ക PEOPLE HEARING WITHOUT LISTENING @ 聽

"People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices that never share

And no one dare disturb THE SOUND OF SILENCE..." 
~ Simon & Garfunkel

Friends, Bloggers, countrymen, lend me your EARS;

I come to bury seizure[Caesar], not to praise him. 

[..] ~ William Shakespeare

God gave us two EARS and one mouth, so we can hear twice as much as we say? This is an abstract from an article from ACQYR, written by a psychologist, Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., CBC, who says that the main communications tasks are: reading, writing, speaking or listening and out of the four tasks, 50% comes from listening alone. But only 25% were retained. Why? Because we give little attention and simply taking it for granted that everyone knows how to listen. The average person speaks at about 130 words per minute against our thinking speed of about 500 words per minute. This causes our minds to wander and we are actually drifting away to other things, thus this phrase "People hearing without listening" is very well said. Krakoff has recommended "Active Listening" to curb the problem. In active listening, it involves the listener paying full attention to the speaker, and then summarizing or reflecting back what he or she has heard without evaluating or interpreting. 

One classic example I could think of,  most successful restaurants or fast food chains used 'active listening' on their waitresses to repeat orders made by clients as confirmation. Oh yeah another example is the "whispering game" whereby a leader in a group of 20 people would whisper a message to the second person and the second guy to repeat the same to the third person and to the next and next until finally in conclusion what the first person says does not tally with the last person. That is where the listening problem begins.

What is the above Chinese word means? This is another simplified version not been used often. Practically the olden way of reading starts from right to left. So it begins with 'you' [figure of a person] using the 'eye' [目]{mù} (sideways) with 'one' [一]{yī} 'heart or mind' [心]{xīn} and 'ear' [耳]{ěr}. Thus the whole word added up is "LISTEN" [聽] {tīng }.  Try talking to a person without looking at his/her face or blocking your own eyes with your hand during the conversation? Can you get the message across? Or when you are in a seminar without looking at the speaker's face? Most likely you would bound to dose off after a while. Quite interesting to note that this Chinese character is very meaningful and actually a composition of what nature gives us, knowing very well just by listening with only the ears is not good enough. So it practically tells us to hear with our ear and listen attentively with our eyes and our mind (heart).

For a bananaz like me, would be at risk of having a seizure to unfold such complex Chinese word  if without the kind assistance of my laoshi Jeannie who went all out researching over the net on the Chinese Etymology of this word 聽 { tīng } as the 'evolution' has created many variations. BTW I have just found out that Jeannie has won the "Inukshuk Award Edutainment 2009", Congratz! Dear fellow bloggers 請多多指教 { qǐng duōduō zhǐjiāo } appreciate your kind advice and comments. Just when you think this word or Chinese language is a tough nut to crack wait till you see some nonsensical English surfacing in my future post.

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