Importance Of Good Listening

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Good listening is important for both the audience and speaker. This is primarily because good listening forms the basis of effective communication and is critical for the passage of any message from the speaker to the audience (Hamilton, 2010). Therefore, for any significant communication to take place, both the speaker and the audience must extrercise good listening. Studies have shown that we spend 80% of wake hours listening (Hamilton, 2010). Moreover, it has been realized that more than 60% of all work related errors are due to poor listening. Further studies into this element of communication have indicated that good listeners make good managers whereas good listening is a vital ingredient for business success (Hamilton, 2010). Therefore, a good speaker will always ensure that the audience is attentive and keen on the message being passed across. Furthermore, a speaker will have to be keen on the feedback received from the audience for effective communication to take place. An audience that actively asks questions and is attentive will gain more than a passive audience that is not actively listening to a given presentation. Good listening from the audience involves keen and active study of the presentation and asking of clarifications wherever anything is not clear. To illustrate this, if a teacher is in class teaching and the students are busy murmuring and not attentive at all, there is no meaningful communication going on. This is because of the following reasons. First, the students are not concentrating on what the teacher is teaching and therefore missing out on the knowledge being passed to them. Second, the students will not have meaningful feedback to the teacher in form of questions since they are hardly listening. Third, they are likely to fail their examinations as they will not understand the concepts in class. In another example, if a doctor

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