LOSS OF THE LISTENER WHEN TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

The author makes an attempt to return listening to its rightful place in communication in general and educational communication in particular. Significance of listening is hard to overvalue not only because it cannot be extracted from communication but mostly because it is listening that turns communication from one-way transmission of information into interaction i.e. into process of mutual influence. An experiment has been run in order to prove that listening is not just keeping silence necessary to digest information but activity that has impact on the speaker himself – the experiment showed that speaker’s awareness of listener’s availability changed the content of his speech. The article also analyses the specifics of verbal communication on the internet. It is assumed that internet capabilities provide opportunity for screen image idealization by shoving ready-made answers to what is usually controlled by users themselves and thus raise the comfort of virtual communication. Possibilities of “effective listening” based not only on the meaning of the statement spoken but also upon the value of the speaker’s personality are analyzed in the article. Suggestion has been made those principles of “effective listening” could be helpful for English language teaching