'Interactive listening' means attentive listening,where you listen well and concentrate on what is

being said without falling out of touch with the speaker and being therefore able to respond
efficiently.

Introduction
Listening comprehension is the receptive skill in the oral mode. When we speak of
listening what we really mean is listening and understanding what we hear.

In our first language, we have all the skills and background knowledge we need to
understand what we hear, so we probably aren't even aware of how complex a process it
is. Here we will briefly describe some of what is involved in learning to understand what
we hear in a second language.
Listening Situations
There are two kinds of listening situations in which we find ourselves:

interactive, and

non-interactive.

Interactive listening situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, in

which we are alternately listening and speaking, and in which we have a chance to ask
for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from our conversation partner. Some noninteractive listening situations are listening to the radio, TV, films, lectures, or sermons.
In such situations we usually don't have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower
speech or repetition.
Micro-skills
Richards (1983, cited in Omaggio, 1986, p. 126) proposes that the following are the
micro-skills involved in understanding what someone says to us. The listener has to:

retain chunks of language in short-term memory

discriminate among the distinctive sounds in the new language

1.

recognize stress and rhythm patterns, tone patterns, intonational contours.

recognize reduced forms of words

distinguish word boundaries

recognize typical word-order patterns

recognize vocabulary

detect key words, such as those identifying topics and ideas

guess meaning from context

recognize grammatical word classes

recognize basic syntactic patterns

recognize cohesive devices

detect sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, prepositions, and the
like

Linguistic competence is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by

native speakers of a language. It is in contrast to the concept of linguistic performance,
the way the language system is used in communication.
2. Linguistic competence is a term used by speech experts and anthropologists to describe
how language is defined within a community of speakers. This term applies to mastering the
combination of sounds, syntax and semantics known as the grammar of a language. People
with such competence have learned to utilize the grammar of their spoken language to
generate an unlimited amount of statements. This term is distinct from the concept of
communicative competence, which determines what is socially appropriate speech.
3. This concept was first developed by linguist Noam Chomsky in the mid-1960s. Chomsky
developed several theories aimed at describing how language was acquired and functioned
within a culture. Linguistic competence is part of a larger theory of linguistic behavior known
as universal grammar, which explains language as a natural ability with which children are
born and which becomes refined as they develop. This theory lies in contrast with the idea
that speech is strictly a learned behavior.
4. Chomskys theory of generative grammar contained several key concepts about language,
including linguistic competence, linguistic performance and communicative competence.
Chomsky defined linguistic competence as an idealized understanding of the rules and

construction of a given language. This includes the distinct sounds used in the language, the
combination of these sounds, the creation of sentences and the interpretation of a sentence.
Once a speaker masters this set of rules, he or she can use this grammar to produce new
phrases that will be understood by all speakers of the same language.
5. Linguistic performance and communicative competence are concepts related to linguistic
competence but are applied to language as it is actually used rather than as an ideal
construct. Linguistic performance is the practical application of speech with the grammatical
flaws and mistakes that exist among real-world speakers. This allows speakers to
understand each other despite grammatical flaws and differences in dialect. Communicative
competence refers to the rules that govern the kinds of speech allowed within the cultural
context.
6. Chomskys theories sparked debate among linguists and have continued to influence debate
around the acquisition and use of language. Some linguistic theorists see linguistic
competence as a learned behavior rather than an innate function of the human brain. Other
researchers ignore Chomskys separate definitions of competence and performance and
study language as a practical function of human behavior.
7. The concept of linguistic competence remains an important aspect of linguistic theory and
education. It is a subject touched on by linguistics courses within the English curriculum and
is dealt with in depth in linguistic and cultural anthropology. Linguistic researchers and
theorists continue to study and refine this concept through fieldwork and clinical
investigation.

8. Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speakerlistener, in a completely homogeneous speech-communication,
who know its (the speech community's) language perfectly and is
unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory
limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors
(random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of this
language in actual performance. (Chomsky, 1965, p. 3)
9. In this definition, Chomsky separates 'competence,' an idealized
capacity, from the production of actual utterances, 'performance.'
Additionally, competence, being an ideal, is located as a psychological
or mental property or function (Lyons, 1996). This is in contrast to
performance, which refers to an actual event.
This definition of linguistic competence has come to be associated
with a rigid and narrowly defined concept of grammatical competence.
Therefore, Hymes (1974) introduced the idea of 'communicative
competence." This has become generally defined as 'the socially
appropriate use of language" (Paulston, 1992, p. xiv).

10.from: de Valenzuela, J. S. (1998). The social construction of language

competence: Language socialization in three bilingual kindergartens.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Colorado at Boulder.
11. Definition
Sociolinguistic competence is the ability to interpret the social meaning of the choice of
linguistic varieties and to use language with the appropriate social meaning for the
communication situation.
Note
:
Sociolinguistics is a very broad discipline and the term sociolinguistic
competence could be used much more broadly than it is here, where we have
restricted its use to refer to the recognition and use of appropriate varieties of
language.
Examples
When greeting someone in a very formal situation an American might say, Hello, how
are you? or Nice to see you again, but if he were meeting a friend in an informal
situation it would be much more appropriate to say Hi, or Hey, whatcha been doing?
Listen with Understanding and Speak to Communicate: Interactive Speaking and
Listening progression

The Interactive Speaking and Listening progression, which is identical in the two strands Speak
to Communicate and Listen with Understanding, describes the learning a person needs to
undertake in order to become an active participant in the most dynamic of speaking and listening
situations, face-to-face interaction. The progression focuses on four particular kinds of speaking
skills:16

Skills in managing an interaction. These can include taking the floor,

interrupting, redirecting a conversation, agreeing while disagreeing,
reiterating a point of view and closing a discussion. Other examples include
hesitating and withholding a turn.

Skills in negotiating meaning. These skills are important for all adults.
Participants negotiate meaning by using communication strategies to ensure
they have expressed or understood meaning clearly. (The negotiation of
meaning that can occur around face-to-face interactions is an excellent
context for ESOL learners who are working to improve their language
knowledge.)

Skills in using appropriate conversational formulas and fillers. Effective

speakers and listeners are able to give and respond to feedback, using such
oral language forms as appropriate formulas (for example, How are you?),
conversation fillers (for example, Ill never forget) and evaluative
comments (for example, Great idea!), as well as repetition.

Skills in taking short and long speaking turns. These skills enable people
engaging in conversations to take speaking turns of increasing length and
complexity. Such speaking skills are a mark of expertise. They are more likely
than the other kinds of speaking skills to be constrained by a speakers lack
of language knowledge because they cannot be based on memorised or
formulaic oral language.