Using concrete examples compare and contrast hearing and listening - Essay Example

Number] Response Essay on Listening Listening is an active and conscious effort to receive the communicated information. It is vital for learning and understanding assorted notions and can produce countless benefits for the listener. Thus, one tends to listen, to respond, react, support/ promote, analyse, evaluate, empathize, to remember and to forward the learnt information efficiently to others. Listening enables one to learn and remember new information and simultaneously enables him to integrate the acquired knowledge into his day to day practices.

Sometimes passive listening also helps; like when one tries to recall any past event and he is able to remember hearing one or two things unconsciously and these tits and bits of information do come handy in many ways. However, active listening is vital and is explicitly significant for learning and progressing in academic, professional or personal life. Like, if one sits in a Professional Development Sessions and he does not pay conscious attention towards the taught concepts, he will suffer from developing skills and will be stuck in a challenging situation due to lack of strategic solutions.

However, if a person actively listens in such session and remembers even one of the taught strategies, he will be able to integrate it easily in his day to day working and will definitely benefit from the learnt concept. Lets! Suppose, if an enthusiast Father is preaching God’s magnificence in his Sermon, he will quote direct biblical verses to prove his point to the Listeners. And he can only quote them aptly if he integrates them with day to day occurrences or issues of the listeners (which he hears during confessions).

Similarly, if he is not attentive in confessions box, he will not be able to speak effectively with his audience, as he will not be aware of their core problems or pressing issues. Likewise, if his audience is only hearing and they have diverse nature (content oriented, time oriented or passive listeners) they will not benefit or acquire any information from his sermon and their faith will decline eventually. Active listeners tend to comprehend the received information in diverse ways. Simultaneously, hearing is a natural act of receiving sounds from the environment.

Like the traffic noise, wind blowing, honking horns, animal cries, people talking in crowded subways, one can hear them; but does not focus on them consciously or unconsciously. And if he does concentrate on any of them like consciously hearing the chirping of the birds then the act becomes listening instead of hearing. For instance, listening to a favourite tune, an individual will remember the lyrics, pitch of the singer, melody of the song and tempo of the music exactly in the same way sung by the singer.

As, his mind will be conscious to receive the given information due to his intrinsic inclination or attentiveness. Likewise, when one listens to political discussions on television he seems to evaluate intrinsically between the known facts and new information and thus, reaches to a conclusion eventually. On the other hand, hearing does not involve conscious attention as one hears diverse sounds in a shopping mall, but the sounds do not contribute to his knowledge. Similarly, if a person hears a scream or cries of help in a disserted alley, he will pay full attention towards it and the act will become listening.

In funerals, one tends to pay their tribute towards the deceived ones and thus, recall their positive personality traits to empathize with the close family members. The process of condolence requires empathizing. However, one cannot empathize if he is not attentively listening to the paid tributes of others, so to choose his words wisely (compassionate speech) and to avoid any embarrassments.