FACULTY OF PLANTATION AND AGROTECHNOLOGY

DIPLOMA IN PLANTING INDUSTRY MANAGEMENT

SEMESTER 5: OCT 2020-MARCH 2021

TITLE: GROUP ASSIGNMENT CHAPTER 6

COURSE: INC271

LECTURER’S NAME: MUHAMMAD QISTI BIN ABDULLAH

CLASS: M3AT1105E

PREPARED BY:

NO. NAME STUDENT ID

1. ABDUL HADI BIN KHAIRUL MUNIR 2018291094

2. MUHAMAD MU’AZ BIN SUKAR 2018295976

3. MUHAMMAD MURTADHA BIN MANSOR 2018295466

4. NORHAYATI AZMAN 2018290142

5. SITI NURFATIHAH BINTI MOHD NOOR 2018258328

SUBMISSION DATE: 23/11/2020

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A) Based on your understanding, define listening, describe its five stage and

identify some skills for improving listening at each stage.

Listening is an active process by we make sense of, assess and respond to what we

hear. According to English Club, they defined listening as receiving language through the

ears. It is involve identifying the sounds of speech and processing them into words and

sentence. Thus, listening is also physiological phenomenon and psychological act

(Wikipedia, 2020)

There are five stages of listening. Firstly, receiving process. It is the intentional focus

on hearing a speaker’s message, which happens when we filter out other sources so that

we can isolate the massage and avoid the confusing massage. Second, understanding

stage. This stage we will attempt to learn the meaning of the message. Next, remembering

stage. It means we can remember all the sentence that we heard. It begins with listening,

if you can’t remember something that was said, you might not have been listening

effectively. The fourth stage is evaluating or judging the value of the massage. Usually, it

happens when we can give personal opinion about the massage. We determine either the

massage is good or bad. Last stage is responding or we referred it as feedback. This

stage, you will indicate your involvement.

There are a few methods to improve the process of listening at each stage. For first

stage, we must give the full attention to the speaker, to make the process of understanding

become smooth, we must ask the questions for clarification. Third stage, we can repeat

key names or concept to improve our memory. For evaluating stage, we need to separate

the facts from the speaker’s opinion to make better critical judgement. Lastly, the method

that we can use to improve responding process is resist responding to the speaker’s

feelings by trying to solve their problems.

(300 words)

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B) Explain the major barriers to effective listening.

The first of major barrier to effective learning is prejudice. Oscar Wilde said, “Listening

is a very dangerous thing. If one listens one can be convinced.” Unfortunately, some of

our default ways of processing information and perceiving others lead us to rigid ways of

thinking. We typically aim to maintain our ways of thinking as we indulge in prejudiced

listening to avoid being convinced of anything different. This form of bias is a barrier to

effective listening, because when we judge a person on the basis of his or her identity or

ideas, we generally stop listening in an active or ethical manner. Often you can have a

hard time listening because you don't agree with the speaker. We, as humans, often

appear to be closed-minded. If you have an emotional reaction to a speaker, or if you

disagree with his/her ideas on a personal level, you can allow personal biases to distract

you. Keep your mind open. You may not agree with the speaker, but his or her message

may be accurate. If you hear them out, you'll never know. (Schmitz, 2012)

Next the major barrier to effective listening is environmental and physical barriers to

listening. Environmental variables such as lighting, temperature and furniture have an

effect on our ability to listen. A room that's too dark can make us sleepy, just like a room

that's too warm or cold can increase consciousness of our physical discomfort to the point

that it's distracting. Some of the seating arrangements make listening simpler, while others

divide people. In general, listening is better when listeners are in direct contact with the

eye and are close to the speaker. In Chapter 5 "Nonverbal Message" that when group

members are allowed to select a leader, they always choose the individual who sits at the

middle or head of the table. Even if an individual may not have exhibited any leadership

skills, people subconsciously gravitate towards non-verbally accessible speakers. The

ability to see and hear a person effectively enhances people's confidence in their ability

to obtain and process information. Eye contact and physical proximity can also be

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impaired by noise. As we learned in Chapter 1, noises such as a whirling air conditioner,

barking dogs or a ringing fire alarm can obviously interfere with listening despite direct

lines of sight and well-placed furniture. (Schmitz, 2012)

Another barrier to effective listening is a general lack of listening preparation.

Unfortunately, most people have never received any formal training or instruction related

to listening. Although some people think listening skills just develop over time, competent

listening is difficult, and enhancing listening skills takes concerted effort. Even when

listening education is available, people do not embrace it as readily as they do

opportunities to enhance their speaking skills. After teaching communication courses for

several years, I have consistently found that students and teachers approach the listening

part of the course less enthusiastically than some of the other parts. Listening is often

viewed as an annoyance or a chore, or just ignored or minimized as part of the

communication process. In addition, our individualistic society values speaking more than

listening, as it’s the speakers who are sometimes literally in the spotlight. Although

listening competence is a crucial part of social interaction and many of us value others we

perceive to be “good listeners,” listening just doesn’t get the same kind of praise, attention,

instruction, or credibility as speaking. Teachers, parents, and relational partners explicitly

convey the importance of listening through statements like “You better listen to me,”

“Listen closely,” and “Listen up,” but these demands are rarely paired with concrete

instruction. So unless you plan on taking more communication courses in the future, this

chapter may be the only instruction you receive on the basics of the listening process,

some barriers to effective listening, and how we can increase our listening competence.

Getting ready to speak or thinking about your counterargument. Listening is more than

waiting for your turn to talk, yet many of us can get distracted by planning what we will

say next. This some tips to avoid from lack of listening which is make it a habit to listen

attentively, it is advisable to assume that the other person knows something that you may

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not know and avoid thinking about how to reply when the other person is speaking and

this habit can be overcome by taking notes while the other person is speaking (Schmitz,

2012).

Our ability to process more information than what comes from one speaker or source

creates a barrier to effective listening. While people speak at a rate of 125 to 175 words

per minute, we can process between 400 and 800 words per minute (Hargie, 2011). This

gap between speech rate and thought rate gives us an opportunity to side-process any

number of thoughts that can be distracting from a more important message. Because of

this gap, it is impossible to give one message our “undivided attention,” but we can occupy

other channels in our minds with thoughts related to the central message. For example,

using some of your extra cognitive processing abilities to repeat, rephrase, or reorganize

messages coming from one source allows you to use that extra capacity in a way that

reinforces the primary message.The difference between speech and thought rate

connects to personal barriers to listening, as personal concerns are often the focus of

competing thoughts that can take us away from listening and challenge our ability to

concentrate on others’ messages. Two common barriers to concentration are self-

centeredness and lack of motivation (Brownell, 1993). For example, when our self-

consciousness is raised, we may be too busy thinking about how we look, how we’re

sitting, or what others think of us to be attentive to an incoming message. Additionally, we

are often challenged when presented with messages that we do not find personally

relevant. In general, we employ selective attention, which refers to our tendency to pay

attention to the messages that benefit us in some way and filter others out. So the student

who is checking his or her Twitter feed during class may suddenly switch his or her

attention back to the previously ignored professor when the following words are spoken,

“This will be important for the exam” (Schmitz, 2012).

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 Another common barrier to effective listening that stems from the speech and thought

rate divide is response preparation. Response preparation refers to our tendency to

rehearse what we are going to say next while a speaker is still talking. Rehearsal of what

we will say once a speaker’s turn is over is an important part of the listening process that

takes place between the recalling and evaluation and/or the evaluation and responding

stage. Rehearsal becomes problematic when response preparation begins as someone

is receiving a message and hasn’t had time to engage in interpretation or recall. In this

sense, we are listening with the goal of responding instead of with the goal of

understanding, which can lead us to miss important information that could influence our

response (Schmitz, 2012).

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 c) Define the four styles of listening and explain how each may be used effectively.

Listening is essential part of communication as the llistening is a process of creating

meaning from, selecting, attending to, remembering as well as responding to oral and

nonverbal messages. Meanwhile, hearing is the process of psychology that decoding sounds

from the speaker regarding the messages that is received. There are four significant styles of

effective such as the empathy and objective, non-judgmental and critical, active as well as the

polite and impolite listening. Thus, the effective listening is important to ensure that the

information from the speaker is clearly understood and received by the listener.

First of all, the empathy and objective listening is a mechanism that takes the input of

others during interaction sensitively and attentively. The definition of empathic listening is to

see the world as they see it as well as to feel what they actually feel and empathic

listening often help in a better relationship. Meanwhile, the objective listening is going

beyond empathy which measure feelings and meaning against some objective in reality.

Frequently called the constructive listening which consider the other person's feedback by

listening empathically, support and inspiration instead of criticism or advice are the important

feature of empathic listening. Indeed, empathy referred to emotionally communicate with

another person in finding the ties between yourself and your experience, so that you are able

to react more wholeheartedly. For example, we must be presentable to eliminate the external

distractions and do not prepare your reactions when someone is speaking. Next, the main

component of being an empathic listener is compassion that engaging with another person's

emotional experience. In other words, we always need to try to find comparisons, although we

haven't encountered the same scenario as the speaker. As a revealed, we can make a time

to listen emphatically if a colleague says he or she has problems adapting to an increased

workload. Other than that, wisdom is also significant if someone shares something with you

emotionally because they respect your judgment and experience. Moreover, wisdom requires

understanding the speaker's input and evaluating the situations surrounding the issues so that

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all the related variables are understandable. The benefit of being an empathic listener is that

work connections are established if we have shown that we able to listen empathically, then

the others will be more able to communicate with us. Hence, this will help develop trust and

more constructive organizational experiences. As well, wisdom will help us to behave closely

if we have the habit of respecting the feelings of other people which can affects our life to be

more polite and compassionate. Another example, if a colleague has suffered from the tone

of emails from a colleague, we can consider updating and encouraging our email texts to them.

Therefore, they typically work better as a team, understand each other, increases the

productivity as colleagues trust as well as when disputes decrease, they will spend more than

one day working and thus they able to generate more income (Kilpatrick, 2018).

In addition, non-judgemental and critical listening are also a listening style. Trying to

understand the other person is the essence of non-judgmental listening. It is about moving

beyond just hearing the words spoken and knowing precisely what the other individual is

saying. We should set our opinions aside as the listener and try not to get distracted by our

feelings and emotions. It is also not always necessary to respond to what the other person

says, and we should continue to listen and value them. Our purpose is not to judge or criticize

the other person, but simply to listen to what they say and receive it. Listening without

judgement really allows the speaker to feel heard and valued (Oakes, 2020). Moreover, the

critical listening is a form of listening that is generally not addressed, as comprehension, critical

thinking, and judgment are necessary. It is often seen to make assumptions during listening

as a barrier to understanding a person, and there is a lot of truth in that. Critical listening,

though, happens when you want to hear what the other person is thinking, but you also have

a reason or responsibility to determine what you are told and how it should be spoken. For

instance, when you watch a television debate, if an election is coming and you will need to

determine how to vote for it you will use some kind of critical listening. You're listening to me

and analysing it. While the relevance and meaning of critical listening is almost universally

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denoted by learning and communication experts, critical listening is used every day when it

comes to everyday life. The trick, though is to try to comprehend the other entity first before

one analysis it (Kilpatrick, 2018).

Moreover, the style of effective listening is active listening. Indeed, the definition of

active listening is the ability to focus completely on a speaker, comprehend the information,

respond thoughtfully, and understand their message. According to the article which entitled

the effects of active listening, reformulation, and imitation on mediator success: preliminary

results, (Jacques Fischer-Lokou, 2016) the uses of active listening is defined as the

negotiation that has promising more than reformulation and imitation in development of

agreements. Subsequently, active listening is considered to induce a feeling of trust than

imitation that it seems hard to support negotiators in crafting agreements. Next, the method of

active listening offers many possibilities for negotiator to consider and listen as they adapt to

new environments. For instance, through active listening, the negotiator might repeat a whole

sentence and he might repeat only the last words if he judges it useful. Other than that, it is

also demonstrated through signals like questions, reformulations, intonations, facial

expressions, imitations of word endings, gestures or acts which recommend the listener

perceives unmentioned feelings and facts (Chavanis & Gava, 2014). As a revealed, active

listening needs the emotional and empathic involvement of a listener that consists of sensing

the emotional needs of processing what has been said, patient, understanding and responding

by using verbal or non-verbal responses, as well as asking questions that indicate active

attention (Bodie et al., 2013). Besides, the art of active listening is not simply the practice of

individual skills such as maintaining eye contact or connectedness with others whereby real

depth and open posture but concerns a state of being, thus meaning are added to interactions

(Ellis and Abbott, 2018). Moreover, in clinical and therapeutic settings, illness, pain and

treatment are always ‘triggers’ for feelings of distress and fears in patients, that represent the

personal and professional challenges for the health professional (Maunder and Hunter, 2012).

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Therefore, for patients to follow medical and therapeutic advice can be delivered by listening

with all the senses by validating the speaker’s emotions, empathic listening builds the

necessary trust, and using reflective questioning. Hence, research demonstrates that active-

empathic listening is associated with higher patient and practitioner satisfaction rates and the

maintenance of positive health behaviours (Hojat et al., 2011; Menendez et al., 2015).

Last but not lease, the polite and impolite listening styles. The politeness is defined as

the various ways that polite behaves when talked or perceived about members of socio-

cultural group and vice versa for the impolite (pourdana, 2017). Significantly, these styles of

listening can be used when it is not needed you to either disagree or agree with the speaker

regarding something. For instance, when the speaker is talking or explaining something to

you, you try not to interrupt the speaker or try to change the topic. Instead, the listener needs

to patiently hear and patiently wait they finish talking before interrupting. Nonetheless, in order

to perceive the possible illocutionary force of a spoken discourse acts or make appropriate

request speech act, the listener needs to acquire adequate the effective pragmalinguistic

knowledge such as the politeness or directness of utterances as well as the knowledge of

socio-pragmatic like the relative imposition of a speech act in the given cultural community to

prevent the embarrassment of impolite or rude by the native speakers. Other than that, when

the speaker speaking, we need to show a good facial expression like maintaining a good eye

contact or shows empathy to speaker such as listening patiently without saying any

disagreement and avoid arguing with what they have been said. Besides, impolite is known

as rude or interrupting the speaker when they have not yet finished their words. However, this

violation of impoliteness only can be dealt with complaints for being interrupted to the

chairperson. Furthermore, the expression of listener like a face-threatening will results in

rejection of speaker and it requires the speaker will be in the eminent threat of losing face. As

a consequence, it is so significant to learn a polite expression which is a request speech that

act in different contexts with different people.

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 In a nutshell, the styles of effective listening are significant to people to determine their

messages is being delivered clearly to the audiences verbally or nonverbally. Therefore, it is

highly suggested to retain and acquire certain pragmatic and linguistic strategies that can be

used as the appropriate language in interactions with dynamic variables.

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REFERENCES

Jacques Fischer-Lokou, L. L. (2016). Effects of Active Listening, Reformulation, and Imitation

on Mediator Success: Preliminary Results. SAGE JOURNAL , 10-47 .

Kilpatrick, J. (2018, October 31). oureverydaylife. Retrieved from Types of Listening Skills:

https://oureverydaylife.com/types-of-listening-skills-4232590.html

Oakes, L. (2020, January 6). Retrieved from Non-judgemental listening: how and why?:

https://hsrpsychology.co.uk/blog/non-judgemental-listening-how-and-why/

pourdana, M. H. (2017). Politeness and Indirect Request Speech Acts: GenderOriented

Listening Comprehension in Asian EFL Context . International Journal of Applied

Linguistics & English Literature , 4-16.

Schmitz, A. (2012, December 29). Barriers to effective listening. Retrieved from creative

commons: https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/a-primer-on-communication-

studies/s05-02-barriers-to-effective-listenin.html

Ted Brown, M.-l. Y. (202 ). Listening and interpersonal communication skills as predictors of

resilience in occupational therapy students: A cross-sectional study. british jpurnal of

occupational therapy , 2-12 .

Wikipedia. (2020, November 22). Listening . Retrieved from wikipedia.org:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listening

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