![]() Research has shown that reading and listening skills do not improve at the same rate when only reading is taught. Listening is a different activity from reading and requires different skills. While some of the skills attained through reading apply to listening, the assumption is far from completely valid. (2) We have assumed that learning to read will automatically teach one to listen. This can happen to people with both high and low levels of intelligence. If a person has not acquired these listening skills, his ability to understand and retain what he hears will be low. To be good listeners we must apply certain skills that are acquired through either experience or training. A poor listener is not necessarily an unintelligent person. There is no denying that low intelligence has something to do with inability to listen, but we have greatly exaggerated its importance. (1) We have assumed that listening ability depends largely on intelligence, that “bright” people listen well, and “dull” ones poorly. Why then have so many years passed without educators developing formal methods of teaching students to listen? We have been faced with several false assumptions which have blocked the teaching of listening. Listening training-if it could be called training-has often consisted merely of a series of admonitions extending from the first grade through college: “Pay attention!” “Now get this!” “Open your ears!” “Listen!”Ĭertainly our teachers feel the need for good listening. Little emphasis is placed on speaking, and almost no attention has been given to the skill of listening, strange as this may be in view of the fact that so much lecturing is done in college. About six years are devoted to formal reading instruction in our school systems. We have focused attention on reading, considering it the primary medium by which we learn, and we have practically forgotten the art of listening. Gap in Trainingīehind this widespread inability to listen lies, in our opinion, a major oversight in our system of classroom instruction. In fact, after we have barely learned something, we tend to forget from one-half to one-third of it within eight hours it is startling to realize that frequently we forget more in this first short interval than we do in the next six months. What happens as time passes? Our own testing shows-and it has been substantiated by reports of research at Florida State University and Michigan State University 1-that two months after listening to a talk, the average listener will remember only about 25 % of what was said. These extensive tests led us to this general conclusion: immediately after the average person has listened to someone talk, he remembers only about half of what he has heard-no matter how carefully he thought he was listening. In each case the person tested listened to short talks by faculty members and was examined for his grasp of the content. At the University of Minnesota we examined the listening ability of several thousand students and of hundreds of business and professional people. They have ears that hear very well, but seldom have they acquired the necessary aural skills which would allow those ears to be used effectively for what is called listening.įor several years we have been testing the ability of people to understand and remember what they hear. It can be stated, with practically no qualification, that people in general do not know how to listen. This communication, businessmen are discovering, depends more on the spoken word than it does on the written word and the effectiveness of the spoken word hinges not so much on how people talk as on how they listen. ![]() Business is tied together by its systems of communication. These comments reflect part of an awakening that is taking place in a number of management circles. ![]() I’ve about decided that it’s the most important link in the company’s communications, and it’s obviously also the weakest one.” “It’s interesting to me that we have considered so many facets of communication in the company, but have inadvertently overlooked listening.“I’ve been thinking back about things that have gone wrong over the past couple of years, and I suddenly realized that many of the troubles have resulted from someone not hearing something, or getting it in a distorted way.”.But now that I am aware of it, I think that perhaps 80 % of my work depends on my listening to someone, or on someone else listening to me.” “Frankly, I had never thought of listening as an important subject by itself.Here are three typical comments made by participants: Later, an executive seminar on listening was held. Recently the top executives of a major manufacturing plant in the Chicago area were asked to survey the role that listening plays in their work.
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