elementary schools which have dearth of learning materials and limited learning experiences. The teachers are cynical whether or not the methods they use in their classes could keep up with the standards of a good and effective teaching procedure considering a mixture of students they have in the classroom.

Teaching should be adjusted to the needs of the learners. Because of this, it is imperative to determine first their difficulties and needs so that whatever materials a teacher purports to design should be in accordance with these needs. This is what is known as directional teaching. This means an assurance of more achievements in teaching than mere teaching without any sound basis.

The researcher has resorted to this study for the purpose of predicting public science high school’s first year selected students’ learning performance utilizing the macro-skills of structured lessons in English.

Communication is something that can bridge you between the unknown world and the known world with sufficient information to dish out. Likewise, it’s about expressing and conveying your thoughts, emotions, notions and concepts with another human beings. The ideal outcome of the event will animadvert upon itself and it will boomerang to the concerned persons if things are not properly addressed. It reciprocates best communication skills that can aid in keeping one’s head and confidently taking charge of unfamiliar situations.  People are more likely to listen to you, whatever you have to utter, if you can express yourself well, and this is particularly useful in influencing and negotiating significant personal, social and business matters.

Communication is the key progress and advancement in continuing to learn things more accurately and effectively. Without communication nothing would get done and the world would pretty much stand still. All five macro skills of communication are indispensable in everyday life and should never be underestimated.

All human beings bring into the world an innate faculty for language acquisition, language use, and grammar construction. It is the internalization of the rules of grammar in one’s first language from a more or less random exposure to various utterances. The language learners are very able to construct new, grammatically acceptable sentences from material they have already heard. Unlike the parrot in human society, they are not limited to mere repetition of utterances.

Language acquisition could not take place “through habit formation” because language is far too complicated to be learned in such a manner, especially given the brief time available. There is an innate capacity of human beings who get possessed and predisposed them to look for fundamental patterns in language. People could create utterances they could not have possibly encountered in a language that was spoken to them.

In first-language acquisition, young children have certain innate characteristics that predispose them to learn a language. These characteristics include the structures, which enable the children to make the sounds used in language, and the ability to understand a number of general grammatical principles, such as the hierarchical nature of syntax.  Children acquire whatever language is spoken around them, even if their parents speak a diverse language.

An interesting feature of early language acquisition is that children seem to depend more on semantics than on syntax when speaking. Furthermore, the acquisition of language facility is one of the most interesting but perplexing phenomena in learning. The learners’ ability to speak is marvelous and his mastery in other areas of learning such as listening, reading and writing gives a clear indication that he has the distinct opportunity of being a learner of a fantastic classroom teacher.

Constant practice under the proper guidance of the teachers makes the students feel at home with any language. The teacher sees to it that the learner can imitate and speak the correct English patterns that are taught to him in the classroom. It is a psychological fact that young people can learn a new language easily and idiomatically. In the language lessons, exercises take the forms of repetition, pattern drills and accompanied reinforcements by the teachers just to learn the language.

It is not a facile undertaking to simplify a process in the four walls of the classrooms an atmosphere of self-confidence and enthusiasm in learning a language. It is energy-consuming and time-consuming. It involves failures and successes. It involves an acceptance of individual’s strengths and weaknesses – including one’s own. The teacher needs to face the exciting and creative experience in the classrooms while in the process of teaching the language. Errors should be avoided. If an error is committed, quick correction is desirable in order to prevent the establishment of bad habits.

The presence or manifestation of various teaching strategies for use in the field has perplexed a lot of public secondary English teachers whose students come from different educational backgrounds. These students come from exclusive schools which have different English books and students come from the remote or far-flung barangay elementary schools which have dearth of learning materials and limited learning experiences. The teachers are cynical whether or not the methods they use in their classes could keep up with the standards of a good and effective teaching procedure considering a mixture of students they have in the classroom.

Teaching should be adjusted to the needs of the learners. Because of this, it is imperative to determine first their difficulties and needs so that whatever materials a teacher purports to design should be in accordance with these needs. This is what is known as directional teaching. This means an assurance of more achievements in teaching than mere teaching without any sound basis.

The researcher has resorted to this study for the purpose of predicting public science high school’s first year selected students’ learning performance utilizing the macro-skills of structured lessons in English.

It will not go over well to use five dollar words when speaking to someone who has a third grade education and uses subject verb disagreement regularly.  You must assess the skill level of your audience and adjust your talk, gesture and mannerisms accordingly.

Southernnesss

You can take the girl out of the South, but you cannot take the South out of the girl.  I am frequently chatting on the phone with people from my childhood.  If anyone is in the room, they chuckle.  I wonder why. Then I hear myself.  I am reverting back to the vernacular without even realizing it.  Words that I normally pronounce as one syllable now have five.  And likewise, words with six syllables suddenly have no more than three. 

But it is a talent.  It has become so much a part of me that it is natural.  When I finish the conversation, I can hear myself (on the rare occasion I am listening to myself) go back to normal speech and mannerisms.  I have noticed when talking on the phone to  a southern friend, my arms are waving wildly to help me describe things and talk to them properly.

The Certifications And Degree Thing

I have worked in a profession with advanced degrees, multiple certifications and licenses.  However, I never post any of them on a wall where I am employed.  Why?  Because, in the deep South, people respond better to me not having a preconceived notion about me.  They tend to think I am uppity if they see the items.  I guess it is the area.

Plus someone once pointed out to me that if you know your stuff (in a particular body of study), you don’t need to post your credentials, or even state them.  People can tell if you are full of fluff.  In other words, other professionals can tell if you walk the walk and talk the talk.

Too Much Information

I have also learned that too much great information to me or you may quickly overwhelm or overload someone not adept in a field of study.  If you overload them, they shut down or linger on a particular thought.  They do not understand 80% of what you say after that.

Silence Is Golden

A constant rattling of information not only alienates your listener, but makes them feel you are not addressing their concerns at all.  And you are not concerned about them.  How about saying something, then being quiet.  Let them give feedback to help you know if you can safely proceed or if they are lost.  Force yourself to hush.  You will be amazed at what you were previously not hearing.

Are You Listening

Are you, in fact, listening? Not only to the customer, but to yourself.  How do you come across?  If you have never taped yourself, you should.  Most computers come with a built in camera.  Try taping yourself and play it back.  You will be utterly shocked at how differently you are coming across from what you think you are.  Better yet, you are able to alter your persona for the better.

Let’s face it, considering most of us professional success and personal success of it.
In other words, we are in our careers.  We also offer our personal and family behaviors on the job of many conflicts that we have at home.

The number one skill to improve our professional and personal life is good communication.  What we say is not important if we are unable to be heard.

Here are some tips for building good communication:

Listen with an open mind.  Focus on what the person says and use your body long eyes.  Put all your energy on thinking it’s the most important thing right now, and it is the most important person in the world.  (The speaker will feel they are important. This work will be to maintain a positive communication )

Reply express honest, open and honest.  To paraphrase helps the listener understand your thought process and give you the opportunity to test your own listening skills.

Speak clearly.  Keep your voice level, high and hard to make sure you are heard.

Be proactive.  Listening, empathy, provide objective information.  Presenting a simple solution if you must.  Remember that communication is not their cause.

Be aware of your body long eyes.  What do you feel when that conversation is reflected in their body long eyes.  Show your interest by leaning forward when listening.  Do not cross your legs or arms.  Do not watch alone or uninterested.  Eye contact is very important.

Listen and learn.  When you hear it is to learn how people feel, how they express themselves.  Once you learn how a person thinks and feels, are better able to communicate with them.

” There are more than a verbal link between the words common, community and communication… Experience communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it is complicated, and you will find an experience of your own attitude change.  “  John Dewey

How can we improve this pivotal and vital skill to achieve success in our daily dealings in life? In order to achieve the heights of listening skills there are some basic conditions .If a person does not fulfill these conditions he can not succeed in becoming a good listener. The first and foremost is the impartiality in thinking. If you listen with biased opinion, you can not understand the point of view of the speaker. It is necessary to listen without having any preconceived notions. As the key to good communication is listening well so it is imperative for a listener to save his   judgment. He should form opinion not before listening others but after it.

Secondly always be conscious to the words of speaker. Do not let you to sway with the speaker. The best thing is to listen with the willingness. Keep your head cool and mind open to the words of the speaker.

Thirdly consider the words and ideas of the speaker in the context he is delivering. Do not remain mixing your ideas and opinion during the listening process. It is the thing to do in the end of listening.

Fourthly do not consider yourself supreme. You might be advance in thoughts and ideas but should listen the speaker attentively. Never consider about right and wrongs during listening. It will astray your mind and thoughts and you will not e able to catch the gist of the speech. Thinking oneself earnestly right is a major hurdle in the process of listening and leads one to failure.

If one does so he is unable to listen or communicate. It is a blunder to think other wrong because others are not always wrong and you are not always right.

Concentration of thoughts and mind is the next prerequisite of listening. If your body is in the auditorium and mind is in theatre you can not understand even the ABC of the speech. In individual process of listening at your home you can repeat the speech but not the live one. So it is necessary to keep yourself present at the spot of listening.

Another necessary thing to listen for understanding is repetition. You can get the idea correctly by repeating the listened words. This can be done with a friend colleague or even with yourself. Repeat the main idea for more than one time to comprehend it completely.

For the complete understanding of the spoken words by a speaker never miss a gesture of his body. Body language is a major source of many hidden or unspoken ideas.

The courtesy is paramount to prayer. Always be courteous polite and respectful for the speaker. It would enable you to make a better spiritual contact with the speaker and you would understand his ideas well.

Never become irrational during listening. If you feel anger or do not like the words of the speaker bear them patiently. Patience is things to count in listening.do not allow your emotions to dominate you.

Last but not the least tip is the constant coaching and practice of listening child does not learn language just by listening it once. Same is the case with us. We should practice listening especially with the persons we feel are difficult to understand and communicate.

Before Listening

          In anything we do in life, it is best to be prepared. Before listening to lectures and seminars, you need to first read up on the topic.

          How do you do this? Think about what you expect to hear. Focus on the title and think about what you already know or questions you may have.

While Listening

          During the lecture, it is important to listen for signposts. These will tell you the key points of the lecture. (e.g. “There are three points…”, “On the other hand…”, “Interestingly…”). Aside from this, listen for a change in tone. A change in intonation often signals that something important is about to be said.

After Listening

          Reflect on the things you heard during the lecture. This will help you remember these later. Try to discuss what you heard with other people such as your friend, family, or colleague. They may provide some good insight regarding some of the issues. You can also try making a mind-map of the contents of the lecture, or writing a few sentences to summarize the main points.

“There was very little eye contact, when I was speaking to one of my colleagues. He was very intent on watching his cell and email continuously. This devalued a lot of what I had to say”.

“Another colleague, was trying to remember what she wanted to say to me, and searched through her desk as I was talking to her, making me feel anxious, and left me rambling through most of my message”.

“I think it is the ‘fast food’ life that we are leading that is the cause of us hearing people but not listening to them. We try to get our message across in as short a time as possible. This means that we are so focused on our message we miss out on the response we get.  I sometimes feel that we don’t even really care about people’s response to our messages, and only notice extremes, such as negativity or anything that seriously impacts on our lives”.

Can you relate to her observations?

It seems from her experience that we are often in a state of distraction with so many things going on around us, and so much demanding our attention that the simple act of listening to a friend or colleague needs to take its place as yet another distraction in the queue. Face to face conversation has to compete with cell ‘phones and emails for attention. Our message has to penetrate through the other person’s urgent “to do” list if we are to be heard.

How does being treated like that make you feel? The work place, although crowded, can be a very lonely environment filled with people each pursuing their own agenda, so distracted by their own needs that they are unable to form fulfilling relationships with their colleagues. When we try to get our own message across we have to penetrate the barriers of their distractions, agendas, pressures and priorities. And we have to be tough enough to stay the course and say what we need to say in spite of the signals which suggest what we have to say is not important. The workplace can be a very lonely and sometimes hurtful place.

So how do we deal with the poor listening skills which not only block our relationships but also hinder our effectiveness?

One way is to adopt the same style ourselves. It is very easy to treat others as we are treated rather than the way we would like to be treated. So we allow our own distractions to get in the way of our listening. We listen with half an ear while we carry on with the things that are important to us. We send out the signals that the other person is getting in the way. And we learn to only listen to the harsh and negative comments which somehow always penetrate the barrier. Our listening is reduced to hearing the negatives, which only compounds the loneliness and the hurt.

There is, of course, another option. Listen to how the course participant I referred to earlier ended off her observations.

“I found that I was a mirror to how others listened to me. If I found their attention wandering I found my attention wandering instead of trying harder to engage them.  Once I realized I was doing this I tried harder to listen intently to all the conversations of the day. I was amazed to notice that when I listened more, other people responded to someone truly taking the time to listen”.

It seems that if we want to create more effective relationships in the workplace we need to become the kind of people we want others to be. We need to be the reality we are looking for. If we want to be listened to, we need to listen. If we don’t want to have to penetrate the distractions of others in order to be heard, we must check ourselves when we find that we are distracted and focus on hearing the person. This is not an easy solution, and it does take time. But you will notice that when you start living out the vision you would like to have for your environment, other people who share your values and vision will start responding positively, and in time your resolve will turn the tide and you will find yourself being treated in the way you treat others.

First, understand that “Communication is the response you get.” This means that the key is to say things in such a way that the person you’re talking to perceives it the way you meant it. If you say something that was meant to make the person feel good, and they are offended instead, that is poor communication. We have to continually monitor the person we are talking to and adjust our communication strategies based on the response (feedback) we get. By attending to the feedback, and adjusting appropriately, we improve a great deal.

The next step is to have a clear goal. Most people are talking randomly and actually have no true goal. But when things don’t “go their way” they are surprised or sometimes even upset. When speaking, have a goal and don’t say or do anything that doesn’t move you in the direction of that goal. By keeping focused on this, you can keep the conversation on track and meet your goals.

Another great strategy is to help others feel good about themselves. Give light complements, they should be subtle, sincere and true. Acknowledge their points in the conversation, people love and need to be validated. Show that you care about and appreciate the other person, this can be a great relationship builder.

Practice “Conversational Generosity.” If you want to be liked or influential, let others speak the majority of the time. People we’re talking to naturally perceive us as talking longer than we actually did, so be aware of this. If you speak 50% of the time, you will be seen as “hogging” the conversation. If you speak 40% of the time, the conversation will seem “balanced” to your speaking partner. If you speak 30% of the time, or less, you’ll be seen as generous, attractive, and a good listener. One of the easiest ways to be liked is to be a good listener. People are starving for someone to actively listen to them. Strangely, the less you say, the more people listen and retain what you do say. Try it and see!

Image via Wikipedia

For me personally, to answer the topic above, I would say yes.  More often than not, people keep talking but not having the ability to listen well and properly.  When we observe careers like psychologist, counsellor, educators, doctors, lawyers and many more, these are jobs that require a good listening skill.  You don’t see these people in the professions I’ve mentioned talking non-stop.  Instead, they are very good listeners. 

What makes a good listening skill?  Is it just listening non-stop but without voicing your views?  When do information gets absorbed instead.  Say you have a friend talking about his or her personal issues like marital affairs or family problems.  Would you listen on 80% and give opinions 20%, or listen for like 30% and airing your views and keep on talking for 70%?  There is a fine line there and it makes a big difference.  I’d say different people expect differently.  Based from my own personal experience, a lot of people do not like to be lectured, and they would prefer someone whom is able to listen to what they have to say.  Reversibly, what if you are the one needing attention and am not in the mood to be a listener?  Some would keep quiet and shut themselves out and some would require advices from others.  For this, I think there is a rather direct answer in which I find that the introverts tend to be good listeners and the extroverts, good talkers.  However, there is the opposite issue of this as well and that is something interesting to analyze.

Do you guys believe that when one listens more, one gains more as well?  I believe in this notion.  For myself personally, I have 2 common sides.  I can be talkative on days and can be quiet and listen on intently at other times.  I like to look at the situation at hand, and not based on a split personality but more towards trying to discern when to apply the theory of when to listen and when to talk.  This is another theory that I observe.  In a relationship mostly, you can see 1 is a great listener and 1 is a great talker.  There are cases whereby both parties are great talkers and listeners too, but it would be kind of boring in the long run.  What say you?  I would love to be in a relationship whereby both the natural listener and talker could change roles irrevocably.  At times, the boyfriend could keep on talking and the girlfriend listening intently, while on other occasions, having the boyfriend to listen and the girlfriend to talk and giving views.  Not nag, of course.  Alright, that should be on another topic – smiles. 

Think about a classroom setting or environment.  If you have a teacher standing there trying to teach something without the students listening to what she has to say, it would be kind of chaotic.  And I used to love lessons in school last time called Listening Comprehension.  Basically, as students, we were given speaker headsets to listen and there would be a cassette recorder of someone in a dialogue or relating a story.  After-which, once the recorder has finished, we would not be able to playback but having to answer questions given and writing them down. 

This is a good form of listening exercise, in my point of view and I encourage schools to have this session at different times.  Last but not least, think about your life and how you would want to inculcate when to listen on and when to give opinions, talk and to question.  Do experiment with this theory because life is a life-long journey.  I would love to be a good listener anytime and am still trying to be.