Listening is a creative process and is much more than simply hearing words. Listening requires not only hearing but thinking, as well as a good dose of interest and information that both the speaker and the listener must have in common. Speaking and listening involve three components: the speaker, the listener and the meaning to be shared; speaker, listener and signified form a single triangle (King, 1984, p. 177). Listening is an active process through which students receive, construct meaning, and respond to spoken and/or nonverbal messages (Emmert, 1994). to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Listening refers to the ability to understand how a particular sentence relates to what else has been said and its function in communication. it is at this stage that the listener selects what is relevant to his purpose and rejects what is irrelevant. The term “Hearing” is used to refer to the listener's ability to recognize linguistic elements in the flow of sound and through knowledge of the phonological and grammatical systems of the language to relate these elements to each other in clauses and sentences and to understand the meaning of these sentences (Venkateswaran,2003). Listening involves forming adequate auditory images of phonemic components such as the use of vowel and consonant sounds, accent, accent, pitch, pause, juncture, intonation, and rhythm of the language in isolation. Hearing is a physiological process while listening is a mental function. Listening can be for perception or for understanding. The listening process has three phases. They are listening, processing and evaluating. In hearing a person can repeat what the speaker has said. if the listener thinks about how the information can be interpreted in relation to his or her background, then it is clear that processing has taken place. In the evaluation phase the listener will evaluate the validity of the information. Wolvin and Coakley (1992) identified four different types of Listening. They are: Comprehensive (informational) listening: - Students listen to the content of the message. Critical (evaluative) listening: - Students judge the message. Appreciative (aesthetic) listening: - Students listen for enjoyment. Therapeutic (empathic) listening :- Students listen to support others but not to judge them. A language teacher should provide students with opportunities to practice listening skills and should be given motivation to actively engage in the listening process. The three phases of the listening process are: pre-listening, during listening and after listening. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom article from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay. Pre-listening activities are needed to establish what is already known about the topic to create the necessary background and establish a purpose for listening. Nichols (1948) found that people listen and think at four times the speed of normal conversation. Students should be encouraged to use the rate gap to actively process the message. They can comment on it mentally, they can doubt it, respond to it or extend it. They can try it to remember it. , that is, they repeat interesting points to themselves. They can formulate questions to ask the speaker to write down key words or phrases (Temple and Gillet, 1989, p.. 55).