CONCEPT:
Listening is known to be a complex process and as such can be defined in numerous ways, depending on the salience of a particular aspect of the process to the “definer”. Here are some examples of definitions given by experts in various disciplines.
| Architecture | An innovative and generative practice, a strategy of engagement that we employ deliberately to explore a different landscape other than the one framed by vision’ |
| Audiology | An active process, requiring us first to pay attention to, then process selected auditory stimuli, while ignoring other auditory information. |
| Interpersonal Communication | A behavior enacted by an individual in the service of communicating and interacting with others. |
| Language Learning | The primary modality that enables speech perception as the basis for language learning. |
| Linguistics | How people understand spoken language, conceptualized as a complex process that involves both bottom-up (literal) and top-down (inferential) processes |
| Management and Leadership | A relational construct that involves understanding the expressed idea and attitude from another person’s point of view |
| Media Studies | A means of engagement with media and the ways in which we can engage with each other through media |
| Musicology | Analytical mode of information processing performed by listener, how we hear organized sound intensities, pitches, timbres, and durations. |
| Philosophy | A cognitive activity that serves the epistemic goal of advancing knowledge that does not require interaction with other agents. |
| Psychology | The intentional selection organization and integration of verbal and nonverbal information provided in oral and/ or audio communication |
| Sound Studies | The primary way that humans experience sound. |
RESOURCES:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hijl19
MR: Constructing meaning through conscious attention to a source.
PERSONALIZE IT:
• Which of these definitions most appeal to you? Why?
• Which surprised you (that is, you’ve never considered the way it is defined)? Why?
• How would you define listening in relation to your own profession — language teaching?
