THE LISTENING PROCESS

Background Information

The 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution 1.10 committed all the provinces of the Anglican Communion to what is called a ‘listening process’. The resolution recognised that there are people who recognise themselves as having ‘homosexual orientation’ and that that they look to the church for pastoral care, moral direction and God’s transforming power for the living of their lives and the ordering of relationships. The resolution continues: ‘We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.’

This statement is made alongside an affirmation of faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union and of abstinence for those who are not called to marriage. The conference also could not advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions.
The Primates’ Meeting of 2005 urged the Anglican Consultative Council, which met later that year, to appoint a facilitator to monitor the work being done, share the results and enable further listening.

The ACC met in Nottingham and passed a resolution calling for the appointment of such a facilitator to establish "a means of monitoring the work done on the subject of human sexuality in the Communion" and to honour the process of mutual listening, including 'listening to the experience of homosexual persons' and the experience of local churches around the world in reflecting on these matters in the light of Scripture, Tradition and Reason.
At their meeting in Dar Es Salaam in 2007 the Primates commended the work of the Facilitator and asked for 'the preparation of material to assist the bishops at 2008 Lambeth Conference'. The present focus of the Facilitator is in producing that material in the form of a Study Guide.

The Listening Process
• Listening is a highly complex, interactive process “by which spoken language is converted to meaning in the mind” (Lundsteen, 1979, p. 1). Hearing is not listening!
• Listening entails, receiving, attending, and assigning meaning (Wolvin and Coakley, 1979). Assimilation and accomodation help in assigning meaning.

Purposes for Listening
• Discriminative (tapes of animal sounds, and other noises)
• Comprehensive listening (required in instructional activities)
• Critical listening (to evaluate messages-propaganda)
• Appreciative Listening (speakers, readers, classmates)
• Therapeutic Listening (sympathetic listening)

Comprehensive Listening Strategies (elementary)
Forming a picture (image + write about it)
Putting information into groups (categories, Chunking)
Asking questions: Why am I listening to this message?, do I know what ------means?, Does this information make sense to me?
Discovering the Plan (description, sequence, Comparison, cause and effect, problem/solution)
Note taking (Demonstrate by taking notes with the children)
Getting clues from the speaker (visual & verbal)

Critical Listening
• Help children to recognize, persuasion and propaganda, deceptive language loaded words). Propaganda devices (handout)
Step- Introduce commercials, explain deceptive language, analyze it, review concepts, provide practice, create commercials
Same procedure applies to advertisements

Appreciative Listening

-Important for reading aloud to students, repeated readings, oral presentations
Teaching appreciative Listening
Before reading: activate prior knowledge, background, set purpose for reading
During reading: Use Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA)-predictions, Reasoning & further predictions, proving
After: share their log and relate to their lives.
Enjoyment is reason enough to read aloud to children.


Authentic Listening Activities

- Acting out a story from one that is read.
- Making or doing something by following oral directions
- Participating in class or group discussions
- Getting information by listening to an announcement
- Working on group projects
- Critiquing a peer’s draft of a story after listening to it
- Enjoying good literature that is well presented orally
- Evaluating an issue that is being debated
- Evaluating products advertised in commercials
- Evaluating candidates from their campaign speeches

Strategies for Teaching Listening

Directed Listening Activity (DL-TA)
• Before Listening
• Listening during the story
• After Listening
The Structured Listening Activity (SLA)
• Concept Building
• Listening purpose
• Reading Aloud
• Questioning
• Reciting

The Process of Listening
We said earlier that the first step in listening effectively is to recognize certain fallacies or false notions. The next step is to understand the process.
Listening is a complex process—an integral part of the total communication process, albeit a part often ignored. This neglect results largely from two factors.

First, speaking and writing (the sending parts of the communication process) are highly visible, and are more easily assessed than listening and reading (the receiving parts). And reading behavior is assessed much more frequently than listening behavior; that is, we are more often tested on what we read than on what we hear. And when we are tested on material presented in a lecture, generally the lecture has been supplemented by readings.

Second, many of us aren’t willing to improve our listening skills. Much of this unwillingness results from our incomplete understanding of the process—and understanding the process could help show us how to improve. To understand the listening process, we must first define it.
Through the years, numerous definitions of listening have been proposed. Perhaps the most useful one defines listening as the process of receiving, attending, and understanding auditory messages; that is, messages transmitted through the medium of sound. Often, the steps of responding and remembering are also included.

The process moves through the first three steps—receiving, attending, understanding—in sequence. Responding and/or remembering may or may not follow. For example, it may be desirable for the listener to respond immediately or to remember the message in order to respond at a later time.

Types of listening

Discriminative listening
-Discriminative listening is the most basic type of listening, whereby the difference between difference sounds is identified. If you cannot hear differences, then you cannot make sense of the meaning that is expressed by such differences.

Comprehension listening
-The next step beyond discriminating between different sound and sights is to make sense of them. To comprehend the meaning requires first having a lexicon of words at our fingertips and also all rules of grammar and syntax by which we can understand what others are saying.

Comprehension listening
The next step beyond discriminating between different sound and sights is to make sense of them. To comprehend the meaning requires first having a lexicon of words at our fingertips and also all rules of grammar and syntax by which we can understand what others are saying.

Evaluative listening
In evaluative listening, or critical listening, we make judgments about what the other person is saying. We seek to assess the truth of what is being said. We also judge what they say against our values, assessing them as good or bad, worthy or unworthy.

Appreciative listening
In appreciative listening, we seek certain information which will appreciate, for example that which helps meet our needs and goals. We use appreciative listening when we are listening to good music, poetry or maybe even the stirring words of a great leader.

Sympathetic listening
In sympathetic listening we care about the other person and show this concern in the way we pay close attention and express our sorrow for their ills and happiness at their joys.

Empathetic listening
When we listen empathetically, we go beyond sympathy to seek a truer understand how others are feeling. This requires excellent discrimination and close attention to the nuances of emotional signals. When we are being truly empathetic, we actually feel what they are feeling.

Therapeutic listening
In therapeutic listening, the listener has a purpose of not only empathizing with the speaker but also to use this deep connection in order to help the speaker understand, change or develop in some way.

Dialogic listening
The word 'dialogue' stems from the Greek words 'dia', meaning 'through' and 'logos' meaning 'words'. Thus dialogic listening mean learning through conversation and an engaged interchange of ideas and information in which we actively seek to learn more about the person and how they think.
Dialogic listening is sometimes known as 'relational listening'.

Relationship listening
Sometimes the most important factor in listening is in order to develop or sustain a relationship. This is why lovers talk for hours and attend closely to what each other has to say when the same words from someone else would seem to be rather boring.