Chapter 4

Listening

Active process that receives, distinguishes, attends to, assigns meaning, and remembers what you hear.

Receiver Apprehension

Anxiety that people experience while listening to messages that make them uncomfortable

D-R-E method

Describe-Respond-Evaluate; a feedback method that describes content, shares personal responses, and gives evaluation

Practice Dialogical Listening

Giving appropriate nonverbal feedback Give verbal feedback

Taking large departures from the communication line

Here, your attention wanders off into unrelated areas; you bring it back and focus on the speech for a while; then, off it goes again, and you find yourself thinking about a totally unrelated topic. This cycle reparations itself.

Engaging in a private argument

In you carry on a running debate or mental argument that parallels the speech, you close your mind and stop trying to understand the speaker's reasoning. To counter this, identity arguments that don't make sense, but withhold your final judgement until you have heard the entire speech.

Barriers to Listening

Linguisti, culture , and persoanl barriers can hinder your effectiveness. Understanding these barriers and planning stratigies to deal with the will build your listening skills.

Critical Listening

Listening that requires you to reflect and weigh the merits of messages before you accept them.

Comprehensive Listening

Listening to understand information

Psychological Factors

Mental stressors or distractions that take away from your desire or ability to focus

Hearing

Physical process involving sound waves, eardrums, and brain receptors

Taking small departure from the communication line

Small departures can distract and hinder your comprehension, but they can also help you follow a message if you use them to produce your own examples, relate the material to your personal experiences, answer the speaker's rhetorical question, and otherwise Interact with the ideas during the departure.

Listening Thought Patterns (Figure 4.2)

Taking a small departure from the communication line Going off tangent Engaging in a private argument Taking large departures from the communication line

Verbal feedback

Using your words for feedback

Going off on a tangent

When you leave the speaker's line of thinking and seize on one idea, taking it in your own direction, your attention is deflected, and you stop listening. One distracting thought leads to another, and before you know it, you're several subjects removed from the topic at hand.

Nonverbal feedback

Your posture, movements , and eye contact, even the distance you sit from the speaker are all ways to provide meaningful feedback.

Speech-Thought Differential

the difference between the rate you think (about 500 words per minute) and the average speaking rate (about 150 words per minute)