Download Listening - Bakersfield College

Inter-Act,
th
13
Edition
Chapter 7
Listening
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Chapter Objectives
 Discuss the three challenges that make it difficult for
us to effectively listen
 List and describe the five steps in the active listening
process
 Discuss the guidelines and skills that can help you
improve your ability to listen
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Discussion Question:
 Based on your work and life experience, what are some
of the reasons why you and others have listened
poorly?
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Listening makes up 42-60% of
our communication.
Speaking
Reading
Writing
Listening
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Class Activity
 A common complaint from women is that men don’t
listen well…
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Challenges to effective listening
 Personal and cultural styles of listening
 Listening Apprehension
 Dual processes in listening
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Personal & Cultural Styles of
Listening
 Content-oriented: prefer to focus on facts and evidence

People-oriented: prefer to focus on conversational partners and their
feelings
 Action-oriented: prefer to focus on point speaker is
trying to make
 Time-oriented: prefer brief and swift conversations
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Listening Apprehension
 Fear of misinterpretation
 Fear of the psychological
affect of the message
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Dual Processes in Listening

Passive listening: effortless, thoughtless, and habitual process

Active listening: skillful, intentional, deliberate, and conscious
process
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The Active Listening Process
The process of receiving, constructing
meaning from, and responding to
spoken and/or nonverbal messages
 Attending
 Understanding
 Remembering
 Critically Evaluating
 Responding
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Attending
The process of willfully striving to perceive selected
sounds that are being heard
 Get physically and mentally ready to listen.
 Make the shift from speaker to listener a complete one.
 Resist tuning out.
 Avoid interrupting.
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Understanding
Process of accurately decoding a message so that you
share its meaning with the speaker
 Identify the speaker’s purpose and key points.
 Observe nonverbal cues.
 Ask clarifying questions.
 Paraphrase what you heard.
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Paraphrase the following statements to reflect
both the thoughts and feelings of the person
speaking:
1.
2.
3.
“I really like communication, but what could I do
with a major in this field?”
“I don’t know if Pat and I are getting too serious
too fast.”
“You can borrow my car, if you really need to, but
please be careful with it. I can’t afford any repairs
and if you have an accident, I won’t be able to
drive to D.C. this weekend.”
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Remembering
Process of moving information from short-term
memory to long-term memory
Reasons we fail to remember
Using repetition to remember
 We filter out messages
 We listen anxiously or
 Repeat two, three, four times
passively
 We remember “easy” or
“desirable” messages
 We forget the middle
 Create mnemonics
 Take notes
 Primacy effect
 Recency effect
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Mnemonics
Any artificial technique used as a
memory aid
For example: take the first letter of a
list you are trying to remember and
create a word
HOMES (the five Great Lakes)
Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior
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Note Taking
Take notes when you
are listening to
complex
information.
Brief outline:
Overall idea
Main points
Key developmental material
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Critically Evaluating
Information
 Separate facts from inferences
 Fact – a verifiable statement
 Inference – a conclusion drawn from
facts
 Probe for information
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Responding
Process of providing feedback to your partner’s message
verbal and nonverbal signals
demonstrating listener response to the speaker
 Back-channel cues:
 Reply when message is complete
 Respond to the previous message before changing the
subject
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Class Activity
 Scenarios?
 Form groups of 3
 Listener
 Story Teller
 Observer
 Takes notes on verbal/nonverbal messages, examples
of paraphrasing/questioning
 What factors led to listening difficulties? What
behaviors demonstrated effective listening?
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Digital Communication Literacy
 Extra effort is required to understand digital messages.
 Critically evaluate social media messages to separate
facts from inferences.
 Recognize underlying motives, values, ideologies.
 Digital messages should not completely replace faceto-face communication.
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Homework
 Create a communication improvement plan for
developing/improving on a particular listening skill
(questioning or paraphrasing) or an aspect of the
listening process (attending, understanding,
remembering, critically evaluating, and responding).
 Be sure to also incorporate your class activity to
illustrate your current assessment of your listening
skills.
 Check your assignment rubric and past assignment
evaluations for additional support.
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