How to improve listening and classroom attention

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What is listening?

Listening is a selective process by which sound communicated by some sources are received, critically interpreted and acted upon by the purposeful listener. This implies that one cannot listen properly from two or more sources of sound. Also for listening to be complete, the sound received is mostly interpreted and acted upon.

Difference between listening and hearing 

Hearing is a passive automatic process. It is the art of perceiving sound.it is physiological. On the other hand listening is more than just and involves both verbal and non verbal messages. It's also involves the manner of dress,cultural background, expectation of participants, venue etc.

Types of listeners.

  • Passive listener. The listener pay attention to the speaker than the message itself. 
  • Active listener. Active listener pay attention to the speaker, hear,interpret, analyse,apply and evaluate the message. 

Process of listening. 

  1. Reception. This is where you here without attending to the sound or noises around you. 
  2. Attention. This is listening passively with no effort to relate or understand what is being said.
  3. Integration. It is when you relate new information to old information eg when learning a certain concept. 
  4. Interpretation. This is  synthesising information or bringing it together and putting it into your own words. It involves figuring out how information affects you.
  5. Implication . This is drawing conclusions from information. 
  6. Application . This is applying information to personal experience. 
  7. Evaluation. This is judging of information in terms of accuracy and relevance to your circumstances. 

Why do learners listen?

  • Learners listen to absorb the skills taught. 
  • Listening helps to  absorb the information and ideas expressed so as to come up with clear coherent meaningful pictures. 
  • To share feelings when one expresses himself and is listened to ,he/she feel attended too.
  • To exert control at different levels. 
  • Listening make the communicants to be able to respond appropriately. 
  • Listening helps to participate actively in any conversation event. 

Factors that determine listening. 

1. Self interest 

For one to engage in any conversation, one must be interested in that topic. Listening here is effective when the listener is interested with the topic.

2. Who is telling. 

The person who is telling or speaking matters. The listener consider the social economic status of the speaker or the teller.

3. How it is told.

Here the listener consider the presentation skills applied by the speaker. Good presentation skills make the listening effective. 

Difficulties Encountered when listening. 

  1. Audibility.This is where the speaker fails to project the voice.
  2. Circumventing/verbosity.This is using very many words that are difficult to understand. Its also involves beating around the Bush saying without completing the intended message. 
  3. Noise or interruptions. This is having many sources of sounds interrupting the listener. 
  4. Vocabulary level. This is use of difficult words that are not understandable by the listener. 
  5. Mental barriers 
  6. Boring speaker 
  7. Pronunciation of words 
  8. Unfamiliarity with the subject under communication 
  9. Prejudice and bias. This is based on culture,religion,ethnic background, education level etc.
  10. Inattention. This is where the attention is not paid.

How to correct barriers to effective listening. 

  1. Read more English to know more vocabularies. 
  2. Ask for clarification when necessary. 
  3. Research on the subject prior to discussion. 
  4. Separate the message from the speaker and concentrate on that regardless of culture,religion or ethnic background. 
  5. Make a conscious decision to fight all opportunities that make you to lose concentration. 
  6. Remove all physical listening barriers .eg. switching off mobile phones, radios etc.

Strategies for sustaining classroom attention 

  • Use stimulus variation or attention drawing signals eg. Pausing,hand signals, use of pictures,calculated movements up and down the class. 
  • Establish incentives or contingencies as the classroom continues eg give students time to draw a diagram. 
  • Use feedback ie.comment on students performance eg good,well done,good attempt etc.
  • Avoid destruction such as noise and disorganisation in classroom especially during group work.
  • Use dramatic examples such as humerous.
  • Give students adequate work to keep them busy. 
  • Vary your mode of delivery, tone and voice during teaching.
  • Look out for signs of a fatigue,restlessness and address them appropriately and promptly. 
  • Use active works that lead to inquiry when giving students assignments. 
  • Use key words that lead to inquiry for learning purposes such as demonstrate, construct, clarify, discuss, investigate, evaluate, create, initiate describe etc. 

Remembering and forgetting 

Learners in classroom forget the information they learn or acquire. The teacher can notice this when most of the tests are given to learners and no body ever get full marks in most of the times.
This is an indication that between the time the materials are learned or even revised and the time the tests are taken some informations are lost through forgetting. 

Why students forget the content they learn.

Learners remember some things very well and others are completely forgotten. A good teacher should know why this happens so that he can try and create conditions that promotes memory all the time. 

The following are some of the factors that cause forgetting:

1.Rehearsal 

Learners who do not rehearse content often lose the connections they had learned.
Rehearsing involves constant repetition and review of content. The teacher should give learners time and places to do their rehearsal. The teacher should also ensure that learners rehearse contents that are meaningful to them. There is need to show learners how the content they are learning is related to what was learned earlier. 

2. Reinforcement 

Remembering is best promoted if learning is reinforced. When the Reinforcement is withdrawn in learning it causes extinction which is the disappearance of the learned response. If a learner displays the desirable behaviour without being reinforced, forgetting occurs. Teachers should reinforce the desirable behaviour to make them probable(to occur again)

3. Proactive inhibition 

Learners forget new content because old content interferes with its memory. what normally happens is that as the learners try to recall words in new content ,they experience some mix up. They remember some words and forget others. At the same time some words from old content are recalled.

4. Retroactive inhibition 

Learners forget old content because new content interferes with its memory. Here the learners forget some words from old content and recall words from new content.

Improving memory. 

Memory can be improved by increasing attention in classroom. This is done by:
  • Selecting a study environment which does not contain too many destructions such as noise,heat,cold,or activities and things that appeal to sight or hearing. 
  • Teachers should give the learners time and classrooms convenient for their studies and rehearsals.
  • The school should organise study time tables. 
  • Teachers should train learners how to conduct individual studies. For example how to pick out important points, review them immediately and again later.
  • Learners should be involved in distributed practice or massed practice depending on reason for study. Distributed practice involves taking short periods of study at a time and taking a break after each period. Massed practice refers to sitting for long hours of study.
  • The learners should be introduced to SQ3R Model of study which involves survey the material,raise questions, read it looking for answers, recite it and review it.



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