If Speaking is Silver, Listening is Gold

— Hearing refers to one’s ability to perceive sounds, by receiving vibrations through ears. In contrast, listening is a skill that requires one to use senses, including hearing and sense of touch. Hearing is physiological and only uses the ears while listening is psychological and requires the use of the brain to interpret the message. Active Listening builds trust and strong relationships, it can help you to resolve conflicts, it even helps you from missing important information, it also helps you to identify or anticipate problems. Thus, helps you to build more knowledge. While hearing may seem less important than listening as it is involuntary, it is passive and simply relies on inaction.


DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE LISTENING SKILLS
Listening is an everyday affair.Despite that, or probably owing to that, many of us shirk listening.In fact, most listeners see listening as a challenging task.Research corroborates (supports) the view that human beings spend more time listening that speaking.It is a skill most used by all of us; we get a little training in this.Right from our school days, we are formally trained in all the other three language skills, namely speaking, reading, and writing.

LISTENING VS HEARING
Hearing takes place when something disturbs the atmosphere, and that disturbance takes the form of pressure waves that strikes our eardrums as sound .For example, a truck rolling by on the road in front of our house would be just heard and not listened to.Listening is different .It expands on hearing when we pay attention to the meaning of what we hear.Therefore listening is all about consciously, actively and systematically processing information.Listening demands perfect coordination between the ears and brain, this results in decoding the speaker's message aptly.Regular practice and consistent efforts are required if we want to improve our listening skills.Effective listening is a dynamic activity that seeks out the meaning intended in messages, considers their motivation, evaluates the soundness of their reasoning and the reliability of their supporting material, calculates the value and risk of accepting their recommendations, and integrate them creatively into the world of listener.Thus, we quite often only hear the words someone else speaks.They are just vibration in the atmosphere.We nod, smile, perhaps even respond, but do we listen to the speaker around us? Listening requires us to be open to the meaning of the others persons'swords.It is no longer just about sounds but about the thoughts, feelings, point of view, expectations, memories, beliefs.

POOR LISTENING AND EFFECTIVE LISTENING
The major difference between poor listening and effective listening are: POOR LISTENING: • Either tries to blame the speaker and considers the subject to be dry.

ADVANTAGES OF GOOD LISTENING
We generally find that good listeners are good performers.Listening helps our learning, good listening ability increase knowledge, and develop critical thinking.Listening skills help in building effective relationship in our personal and professional life.It prevents mis communication.It also helps in solving problems.Effective listening helps in sharing problems, emotions, ideas and expressions.Good listening also improve decision making and critical thinking.

PROCESS OF LISTENING
Listening is highly an active process, in order to be part of it we need to be very alert and active.In fact, to be a good listener we require to understand how listening happens, listening involves the following stages: 1.Sensing: At this stage the listener has the physical hearing of the message because the sound waves fall on the eardrum.2.Recognizing: After hearing the physical sounds, the listener identifies and recognizes the pattern of sound.3.Interpreting: Now the listener starts decoding the message.As he/she employs his/her own values, belief, needs, ideas, etc… 4.Evaluating: After he or she understands what the message actually means, he/ she critically examines/ evaluates it.5.Responding: After this stage the listener is ready to respond and react.Remembering and memorizing: This is the final stage of listening.Good listening enables the listener to retain the information for future reference.

BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE LISTENING
Look at the eyes of the speaker as far as possible, or follow his/her movements.2.Summarize what the speaker is saying take down notes 3.Link what you are listening and what you already know.4.Ask and answer questions in your mind for the clarity in your understanding.TECHNIQUES FOR EFFECTIVE LISTENING 1.You should have an open mind and you should sit alert.2.You should increase the intensity of interest 3.Stop talking and do not interrupt the speaker unnecessarily 4.Take down notes or paraphrase the message in simple words.