Middle School | Language Arts | Listening

Of all the language arts, listening, as well as speaking, is most often used on a daily basis at home, school and work or in the community. In person, by phone or through video, good listening skills are essential to receiving and understanding messages. To understand messages spoken by others, students must be able to listen carefully, using specific techniques to clarify what they have heard.

Learning Objectives

Listen effectively in formal and informal situations:

• Demonstrate ways (e.g., ask probing questions, provide feedback to a speaker, summarize and paraphrase complex spoken messages) that listening attentively can improve comprehension.
• Compare a speaker’s verbal and nonverbal messages.
• Restate and carry out multistep oral instructions.
• Demonstrate the ability to identify and manage barriers to listening (e.g., noise, speaker credibility, environmental distractions).