Listening is a skill that has a critical role in every person’s life, especially students and learners. Every person must have this skill as it is beneficial for communication. But firstly, there is need to understand another term i.e. “hearing”. Hearing simply means to receive sound by ears. But listening means to receive the sound with proper attention and concentration and to understand it. Hearing only involves ears but listening requires mind too.
In 90% of cases we people just hear. We think that we are listening to other person but actually we are not listening. Because other things keep going in our mind while communicating with other person. Let’s see a simple example, we usually hear the street hawkers vending by speaking loudly. We hear that there is sound outside but we can’t understand what they are selling until we hear by paying full attention.
So, here are some tips to develop and improve listening skill and to become a good listener.
Pay attention and make eye contact
In order to listen the speaker we need to pay proper attention and listen with concentration. We need to make eye contact with speaker if we want to understand what the speaker is saying. We need to be present there,our mind should not be somewhere else. The important thing is to be attentive.
Ask questions
We need to ask questions to speaker just to ensure that we understand the information. We should visualise the mental picture of what the speaker is saying and then ask the question. If we ask questions then our communication go smoothly and the speaker feels excited to talk to us and sometimes tells us extra information that may helpful for us.
Don’t be fakers
Fakers are the persons who pretend that they are listening to the speaker. But actually they are not listening and thinking about something else. For instance, there is a student who don’t want to listen the lecture. But he will like he is listening. He will face the teacher and also will nod his head that he is understanding everything,but at the same time he may be thinking of movies,home,friends or anything else.
So we should not be like fakers.
Don’t interrupt
When speaker is speaking, we should listen to him carefully until he ends up his talk. We should not interrupt him in between his talk. It may leave a bad impression on him. If we want to ask question or make any suggestion then we can ask after the speaker is done.
Give response to speaker
In order to show that we understand what the speaker is saying, give proper response to speaker. We can respond by nodding our head or with our facial expressions. We can also use some words like, “oh….”, “hmmm”, “ yes” etc.
We should not remain silent or keep our head down while communicating. It may make the speaker feel that you are not listening to him.
Copy speaker’s feeling
If speaker is saying something then we should copy his feeling or feel his emotional feeling. It may give him a sense of belongingness and he thinks that you understand him.
For e.g. If someone is telling you his broken heart story then you can involve in his feeling by saying that, “oh…what a tragedy!!”, “it’s terrible” etc.
And if someone is telling you about his birthday party then you can say, “wow….that’s great”, “so, how many gifts have you received?”
So, these are some points to take care of while communicating and to develop an effective listening skill. We hope this article will help you.
