Three major categories of instruction for a course designed to teach community college students how to effectively listen are functional listening, awareness of auditory disabilities, and interpersonal listening. In functional listening, students learn to listen for the main idea, identify supporting points, summarize accurately, avoid distraction, listen actively, analyze group discussions, and identify situations with more than one main idea. In becoming aware of auditory disabilities, students are acquainted with the basic concept of auditory disabilities and functional awareness of disabilities in self and in others. For interpersonal listening, students identify and practice listening techniques, such as identifying the speaker's message, responding to speaker's messages and identifying speaker's underlying message. Students develop these skills through awareness, identification, and practice. Awareness is accomplished through keeping a journal in which they focus on listening for 10 minutes each day for six consecutive days and identify the 5 W's (who, what, where, when, why) of the listening situation. After developing awareness, students identify their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, additional practice is acquired by use of another journal and a listening lab. (HOD)