Technical Knowledge Base

EFFECTIVE LISTENING SKILLS
“If speaking is silver, then listening is gold.” -- Turkish Proverb

Before we get into the techniques of effective listening, let’s define what we mean by the word “Listening.”

Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages.

Listening is an activity that most of us are not really taught how to do effectively. We tend to be overly concerned with the outgoing sounds, rather than the incoming signals. Listening is as important, maybe even more important, than speaking. Without proper listening skills it is difficult to communicate effectively with others.

We’ve all met the person who talks a mile a minute and doesn’t really want to hear what others have to say. Is this person actually communicating? The answer is NO. If you do all of the talking and never listen, you will never really communicate very well with others.

In this unit we will investigate effective listening skills, barriers to effective listening, and methods of improving our own listening skills.