Definition and

Importance of
Listening
FRELYN DURAN-BACALSO
Learning Outcomes
1. Define Listening.
2. State the importance of Listening.
3. Differentiate Listening and Critical Thinking.
4. Differentiate the features of spoken text.
5. Report to the class the assigned by team.
 Learning Objectives
 Understand the differences between listening and hearing.
 Explain the benefits of listening.
What is Listening?
 the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and
responding to a spoken and / or non-verbal message
 means paying attention not only to the story, but how it is
told, the use of language and voice, and how the other
person uses his or her body. In other words, it means being
aware of both verbal and non-verbal messages.
“We have two ears and one mouth”
Listening
vs
Hearning
 HEARING
Hearing is an accidental and automatic brain response to sound that requires
no effort. We are surrounded by sounds most of the time. For example, we are
accustomed to the sounds of airplanes, lawn mowers, furnace blowers, the
rattling of pots and pans, and so on.
 We hear those incidental sounds and, unless we have a reason to do otherwise,
we train ourselves to ignore them. We learn to filter out sounds that mean little to
us, just as we choose to hear our ringing cell phones and other sounds that are
important to us.
 LISTENING
 Listening, on the other hand, is purposeful and focused rather than accidental.
As a result, it requires motivation and effort. Listening, at its best, is active,
focused, concentrated attention for the purpose of understanding the meanings
expressed by a speaker.
Hearing VS Listening

HEARING LISTENING
Accidental Focused
Involuntary Voluntary
Effortless Intentional
 LISTENING HAS BENEFITS…
 You’ll gather critical facts before making decisions
 You can uncover underlying issues
 Active listeners have more successful interpersonal relationships
 You avoid “Trifling” conversation
 You’ll recognize the contributions of others
 CRITICAL THINKING
 It is the process by which people qualitatively and quantitatively assess the
information they accumulate.
 Critical thinking skills include observation, interpretation, analysis, inference,
evaluation, explanation, and metacognition.
 The concepts and principles of critical thinking can be applied to any context or
case, including the process of listening.
 Effective listening lets people collect information in a way that promotes critical
thinking and successful communication.
Features of Academic Spoken English
Spoken language has the following characteristics (Halliday, 1989, p.31)
 Variation in speed – but it is generally faster than writing

 Loudness or quietness

Gestures – body language

 Intonation

 Stress

 Rhythm

 Pitch range

 Pausing and phrasing

 SPOKEN LANGUAGE
 Spoken language is less complex than written language.
 Spoken language is grammatically less complex than written language.
 Spoken text are longer. This means that there is more repetition.
 Spoken texts also have shorter, less complex words and phrases.
 Spoken language has more words that refer to the speaker, more quantifiers
and hedges, and less abstractness.
THANK YOU!