Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals
Posted on June 22nd, 2009
Audio productions are made or broken by the quality of the recording engineer’s ears. The ability to properly discern sounds, identify subtle problems, and act accordingly to apply the necessary fix makes all the difference in the quality of the final tracks and master. The good news is that these crucial skills can be learned. The ability to instantly identify frequencies, hear hidden distortions, and instinctively reconcile conflicts in the EQ of instruments, audio elements, vocals and more are traits of those who have mastered the art of audio production.
The best engineers have trained their ears to immediately recognize audio problems that the consumer and those new to recording arts would likely not hear, but that, if left unresolved, would result in an amateurish final product. For more than two decades, students of F. Alton Everest’s Critical Listening and Auditory Perception courses have rapidly developed these skills by using the intense lessons found in this b (more…)
Websites for improving Critical Listening Skills
- 8 Critical Listening Skills Factors for Managers – Business-Coach – Martin Haworth – 8 Critical Listening Skills Factors for Managers – Business-Coach – Martin Haworth
- Listening Skills – Improve Listening Skills
- Listening Effectively – Types of Listening – Types of Listening
- Let’s Look at Your Listening Skills – Look at Your Listening Skills
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Tags: Critical Listening Auditory Perception, Listening Skills Lessons
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Listening Skills Training
Posted on June 22nd, 2009
If you need a guide to produce listening skills content, this book will absolutely serve that purpose. However, trainers and other workplace learning professionals willing to look deeper into the content will find real gems that will help them bridge the gap between effective human communication and the processes workplace learning professionals use daily to get their jobs done. The author reminds us of the power of listening and how implementing these often neglected principles can translate into value for our clients and our organizations.
Much more often than we should, practitioners rush to add value, asserting a toolbox of services without deeply understanding the client needs. For consultants, for shared service providers, and for embedded trainers, Listening Skills Training should be a wake-up call. –Jim Haddock, Global Training Manager, Microsoft Health Solutions Group. Listening is the foundation of all communication (whether giving or receiving). Lisa Downs (more…)
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Tags: Barriers Listening Skills, Empathic Listening Skills, Interpersonal Listening Skills, Listening Skills Powerpoint, Listening Skills Seminar, Listening Skills Training Exercises, Listening Skills Workplace, Listening Skills Workshop
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Listening – A Self-Teaching Guide
Posted on June 22nd, 2009
A proven program for turning effective listening into a powerful business tool Managers and other employees spend more than 40 percent of their time listening to other people but often do it so poorly that the result is misunderstood instructions, misdirected projects, and erroneous actions millions of dollars worth of mistakes just because most people don’t know how to listen. In this new edition of her classic guide to the art of effective listening, Madelyn Burley-Allen shows you how to acquire active, productive listening skills and put them to work for you professionally, socially, and personally. With her time-tested techniques, you’ll learn how to:Eliminate distractions and improve your concentration on what is being said.
Locate key words, phrases, and ideas while listening Cut through your own listening biases Interpret body language clues Ask constructive, nonthreatening questions that elicit real information Get others to listen to youMaster a whole range of li (more…)
Sites for Improving Listening Skills
- English Listening Skills and Activities-Effective Listening Practice for ESL EFL Learners and Teachers – English listening skills including active listening comprehension for ESL EFL learners and teachers. Comprehension quizzes including multiple choice quizzes
- Interpersonal Listening Skills -
- Listening Skills – Why You Need Good Listening Skills – Listening skills were one of the basic skills identified by the Department of Labor Secretary’s Commission on Necessary Skills or SCANS – everyone one entering the workforce should have good listening skills
- Speaking Listening Skills -
- Active Listening – Improve Listening Skills with Mind Tools – This article helps you to become an active listener. Mind Tools offers a guide on how you can be a good listener.
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Tags: Active Listening Skills, Effective Listening Skills, Listening Activities, Listening Skills Test, Questioning Skills, Reading Skills, Speaking Skills, Types Of Listening Skills
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Improve English Language Listening Skills
Posted on October 15th, 2007
There are four principal venues that are frequently used in order to develop listening comprehension skills in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. By integrating these resources, the EFL teaching professional can effectively aid learners not only in listening comprehension skills development but also in multiple aspects of connected speech production. Understanding a listening passage can be made all the more difficult by four key influence factors including: the number of speakers in the passage, the technical difficulty and level of the spoken material in the passage, the speed of the speech and the accent(s) of the speakers in the passage and whether or not there is any external support provided for the listening passage. (i.e., photos, illustrations, graphics, vocabulary review or pre-listening activities, etc.) ref. Brown and Yule, 1983
Speech and Language Modeling by the Teacher
If the EFL teacher is a native or near native English speaker, then the dialogues can be modeled in addition to modeling pronunciation and connected speech examples. If the EFL or ESL teacher is not a native (or near native) English speaker, and this teacher does not have sufficient speech and pronunciation in English to model these aspects for the learners, then other English speech modeling and input sources can be used. Besides, we must not limit learners by thinking they can only learn and improve in a particular way. (M. Spratt, 2005)
Audio-Visual Resources
A valuable audio-visual aspect is provided to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners by native-speaker-produced CDs and DVDs. Speech and cultural elements can be illustrated or demonstrated using authentic audio-visual materials such as movie clips and documentaries, student-produced recordings and TV programs or commercials, among many others.
Audio cassettes or CD – ROMs
A wide range of CDs and DVDs exist to provide native speech modeling of different speaking, pronunciation, national and regional English accents. Multiple varieties of English are commonly used throughout the world and having examples of these by which learners can be exposed to the differences in spoken English will be helpful in demonstrating pronunciation variables. Online, over-the-air and cable radio broadcasts can be especially effective and are readily available in much of the world.
Three examples of excellent online radio broadcast sites are:
• www.live365.com
• www.archive.org
• http://www.multilingualbooks.com/online-radio.html
Online Audio and Video
Increasingly, institutes of higher learning are making integrated online materials available to learners. These may consist of spoken dialogues, video dialogues, short stories, interactive games, poems, rhymes and riddles, spoken grammar, connected speech examples, movie clips, interviews, documentaries and even pronunciation lists. Learners can log into the website at their institution to receive extended practice materials to complement in-class learning. Many large, well-established universities, institutes and ELT materials publishers are making such materials available online to both clients and the general public. In addition, specialized websites for English language teaching have cropped up in abundance and offer a plethora of materials and didactic assistance for the ELT professional.
Some examples of available materials online include:
• Penguin – www.penguinenglish.com
• Pearson – Longman www.longman.com
• Heinemann – http://www.heinemann.com/
• Oxford University – Press www.oup.com
• Cambridge University Press – www.cup.org
• Heinle and Heinle – http://www.heinle.com/esl_d/
• McGraw – Hill – educational resources http://mcgraw-hill.co.uk/kingscourt/
• Harvard University – Open Courseware
http://oedb.org/library/features/236-open-courseware-collections
A web search using “online English language teaching materials” will yield a virtual bonanza of materials, planning and resources for the time-strapped English teacher.
Although listening comprehension skills of themselves cannot be “taught”, the English (EFL) teacher can guide the learner’s practice in listening and increment their intensity of study and practice to aid in the development of listening comprehension skills in EFL learners. This can be especially effective when the learners live in one Braj Kashru’s “outer circle” countries (B. Kashru, 1980) where there may well be a quite limited exposure to spoken English available for the English language learners. English teachers should be resourceful in identifying and acquiring materials to augment their classes in proving as broad a variety of listening comprehension materials as possible for their classes. Thus, by integrating any and all available resources, any English language teaching professional can effectively aid learners not only in developing their listening comprehension skills but also in the demonstration of multiple aspects of connected speech in worldwide Englishes.
Improve English Language Listening Skills – By Larry M. Lynch
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