What are listening skills? Enlist the types of listening skills

Types of Listening

1. Discriminative listening:

As the name itself suggests, Discriminative listening is the most basic type of listening, whereby the difference between the sounds is identified. If you cannot hear difference, then you cannot grasp the meaning that is expressed by such difference.

We learn to find the difference between sounds within our own language early, and later are unable to discriminate between the phonemes of other languages. This is one reason why people belonging to one country find it difficult to speak the language of another nation, as they find the sounds similar, but cannot distinguish the subtle sounds that are required in that language.

Likewise, unless a person is attentive to the slight variation in the tone of the speaker’s voice, he is less likely to discern the emotions experienced by the speaker.

2. Comprehension listening:

When the discrimination between sounds is achieved, one should learn to make sense of the perceived sound. To comprehend the meaning, one requires a lexicon of words and all rules of grammar and syntax by which one can understand what others are saying.

The same is true with regard to the visual components of communication. An understanding of the body language helps us understand what the other person really means.

The communication, some words are more important and some are less and comprehension is often facilitated by the extraction of key facts and words from a verbose communication.

3. Evaluative listening:

Evaluative listening is also called ‘critical listening’ because 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 about our values, assessing them as good or bad, worthy or unworthy. Evaluative listening is particularly relevant when the other person is trying to persuade us, perhaps to change our behavior or belief held by us.

4. Appreciative listening:

In appreciative listening, the main intention is to seek certain information which will be appreciated. For example, the information that helps meet our goals and needs are looked for. We use appreciative listening when we are listening to good music, poetry or may be even the stirring words of a great leader.

5. Empathetic listening:

When we listen empathetically, we seek to understand t the beliefs, moods emotions and goals of other people. This requires excellent discrimination and close attention to the nuances of emotional signals.

In order to make others exposes their deep emotions to us, we also need to demonstrate our empathy in our demeanor towards them, asking sensitively and in a way that encourages self-disclosure.

6. Therapeutic listening:

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

This not only happens when you go to see a therapist but also in many social situations, where friends and family seek to both diagnose problems from listening and also to help the speaker find a remedy for those problems. This also happens in work situations, where Managers, HR people, trainers and Coaches seek to help employees learn and develop.

7. Dialogic listening:

The word ‘dialogue’ stems from the Greek words ‘dia’, meaning ‘through’ and ‘logos’ meaning ‘words’. Thus dialogic listening means learning thorough conversation. It is 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 also known as ‘relational listening’ because with the help of exchange of ideas while listening, we also indirectly create a relation.