Listening Skills: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

The art of listening is considered as the ability to understand and recall the spoken word (Santos, 2006). This process is a skill and when treated as such, listening can be improved by training. According to Darnell (2007) developing listening skill is a neglected area in the teaching of English towards communicative competence. This is lamented considering that of the total twenty four hours daily available to every human being sixteen are allotted to walking and eight are allotted to sleeping time, of the sixteen hours at least eleven are dedicated to communicating and of these eleven hours normally the greatest portion is spent in listening whereas only three are spent in speaking, two in reading and one in writing. There is so much to be gained by listening yet why do most people not listen well?