The Psychological Process of Listening Comprehension
Listening is essentially an active process. To understand what we have heard, we need the communicative
knowledge of the spoken language—phonological and grammatical patters, as well as lexical items, the ability
to predict what is likely to come next, and the contextual clues. It will be helpful to take account of the two
main ways of responding to something we have heard:
(1) Interacting: That is, the listener also participates as a speaker, for example, in a conversation or
discussion;
(2) Reacting: That is, the listener does or says something as a result of what he/she has heard, but is not
involved in an interaction with the speaker. This situation is similar to reading, as the listener is “distanced”
from the speaker.
As for the process of listening comprehension, there are different answers. With references to these
answers, this study constructs an outline of the process of listening comprehension as in Figure