The Missouri Reader Vol. 37, Issue 1 | Page 20

CRITICAL LISTENING: SENSIBLE WAYS TO
TEACH A NEGLECTED SKILL
Randall Wallace
It is the province of knowledge to speak,
and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
ancorous verbal confrontations among
liberals and conservatives regarding the national debt,
healthcare reform, or other political events must
make educators wonder how well the communication
arts curriculum is addressing the listening component
of the core curriculum. Listening has been considered
by some to be the most meaningful of the
communication arts (Crink & Buntley, 1955); and
about 80% of what children learn is acquired through
listening (Hunsaker, 1990). Yet, teaching listening
skills is often overlooked; in fact, Wolff, Marsnik,
Tacey, and Nichols (1983) refer to listening as the
―orphan of education‖ (p. 3), Tiedt (1983) describes it
as the ―invisible‖ language arts skill (p. 88), and Cox
(2005) calls it the ―neglected language art‖ (p. 154).
It is important for educators to understand why
purposely teaching listening is an imperative aspect of
educating their students. The intent of this article is
to draw attention to the importance of teaching and
practicing critical listening skills and to offer an
approach to teach listening without adding another
layer of skills to an already over-crowded curriculum.
Listening is the basis for improving reading,
speaking, and writing (Hunsaker, 1990). Yet, when
addressing the language arts curriculum, teachers
often ignore it. In fact, it was not until 1978, with an
amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act, that speaking and listening were formally
considered to be basic literacy skills like reading and
writing. In a classic study by Rankin (1928), it was
estimated that students spent about 68% of the day
communicating; an analysis of this 68% indicated that
about 9% was spent writing, 16% reading, 30%
speaking, and 45% listening. Yet, Rankin found that
reading received about 52% of the instructional time

and listening received
about 8%. Since Rankin‘s
seminal study, others have
found that listening takes
up about 50 to 60% of the
school day (Duker, 1971;
Funk & Funk, 1989;
Laurent, 1963).
Listening is the
backdrop upon which
reading and writing
depend (Cox, 2005).
Listening and reading are
active, interdependent processes that depend on
worldly experiences, language skills, and thinking
strategies. They require the interpretation of
information, mature through developmental stages,
and are effective ways to learn new information.
Some teachers shy away from teaching listening skills
for various reasons: some think that it is analogous to
learning to walk and improves naturally, some think
that it cannot be taught; some see it as additional
content in an already time-cramped curriculum, and
some attribute the failure to teach and improve
listening skills to teachers not being provided preservice instruction on how to teach it (Funk & Funk,
1989).
There
are many
Dr. Randall Wallace is
definitions
Associate Professor of
of listening.
Reading in the Reading,
Lundsteen
Foundations, and
(1979), in a
straightforw
Technology Department at
ard manner,
Missouri State University.
defines
listening as:
―The process by which spoken language is converted
to meaning in the mind‖ (p. 1). Lunsteen
differentiates listening into two general categories—
general and critical. General listening is an important
©The Missouri Reader, 37 (1) p.20