LISTENING SKILLS

❑ Listening to lectures/seminars/presentations
Critical / analytical listening
Identifying main ideas and supporting ideas
Note-taking skills

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CRITICAL / ANALYTICAL LISTENING
the goal is to evaluate or scrutinise what is being
said
is about analysing opinion and making a
judgement
involve analysis of the information being received
and alignment with what we already know or
believe
it does not necessarily mean that you are claiming
that the information you are listening to is
somehow faulty or flawed
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means engaging in what you are listening to by
asking yourself questions such as, ‘what is the
speaker trying to say?’ or ‘what is the main
argument being presented?’, ‘how does what
I’m hearing differ from my beliefs,
knowledge or opinion?’
often important, when listening critically, to
have an open-mind and not be biased by
stereotypes or preconceived ideas to broaden
your knowledge and perception of other people
and your relationships
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IDENTIFYING MAIN IDEAS
means to find out the general ideas or the gist of a
listening material
in a lecture, it is easy to get the main idea when
the lecture starts with “Today, we are going to
discuss …” or “At the end of this lecture, you
would be able to …”
In other instances where no indication of what is
going to be conveyed, the key to determining the
main idea is to listen for key words of the listening
text
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NOTE-TAKING
requires the skill of listening to the information,
understanding the gist of it and finally putting it down
into words as quickly as possible
Note-taking can be made easier by:
a) listening effectively
- summarize whatever you have listened to
(listen for important details, leave out the
unnecessary ones)
- jot down key words/phrases (eg. specific
details – names, dates, figures), leave out
examples and illustrations
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b) take notes effectively
- paraphrase what you have listened to, ie.
express it in a more concise manner and use
short forms as much as possible
- leave out unnecessary words (eg. Prepositions,
pronouns, articles)
- use headings, sub-headings and a numbering
system which you understand