The Perfect Listener: A Guide to Effective Listening Skills

Posted on Sep 22, 2024 in Language

Decalogue of the Perfect Listener

Adopt a curious and active look. Pay close attention to the speaker.
Be objective. Listen to what a person different from ourselves has to say.
Connect with the speaker’s perspective. Understand their message and their way of seeing things.
Discover the speaker’s main idea, objectives, and purpose.
Evaluate the speaker’s message.
React to the message. Speak when the speaker has finished.
Listen to everyone and everything.
Honor the education you received. Do not covet your neighbor’s word, do not fret, do not go wrong, do not use harsh words.
Do not covet your monologue in front of others.
Celebrate the intelligence of others. Do not talk in vain. Win in dialogue by being convincing.

Microskills for Listening Comprehension

Recognize

Identify the acoustic segments that compose speech: words and sounds, articles and nouns, verbs and pronouns, combinations of pronouns, etc.
Recognize phonemes, morphemes, and words.
Discriminate phonological oppositions of language: vowel/unstressed vowel, bed/cane, straw/box, hand/etc.

Select

Distinguish relevant words (nouns, verbs, etc.) from irrelevant ones (catchphrases, repetition, redundancy, etc.).
Recognize how elements are grouped into higher units of meaning: sounds into words, words into phrases, phrases into sentences, sentences into paragraphs or subject headings, etc.

Interpret

Understand the content of speech, the communicative intent and purpose, the global meaning, the message, the main ideas.
Discriminate relevant from irrelevant information.
Understand the details or supporting ideas.
Relate important ideas and details (e.g., thesis, argument, and anecdote).
Understand assumptions, implications, what is not said explicitly, ambiguity, double meanings, and ellipsis.
Understand the structure or organization of discourse (especially in lengthy monologues: the various parts, theme changes, etc.).
Identify words that mark the structure of the text, changes in subject, the opening of a new theme, and the conclusion.
Identify the dialectal variant (geographical, social, slang, etc.) and register (level of formality, degree of specificity, etc.) of speech.
Capture the tone of the speech: aggressiveness, irony, humor, sarcasm, etc.
Note the acoustic characteristics of speech: the voice, vocalization, pitch, attitude of the speaker, and so on; the speech rhythm, speed, pauses, intonation, etc.

Anticipate

Activate all the information you have about a person or topic to prepare for listening.
Predict the subject, language (words, expressions, etc.), and style of discourse based on what has already been said.

Infer

Infer information about the sender: age, sex, character, attitude, cultural and social origin, purposes, etc.
Extract information from the communicative context: location (street, house, office, classroom, etc.), roles of the sender and receiver, type of communication, etc.
Interpret nonverbal codes: gaze, gestures, movements, etc.

Retain

Remember words, phrases, and ideas for a few seconds to interpret them.
Retain the most relevant aspects of a speech in long-term memory: the basic data and communicative situation, the discourse structure, and some special words (rare, new, relevant).
Use various types of memory (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.) to retain information.

Strategies for Developing Listening Comprehension

For effective listening comprehension:

Students must have a reason to listen, which should be the objective of the exercise.
Understanding should be made visible and observable (through recording, writing, speaking, etc.) so that it can be commented on, improved, and evaluated. It is advantageous to work with visual media: paper notes, sketches, photographs, drawings, etc.
Students must be able to listen to the oral text more than once to concentrate on certain points: pronunciation, the meaning of a word, intonation, etc.

Follow these steps:

Introduce the subject of the text to be heard and the context. It may relate to the students’ personal interests to motivate them. This is important because it allows for anticipation.
Present a concrete and clear task for the student. For example, understanding an idea, a piece of information, counting the number of occurrences of a word, inferring information about the speaker, and so on. Specify how the response should be given: writing, drawing a picture, etc.
Present the oral discourse: give a speech, read aloud, play a tape or video, etc. Students work individually.
Ask students to compare their answers in pairs or small groups.
Listen to the discourse again.
Compare answers in pairs, small groups, or as a whole class. Finish the activity by checking if the answers are correct, returning to the oral discourse, and pausing at important points.

Comprehension Exercises

Mnemonic games. Some popular games are very useful for comprehension work, especially with younger students. For example, the game “say and repeat” with words.
Listen and draw. The result of understanding can be translated into a drawing. For example, each student draws a square representing the layout of furniture in their room, and then, in pairs, they are instructed to draw each other’s layouts.
Complete tables. Students must complete a table based on oral presentations. For example, it may involve interviewing people about their favorite sports.
Transfer information. Instead of a table, students can complete a diagram, a text with blanks, or a drawing that needs names and data added based on the spoken text.
Choose options. For example, students have three or more photographs (of people, landscapes, objects, etc.) and have to discover which one corresponds to the description they hear.
Identify errors. This involves finding the lies and errors (previously warned about) that a spoken text contains. For example, students have to explain what they usually do during the day, introducing three lies; the rest of the students must discover them.

Technological Resources

In addition to the techniques mentioned above, we also have technological resources like video (TV, VCR, and monitor) and audio (cassette tape). Currently, it is almost unimaginable to teach a language without using audio, video, or both.