Learning Skills Development Among

Elementary School Children

 

Abstract

The level in which children start developing their communication skills can be considered a challenging task; given the development of technology that also target this age group, these advantages have become a tremendous distraction, thus, the basic skills that need to be enhanced take a backseat because the attention is diverted into something more interesting.  Communication skills play its two major roles in which a person gets to play the one who is communicating, and the one that receives the information; between these two, it has been observed that eventually, the focus of skills development has been on the expression rather than on the receiving end. Although reading skills are further enhanced with additional lessons on comprehension, listening skills, particularly in the grade school, have yet to reach a more developed phase.  This paper presents a review of relevant literature on existing studies on listening skills, a methodology in which it enumerates the process to test the hypothesis, and conclusions and recommendations on further studies on the topic.

Improving Listening Skills in Grade School Learning

Introduction

            According to Cronin (1993), people generally spend more time listening than speaking.  This shows that the moment a person wakes up, the brain’s activity first adjusts to its environment, and listening is an instant reflex in order to get information what the eyes cannot see: the goings-on outside the window, the conversations outside the door, the sound of the distant radio.  It can also be observed that people can be easily roused from its catatonic state through sound, this is why people rely on their alarm clocks in order to wake up.  Given these everyday examples, Cronin is right; we spend more time listening, being on the receiving end of the communication line rather than the one that relays the information.  Even in the state of solitude, people can even listen to the “sounds of silence” since sound is almost everywhere, even with the absence of light.

            However, although listening is a common activity, and people do rely on sound most of the time, there is still the question on whether people have improved their listening skills enough.  Some may ask, if they can hear things okay, why bother develop something that is already regularly practiced?

            There has been the common discussion on the difference between hearing and listening; apparently, “hearing” is something that people do most of the time, particularly in instances that the sound that is heard does not have to be decoded of its meaning.  On one hand, “listening” is something else as it requires a number of other skills.  Similar to reading, what a person “sees” does not necessarily mean is being “read”; this shows that for various degrees of information, the amount of attention it requires depend on the requirement of that information for a certain degree of attention and comprehension.  Similar to texts, that are read, the sound that is listened to has meaning, and it is in the listener’s ear to interpret this information. 

            Thus, given that effective listening is a skill, its development should be inculcated throughout a person’s development, particularly starting at a young age.  What can be deemed challenging for children before the grade school years is their attention are usually directed to objects that are dynamic, which more or less measures up to the energy that the child projects.  However, the grade school period may vary; grade school lasts six to seven years on average, thus, the degree of attention span of each level may vary.  The needs of those in the first and second grades are less sophisticated than those in the later years, although there is also the awkward phase in the third, fourth, and fifth grade when the stages of adolescence sets in.  In summary, the skills that need to be developed have to be progressive, although the approach has to vary depending on the class the teacher is handling.

            The rest of this paper discusses  the importance of developing listening skills and how can this study add to the existing literature on the topic.

Significance of the Study

            As abovementioned, sound is part and parcel of everyday life, and those who have the sense of hearing have to take advantage of this ability.  However, like all communication channels, sound alone is developed into more complex forms, in which it ranges from a mere sound with meaning, i.e. emotion, to the development of languages in which a word is made up of various components of sound with a fixed meaning. 

            The subject of language alone shows that in the early stages of a person’s life, communication skills are already important, and language is among the foundation in which a person learns to communicate back.  However, before language is learned, the child has to listen first how certain sounds are formed into words, and how it would eventually form its meaning.  In this sense, the fact that a person learns his or her first language shows that listening skills are already applied at a very young age.

            Barker, et al. (1995, p. 28) cites Pearson and Fielding (1983) in saying that “Listening involves the simultaneous orchestration of skills in phonology, syntax, semantics, and knowledge of text structure”; this means that the process of decoding sound involves a lot of systems that need to be understood as it makes up the whole context of the sound itself.  In scientifically approaching the act of listening, this may involve other complex matters like the capacity of the ear to handle sounds, the diction and articulation of certain words, etc.; however, to simplify this, the importance of having good listening skills, especially among children, can be simplified in the following, according to Anderson and Brent (1993, p. 123) :

In many classrooms, the emphasis is on integration of the language arts as students communicate and interact with each other and with print.  Opportunities to read, write, speak and listen grow out of meaningful experiences and students’ responses rather than being dictated by pre-determined skills list. 

            As abovementioned, language and communication arts have become a significant part of classroom learning, although the problem is in the lack of attention that educators give to this area of development.  Citing these elements, this study sets up the following objectives:

• Review existing literature on developing listening skills, both in general and specified concerns like the grade school classroom setting.
• Create a method of research to test the cited options based on the cited literature.
• Draw up a list of recommendations on what lessons or styles that should be incorporated in order to develop listening skills in the grade school classroom setting.
• Draw up a list of recommendations for further studies.

            Generally, the working thesis of this study is more on testing; given that some of these related literatures are results of previous studies and current studies and testing on the subject, the pool of knowledge on listening skills development is composed of a mixture of classroom strategies that can be adopted in universal and various levels.  From this, the methodology that is going to be created is based on the feasibility of these studies and how it can be applied in the classroom setting.  The established goal of this study is to answer the thesis question that goes, “Can specific classroom lessons that focus on listening skills improve the overall performance of elementary children?”, and since the cited literature can answer this question, what can be hypothesized based on this question and the availability of resources is Teaching styles and that integrate listening skills development strategies can help improve the overall performance of grade school children.

References

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Gimpel, G. & Merrell, K.  1998.  Social Skills of Children and Adolescents:         Conceptualization, Assessment, Treatment.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum         Associates.

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