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MODUL PERKULIAHAN

Active Listening for


Communication

Modul ini dipergunakan sebagai bahan


ajar (materi) dalam perkuliahan Active
Listening for Communication yang berisi
dialog-dialog dengan topik keseharian.
Fakultas Program Studi Tatap Muka Kode MK Disusun Oleh

01
Fakultas Bahasa Bahasa Inggris S1 190713001 Heri Heryono, S.S., M.Hum.

Abstract Kompetensi
Mata kuliah ini berisi materi, skills dan latihan Mahasiswa memiliki kemampuan
menyimak (listening) dengan topik keseharian. dalam memahami konsep dasar
Ada pun listening skills yang di pelajari adalah tentang strategi mendengarkan baik
mendengarkan main idea, detail, inference. secara general maupun detail dari
Kemudian mahasiswa mampu mereproduksi model berbagai topik. Mampu mengucap-
listening yang telah dipelajari untuk menunjang ulang setiap istilah yang terdapat
speaking skills-nya. Pada mata kuliah ini pada topik tertentu. Dapat
mahasiswa menggunakan buku ajar dan referensi menggunakan istilah-istilah tersebut
yang disesuaikan dengan tingkat kemahiran dalam dialog dialog sehari-hari
menyimak. Mahasiswa diharapkan bertambah dari
segi vocabulary dan melatih pendengaran meraka
yang bisa digunakan dalam sehari-hari dan
dimanapun berada.
The Importance of Listening in Effective Communication
“Are you listening to me?” This question is often asked because the speaker thinks the
listener is nodding off or daydreaming. We sometimes think that listening means we only
have to sit back, stay barely awake, and let a speaker’s words wash over us. While many
Americans look upon being active as something to admire, to engage in, and to excel at,
listening is often understood as a “passive” activity. More recently, O, the Oprah
Magazine featured a cover article with the title, “How to Talk So People Really Listen: Four
Ways to Make Yourself Heard.” This title leads us to expect a list of ways to leave the
listening to others and insist that they do so, but the article contains a surprise ending. The
final piece of advice is this: “You can’t go wrong by showing interest in what other people
say and making them feel important. In other words, the better you listen, the more you’ll be
listened to.”Jarvis, T. (2009, November). How to talk so people really listen: Four ways to
make yourself heard.

Listening vs. Hearing


Hearing is an accidental and automatic brain response to sound that requires no effort. We are
surrounded by sounds most of the time. For example, we are accustomed to the sounds of
airplanes, lawn mowers, furnace blowers, the rattling of pots and pans, and so on. We hear
those incidental sounds and, unless we have a reason to do otherwise, we train ourselves to
ignore them. We learn to filter out sounds that mean little to us, just as we choose to hear our
ringing cell phones and other sounds that are more important to us.

Listening, on the other hand, is purposeful and focused rather than accidental. As a result, it
requires motivation and effort. Listening, at its best, is active, focused, concentrated attention
for the purpose of understanding the meanings expressed by a speaker. We do not always
listen at our best, however, and later in this chapter we will examine some of the reasons why
and some strategies for becoming more active critical listeners.

‘20 Active Listening for Communication Biro Akademik dan Pembelajaran


2 Heri Heryono, S.S., M.Hum http://www.widyatama.ac.id
Benefits of Listening
Listening should not be taken for granted. Before the invention of writing, people conveyed
virtually all knowledge through some combination of showing and telling. Elders recited
tribal histories to attentive audiences. Listeners received religious teachings enthusiastically.
Myths, legends, folktales, and stories for entertainment survived only because audiences were
eager to listen. Nowadays, however, you can gain information and entertainment through
reading and electronic recordings rather than through real-time listening. If you become
distracted and let your attention wander, you can go back and replay a recording. Despite that
fact, you can still gain at least four compelling benefits by becoming more active and
competent at real-time listening.
You Become a Better Student
When you focus on the material presented in a classroom, you will be able to identify not
only the words used in a lecture but their emphasis and their more complex meanings. You
will take better notes, and you will more accurately remember the instructor’s claims,
information, and conclusions. Many times, instructors give verbal cues about what
information is important, specific expectations about assignments, and even what material is
likely to be on an exam, so careful listening can be beneficial.
You Become a Better Friend
When you give your best attention to people expressing thoughts and experiences that are
important to them, those individuals are likely to see you as someone who cares about their
well-being. This fact is especially true when you give your attention only and refrain from
interjecting opinions, judgments, and advice.
People Will Perceive You as Intelligent and Perceptive
When you listen well to others, you reveal yourself as being curious and interested in people
and events. In addition, your ability to understand the meanings of what you hear will make
you a more knowledgeable and thoughtful person.
Good Listening Can Help Your Public Speaking
When you listen well to others, you start to pick up more on the stylistic components related
to how people form arguments and present information. As a result, you have the ability to
analyze what you think works and doesn’t work in others’ speeches, which can help you
transform your speeches in the process. For example, really paying attention to how others
cite sources orally during their speeches may give you ideas about how to more effectively
cite sources in your presentation.

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3 Heri Heryono, S.S., M.Hum http://www.widyatama.ac.id
Listening Styles
Aristotle classified listeners into those who would be using the speech to make decisions
about past events, those who would make decisions affecting the future, and those who would
evaluate the speaker’s skills. This is all the more remarkable when we consider
that Aristotle’s audiences were composed exclusively of male citizens of one city-state, all
prosperous property owners.
Our audiences today are likely to be much more heterogeneous. Think about the classroom
audience that will listen to your speeches in this course. Your classmates come from many
religious and ethnic backgrounds. Some of them may speak English as a second language.
Some might be survivors of war-torn parts of the world such as Bosnia, Darfur, or northwest
China. Being mindful of such differences will help you prepare a speech in which you
minimize the potential for misunderstanding.

People
The people-oriented listener is interested in the speaker. People-oriented listeners listen to the
message in order to learn how the speaker thinks and how they feel about their message. For
instance, when people-oriented listeners listen to an interview with a famous rap artist, they
are likely to be more curious about the artist as an individual than about music, even though
the people-oriented listener might also appreciate the artist’s work. If you are a people-
oriented listener, you might have certain questions you hope will be answered, such as: Does
the artist feel successful? What’s it like to be famous? What kind of educational background
does he or she have? In the same way, if we’re listening to a doctor who responded to the
earthquake crisis in Haiti, we might be more interested in the doctor as a person than in the
state of affairs for Haitians. Why did he or she go to Haiti? How did he or she get away from
his or her normal practice and patients? How many lives did he or she save? We might be less
interested in the equally important and urgent needs for food, shelter, and sanitation
following the earthquake.
The people-oriented listener is likely to be more attentive to the speaker than to the message.
If you tend to be such a listener, understand that the message is about what is important to the
speaker.
Action
Action-oriented listeners are primarily interested in finding out what the speaker wants. Does
the speaker want votes, donations, volunteers, or something else? It’s sometimes difficult for

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4 Heri Heryono, S.S., M.Hum http://www.widyatama.ac.id
an action-oriented speaker to listen through the descriptions, evidence, and explanations with
which a speaker builds his or her case.
Action-oriented listening is sometimes called task-oriented listening. In it, the listener seeks a
clear message about what needs to be done, and might have less patience for listening to the
reasons behind the task. This can be especially true if the reasons are complicated. For
example, when you’re a passenger on an airplane waiting to push back from the gate, a flight
attendant delivers a brief speech called the preflight safety briefing. The flight attendant does
not read the findings of a safety study or the regulations about seat belts. The flight attendant
doesn’t explain that the content of his or her speech is actually mandated by the Federal
Aviation Administration. Instead, the attendant says only to buckle up so we can leave. An
action-oriented listener finds “buckling up” a more compelling message than a message about
the underlying reasons.

Content
Content-oriented listeners are interested in the message itself, whether it makes sense, what it
means, and whether it’s accurate. When you give a speech, many members of your classroom
audience will be content-oriented listeners who will be interested in learning from you. You
therefore have an obligation to represent the truth in the fullest way you can. You can
emphasize an idea, but if you exaggerate, you could lose credibility in the minds of your
content-oriented audience. You can advocate ideas that are important to you, but if you omit
important limitations, you are withholding part of the truth and could leave your audience
with an inaccurate view.
Imagine you’re delivering a speech on the plight of orphans in Africa. If you just talk about
the fact that there are over forty-five million orphansin Africa but don’t explain why, you’ll
sound like an infomercial. In such an instance, your audience’s response is likely to be less
enthusiastic than you might want. Instead, content-oriented listeners want to listen to well-
developed information with solid explanations.

Time
People using a time-oriented listening style prefer a message that gets to the point quickly.
Time-oriented listeners can become impatient with slow delivery or lengthy explanations.
This kind of listener may be receptive for only a brief amount of time and may become rude
or even hostile if the speaker expects a longer focus of attention. Time-oriented listeners
convey their impatience through eye rolling, shifting about in their seats, checking their cell

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5 Heri Heryono, S.S., M.Hum http://www.widyatama.ac.id
phones, and other inappropriate behaviors. If you’ve been asked to speak to a group of
middle-school students, you need to realize that their attention spans are simply not as long as
those of college students. This is an important reason speech to young audiences must be
shorter, or broken up by more variety than speeches to adults.
In your professional future, some of your audience members will have real time constraints,
not merely perceived ones. Imagine that you’ve been asked to deliver a speech on a new
project to the board of directors of a local corporation. Chances are the people on the board of
directors are all pressed for time. If your speech is long and filled with overly detailed
information, time-oriented listeners will simply start to tune you out as you’re speaking.
Obviously, if time-oriented listeners start tuning you out, they will not be listening to your
message. This is not the same thing as being a time-oriented listener who might be less
interested in the message content than in its length.

Daftar Pustaka

[1] Steven Brown. and Dorolyn Smith. 2007 Active Listening (Second Edition). Cambridge
University Press. New York.

[2] Craven Miles. 2008. Real Listening and Speaking 4. Cambridge University Press. New York.

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6 Heri Heryono, S.S., M.Hum http://www.widyatama.ac.id

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