Critical Listening Skill : Being Critical Means Being Responsive

Listening skill deals with how language users receive, integrate, and evaluate the information by auditory sense

The information related to particular subject is so much various. That was why I asked my students into groups and divide their members for finding details fairly. It happens because the nature that we need preparation and working cooperatively is a choice.  It is a common decision, but in critical listening case? How to correspond this background?

Several students came forward. Then, they told their findings. That was the second meeting of my lecture on critical listening skill. What did the others do? The activity in the meeting was inspired by Flowerdew (1994: 11) claiming that there are five processes in optimizing listening skill in advance. They are decoding, comprehending, identifying main points, deciding when to record, writing quickly and clearly. His five processes are listed in the response of academic listening as the essential component in university context (ibid, 1994: 7).

Actually, critical listening guides students in catching the meanings expressed in lecture. It is appropriate because being critical is also reflected in the way of responding concept or abstract.  It happens in lecture listening mode. Critical level performs improved standard of advanced listening as Carrel, Dunkel, and Mollawn (2002) state the importance of taking note from lecture, answering question performance, and recalling information.

In the meeting, the topic was Anthropology. It was sourced from the listening book by Dunkel and Pialorsi (2005) I used. The result of my lecture was inspiring. They were several strategies my students applied for getting the meanings from their friends presenting the topic in front. There were several students focusing on the explanation said by one of his friends; and the others on multiple presenters. It is particular skill applied by each individual to get information: how much information someone gets and relevantly requires to fulfill his need toward the topic. They might agree, disagree, restate, or add their friends’ presentations.