Active listening: a proposal for the development of oral comprehension

Abstract

The act of listening implies the ability to understand different discursive typologies in different situations, thus identifying roles among interlocutors and communicative intentions.  Despite its importance among linguistic skills, listening is the one that usually arouses less interest in the educational environment. Students are rarely accompanied in their comprehension and oral production processes, essential competencies for their daily and professional life. In view of the above, this article presents a transversal and interdisciplinary innovation proposal, whose purpose is to develop communicative processes inherent to oral comprehension (listening) that allow communicative interaction. It contemplates an active and meaningful learning methodology in which the student will develop lower (identify, select and apply) and higher (analyze, interpret, evaluate and create) mental and cognitive processes.  Its implementation in the university environment, specifically in first year students, helped to strengthen certain micro-skills of listening, ranging from the capture and recognition of messages, including cognitive procedures, to the weighting and construction of new discourses that provided expressive and communicative autonomy.