Perceptions are interpretations of the messages from our environmentbased on our past experience, the current context, our needs, goals andexpectations.
Our ability to perceive and sense contributes to our uniquenesson a further dimension: we have a conscious awareness of ourselves and anability to go beyond that experience, extending the limits of our consciousness.Perception also refers to later processess that organize and interpret information in asensory image as having been produced by the properties of objects in theexternal, three dimensional word.
The first stage in the comprehension process is the perception of the speechsignal, an acoustic signal produced the speaker. This includes the position ofthe tongue, lips, velum, the state of the vocal cords, and the airstreammechanisms. The intrepretation of these sounds is necessary in order to learnthe language, therefore, understand the content (Fromkin and Rodman, 1991).