To pay attention; heed. Yes, it means to hear; but it also means to pay attention—with our ears, our eyes, and our hearts. Listen to more than the words. True listeners look beyond the words themselves—they search for meaning in the speaker's tone and body language.

Listening involves identifying the sounds of speech and processing them into words and sentences. When we listen, we use our ears to receive individual sounds (letters, stress, rhythm and pauses) and we use our brain to convert these into messages that mean something to us.

listening. listened. listened. Most verbs are regular: they have a past tense and past participle with –ed (worked, played, listened). But many of the most frequent verbs are irregular.