During an in depth chat with my friend whom was trying to help and teach me a position, but I was slow at being able to focus. So she then asked this girl to write an essay on listening skills and such, in regards to things that I have learned this night, as well as why it is important to learn. Mind you this is in regards to learning online, where listening may take on a different role than normal every day life, and is in fact to some extent reading and comprehending what others type.

I learning the importance, of really reading the words that are being typed, and focusing upon them to a degree so that one may see exactly what is being said to them. The need to slow ones mind and get it to only look at that which is being said, holding it back and not permitting it to run wild to each and every thing as it struggles to comprehend and pick up on each detail, instead of seeing the big picture in order to understand what actually was said and sticking to one topic.

When a mind is full of many thoughts, listening isn't always one of the easiest things to do, for little things are quick to distract or through a person off track. Subtle things can be missed by this and end up causing more and more confusion. One can't truly call it "listening" for it's more reading and understanding in your brain what is being said, then slowly calculating the correct response, and thinking about each word as you type that response out in order to formulate the answer. Sound confusing? It can be very confusing. Sometimes as stated above, there are other things that come into play while one is trying to read, understand, and think slowly focusing on what is being said. Even small things like someone else entering, or leaving, other chats going on, and that's only within the world of yahoo, and the Internet. Real life things such as noises, phones, radio's, the elephant people upstairs with the wooden shoes on the wood floor racing back and forth screaming at each other.

Sometimes words can get one's attention, like stop, halt, hey you, etc. in order to grasp at the attention of the person it is directed to. Then it's a matter of slowing them down so they hear, and understand the words that are being said.
First one needs to look at what listening actually means. It means that one should give close attention with purpose of hearing. To give your ear in some ways to the one that is speaking and block out anything else that may take the attention from that given person that is speaking and requires your attention to them. It can also mean to give heed, to yield to the advice of a person that is speaking in order to truly understand all that is being said by that person, so that one may hear it, and formulate the appropriate answer that would be found pleasing intellectually. It can also mean to obey, similar to above, but one that was listening to direction and obeying the person that is speaking to them, focused mainly on them, would not need thusly to take the time to formulate an answer for the other person and could then respond quickly by simply doing as the other person has asked. Sometimes this can be a simple natural reaction from stimuli that has occurred a number of times before.
That about covers what listening is now let us move forward some to exactly why a person should listen to another. There are many purposes of learning to listen well to what is being said. Many find that interesting conversations can come from the joining of people whom are talking to one another about similar things and listening to each and every person as they speak. Also learning new and wondrous lessons on any specific thing, maybe and idea, sometimes a thought, it could be a dream, a whim, and sometimes lessons may be learnt on nothing in particular at all. One person can pick up vocabulary from another by listening to what formulated sentence the another person uses in context, and therefore can create growth in a persons intellect, making them more prone to interesting conversations. Hearing what words are used and said, can bring meaning to each and every person differently, for we are all individuals, and pick up on different views and opinions and then create slowly and with our own perspectives, and in the end creating our own idea's which leads into creativity. However, sometimes these things cause troubles for one starts to think too far ahead, or too fast, and doesn't have the patience to wait and fully understand what the other person is saying. By doing this, small tidbits of information can be lost, and the concluding thought in the brain then ends up lost and trying to piece things together usually mixing parts of the information up.

To better understand how people listen in real life, we need to look at how a person hears. This is done with the ears. The ears are made up of 3 different parts. Those parts are the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear.
The outer ear, which is made up of the pinna and the ear canal, picks up sounds from the world around it. As sound waves enter the ear, the ear canal increases the loudness of pitches so speech is easier to understand. At the same time the ear canal protects another part of the ear known as the eardrum. The eardrum is a flexible circular membrane that vibrates when touched by sound waves.
The next part of the ear is the middle ear. The vibrations that are being caused by the outer ear continue into this part. It contains three small bones known as the hammer, anvil and stirrup, or if one wanted to get scientific, the ossicles. These 3 bones form a bridge from the eardrum into the inner ear. They increase and amplify the sound vibrations even more, before safely transmitting them on to the inner ear by way of the oval window.
Does anyone like snails? We now enter the cochlea or inner ear. This area looks much like a circular snails shell. It houses a system of tubes that are filled with a watery fluid. As sound waves pass through the window and causing the fluids to move. This sets many tiny hair cells in motion. The hair transforms the vibrations into electrical impulses that travel along nerves to the brain. Then it's up to the brain to translate the sounds into things it can understand or relate to and sometimes it can't. As in if a person is speaking a language that the other person doesn't understand or comprehend.

So what have we learned so far? Well if a person isn't listening to what is being said, then the sound waves that pass through the outer ear, and into the middle ear, causing the hairs in the inner ear to send the impulses, which are ignored by the brain for it isn't paying attention or concentrating on listening to what those impulses are saying. Sometimes the brain is over active, or too busy to hear what is being said and in turn causes it self to become confused and trying to recall the impulses it missed. This mind you isn't a good thing. Usually the person that has done this faces the embarrassment of asking the uncomfortable question in order to beg the person to say it again, so they can be more attentive to what that person is saying and thusly admit that they weren't fully listening the first time, or weren't fully able to understand what was being said.

Another way a person can listen which is done on the Internet is by reading carefully the words that another person has typed. For instance reading the newspaper, or a book in many ways is "listening" to what that author or journalist is saying, and from that formulating one's views on such and adding to a person's intelligence and intellect.
But how exactly do the eyes do this?

Well there are many parts to an eye as it is one of the most intricate parts of the human body. Many mysteries still surround the eye and how it works, but there are certain parts that doctors and leading specialists can understand. Having been partially blinded in the left eye, and have now seen 27 specialists, I have been able to listen with the three parts of my ears and learn about my eyes that I now use to learn with the aid of online tools the wonderful world of Gor. From reading the John Norman novels, to discussion and lessons from friends and mentors, as well as direction and control from Masters. Now let us not get off topic. Listening with the eyes.

In order to understand how one listens with the eyes by reading and understanding, we need to look at how the eye works. The eye is made up of many parts. The outer layer of the eye is called the sclera. It maintains the shape of the eye. The small one sixth of the sclera is called the cornea. All light passes through the cornea when entering the eye. There are extra ocular muscles that are attached to the sclera that move the eye when one looks around.
The second layer of the eye is called the uveal tract. It contains many blood vessels that supply blood to the structures of the eye. The front part of the second layer contains two structures. They are the ciliary body and the iris. The ciliary body is a muscular area that is attached to the lens. It contracts and relaxes and controls the size of the lens for focusing. The iris is the colored part of the eye, which is determined by the connective tissue and pigment cells. Less pigment makes the eye blue; more pigment makes the eye brown. The iris is an adjustable diaphragm around an opening, which is called the pupil.
The iris has two muscles, which are the dilator and sphincter. The dilator makes the iris smaller and therefore the pupil larger, allowing more light in, and the sphincter makes the iris larger and the pupil smaller allowing less light in.
The inner most layer is the retina, which is the light sensing portion of the eye. It houses the rod cells which are for low light and the cone cells which are for color vision and detail. In the back of the eye near the center of the retina is the macula. In the center of the macula is an area called the fovea centralis. This area contains only cones that are responsible for seeing fine detail clearly. Like the details of letters in a small book or chat online.
The retina contains a chemical called Rhodopsin. This chemical converts the light into electrical impulses that the brain interprets as vision. The retinal fibers collect at the back of the eye and make up the optic nerve, which sends the impulses to the brain. The spot where the optic nerve and blood vessels exit the retina is called the optic disk. This area is a blind spot on the retina because there are no rods or cones at that location. You aren't aware of this blind spot because each eye covers for the other eye. The lens of the eye is a clear structure that changes shape because it is attached to the muscles in the ciliary body. The lens is used to fine-tune vision and the words you are reading on the page, or things you are seeing in front of you as the eye is focusing it's impulses and sending the detailed information to the brain so it may form the image of what you are seeing, and therefore interpret it to useable information.

Useable information is information in your surroundings that you can use in order to assist in whatever you wish to do. In the case of this essay, my eyes are taking in the information that is being typed, in order to check for errors, or spelling, and to form sentences from the information that is stored in my brain. Some of the names of the information had to be looked up as the doctors that explained how my eyes work to me seemed to leave out a few empty places.
Now you can see that the only ways to learn are by listening with both ears, and eyes. Together, they make a valuable team.
When a person can focus and use them together, then the brain has an easier time interpreting the information it is being provided. This is why listening is so important.
Some ways to help with focusing so you can listen well, are taking a few minutes to relax, and try not to think about a million things going on all at once. Understand and talk to yourself and slow yourself down. Your ears and eyes are continuously taking in huge amounts of information, slowly learning skills to control the amounts of information and which information you are learning or focusing on, will help a person truly master the art of listening. This takes time though, for each and every stimulus to both these useful tools change many times in the course of seconds, minutes, days, hours, years, etc. Also Health matters change how easily a person can focus and listen to what is being said.
A person with irritants like a sore throat, head ache, upset stomach, no matter how much they relax with have the constant signals of this going to their brain. This needs extra concentration to ignore them and focus on the task at hand.
In some cases a little push like the risk of punishment drives the brain into overdrive so it can gain control swiftly of the senses that are in desperate need of a smack, so they become alert to what is going on, and what is being said. For if they are unable to control them or take too long to get them in sync with each other, the fact that they could be facing another enjoyable essay that's more hard on the fingers or digits than on the actual person whom enjoys research and such. However, with things like this it takes up other valuable time that could be used for sleeping and resting those ears and eyes so they could be more attentive the next day.
Therefore seeing with my eyes and listening with my ears and brain to what I am typing out in this assignment, one can now see that I have not gone over the expected amount of words by nine words. Listening to my body as my eyes grow tired one can see it is time to rest.
This concludes my essay on listening, and listening skills. Hoping this brings better knowledge to those that read it. Thank you and Good night.

By: dina. Total words: 2,558

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