ABSTRACT
Active listening is a special type of interactive conversation, one in which the listener carefully uses occasional participation to help the speaker along. Improving the listening skill is one way to improve your 'emotional intelligence', a term used by psychologists to assess the ability to collaborate with other people. The main trick for good listening is to keep the focus on what the other person is saying, right through to the end. Listening is not a one-way process that starts with hearing and ends with making sense of what hear. Partly to try to resolve this potential weakness and partly to evaluate our listening performance, we engage in conversation with a speaker, asking questions to help resolve apparent ambiguity or misunderstandings. Having started on what will normally be a lifelong journey to improve your listening skills, it is now time to turn to reading.
