communication 5 listening

Stimulus

Something that causes an activity or action to occur.

Mnemonic device

A formula, rhyme, acronyms, or other technique that aids memory.

Responding

After we hear a sound, focus on it, and interpret it, we must indicate in some way that we have completed these steps of the process—otherwise, we cannot say we have listened. We call this indication "responding." Responding is our reaction to what we have heard, focused on, and interpreted. Suppose someone yells "Fire." Your response might take one of several forms: -non-verbal sound such as screening -non-verbal behavior such as running for a fire alarm -verbal response such as telling people to run The response we make depends upon different factors, such as how we interpret the sound, the context in which the sound occurs, our emotions at the time, and our personality. Some response, though, is necessary to ensure that we have truly listened.

Reasons for Listening

All listening requires that you follow the steps of the listening process described in this lesson. However, we listen for a number of different reasons, and different situations require different types of listening skill: -pleasurable listener = music/videos -discriminative listener = to learn information such as college lectures -critical listener =when we evaluate and judge (campaign) -empathetic listener = when we try to understand

Auditing

Another word for the term "understanding" in the listening process.

Critical Listening

Critical listening goes beyond simply gaining information. It involves comprehending the information and then evaluating it. This type of listening requires the ability to be a good judge of intangible issues, such as character, sensitivity to subtle changes in a speaker's voice or words, and the ability to evaluate pauses and nonverbal cues to more accurately judge the speaker's message and the speaker's intentions. Critical listening is essential whenever someone is trying to persuade you of something or to change your beliefs in some way. When you are a critical listener, it is important to do the following; Try to determine the speaker's motives. Try to determine where the speaker obtained his information. Distinguish fact from opinion. Evaluate the evidence the speaker uses to support his point of view. Recognize your own biases. Reflect on the message before you make a decision about it.

Understanding

Hearing sounds and focusing on them are the first two requirements for listening. However, we said that listening requires that we give words meaning. Attending to the sound is the first step in assignment meaning. The second step is to understand, or to interpret, the words. Understanding is also referred to in some textbooks as auditing, and it is the most complex aspect of the listening process. To understand something, we have to associate it with our past experiences. For example, we are not likely to understand a word we have not heard or read before unless we can relate it to a similar word we know. Understanding also involves evaluating a message as we try to understand it. Often, when we listen to someone's point of view, we judge it or try to determine how it fits with our own knowledge or experiences. When we associate words or other sounds with our past experiences and make a determination about them, then they have meaning for us. Because we all have different experiences and different interpretations of those experiences, though, understanding can be different for different people. This fact is why misunderstandings frequently occur when we communicate.

Listening Is Not Just Hearing

If you were asked to define "listening." What would you say? Many people believe that listening is a natural process that occurs automatically. They think if they are hearing what someone says and can repeat it back to that person, then that proves they were listening. o communicate with others, it is important that we hear the messages others send us, but hearing is only a small part of listening. Listening is a complex process that involves five distinct steps: hearing, attending, understanding, responding, and remembering. Hearing, the first step in the listening process, is the physiological process of receiving a stimulus (the plural is stimuli). Our ears detect sound waves and send a nerve impulse, or a signal, to our brain. Not all sounds can be heard by all animals. Humans can hear sounds only if the sound waves occur within a certain range. However, just hearing a sound isn't listening—we must make sense of that sound as well.

Automatic attention

Instinctive focus on a specific sound or word.

Understanding

Interpreting and evaluating messages to give them meaning.

How to Improve Your Listening

It is not difficult to learn to become a better listener, but it takes commitment, dedication, and a shift in attitude. It is important that you practice anticipatory set—a phrase that means to motivate and prepare yourself mentally and physically to listen. First, become physically prepared to listen. Face the speaker and make eye contact. Lean forward and become involved. Effective listening also requires that you focus on other people rather than on yourself. You cannot be absorbed in your own issues, desires, and needs and be effective in listening to others. Here are some additional tips for improving your listening in all interpersonal communication situations: -23

Being able to recall or to retrieve a message is called __________.

remembering

__________ is the reaction we have to indicate that we have heard, focused on, and interpreted a message.

responding

__________ is the choice we make to focus on a specific sound or word.

selective attention

Temporary storage of information is called __________.

short-term memory

A __________ is something that causes an activity or action to occur.

stimulus

Empathic Listening

the final type of listening we explore in this lesson is empathic listening. Empathic listening is the type of listening you must do if you want to truly understand another person's point of view. It is an attempt to "put yourself in someone else's shoes." With empathic listening, you attempt to get information, but, more importantly, you try to understand the feelings that accompany the information. Empathic listening is one way you build relationships and create intimacy with another person. It requires that you set aside your own point of view and try to see the world from their perspective. It is also the type of listening counselors use when they work with clients and attempt to help them work through issues or identify the feelings they are experiencing.

Short-term memory

Temporary storage of information.

Selective attention

The choice we make to focus attention on a specific sound or word.

Remembering

The final step in the listening process is remembering. To effectively listen, we must store information in some way so that we can recall it or retrieve it later. We store or retain information in two different ways: Short-term memory —Information that we need for only a short period of time and do not need to retrieve later. Long-term memory —Information we need to retrieve from memory later.

Improving Your Empathic Listening Skills

The first requirement to be a good empathic listener is to listen more and to talk less. Other important skills can also be learned and practiced that improve your empathic listening skills: 27

Hearing

The physiological process by which the ear detects sound and sends nerve impulses to the brain.

Selective and Automatic Attention

We are surrounded by sounds, so we often have to select which ones we listen to or focus on. The cocktail party example illustrates what is known as selective attention. At times, we choose to pay attention to certain stimuli that are important to us and filter out others. At this same cocktail party, if a child is sleeping in another room, the child's parents often hear their child's cry when others in the room don't notice. The parents are focused on the sound of their child's voice, and it is significant to them. Some stimuli instinctively get our attention. Automatic attention occurs when we focus on sounds that signal a change in our surrounds, such as hearing a person walk into a room, or hearing a sound, such as a siren or a loud bang. Have a piece of paper and a pen or pencil handy and then stop what you are doing. List all the sounds you hear around you right now. How many of these sounds did you notice before you chose to focus your attention on them?

A __________ is a rhyme, acronym, or other technique that aids memory.

mnemonic device

Barriers to Effective Listening

o become a better listener, it is important that you understand some of the factors that are barriers to effective listening. no desire to listen, distraction, laziness, the halo effect, message overload, gender listening preferences. some people prefer to share their opinion rather than to hear the opinion of others. To be a good listener you must learn more than you tell

Listening for entertainment.

pleasurable listening

Listening to judge or to evaluate information.

critical listening

The process by which the ear detects sound and sends it to the brain is called __________.

hearing

Remembering

Being able to recall or to retrieve a message.

Skills for Empathic Listening

Empathic listening is supportive listening—and it is the opposite of critical listening. Rather than judging and evaluating what someone says, as you do when you listen critically, you must suspend judgment and simply try to understand another person. You become a "sounding board" for the other person. To do this, you must: - focus on listening rather than on talking -respond to personal statement and feelings rather than to abstract concept -be fully engaged in the moment and avoid distractions -be patient and follow where the other person goes with the conversation, rather than trying to lead him in a specific direction -clarify what the person has said, rather than asking him questions or give him opinions -allow the other person to work out problems rather than give advise

Attending

Focusing attention on a specific sound or word.

Improving Your Pleasurable Listening

Most of us are fairly good at listening for enjoyment or for pleasure. It is self-gratifying to us and a good way to relax from other types of communication. Besides being enjoyable, studies have shown that pleasurable listening can reduce pain for hospital patients and can help lift our mood. We can make our pleasurable listening even more enjoyable, however, if we pay attention to the volume at which we listen and make sure we don't create any long-term hearing problems caused by listening at high volumes.

Improving Your Discriminative Listening

One of the most difficult aspects of listening for information is maintaining concentration. The average person speaks at about 100 to 150 words per minute. However, as listeners, we can process information about four times that fast. As a result, we have plenty of spare time, and we may get bored or distracted and daydream while we should be listening. Here are some tips for becoming a better discriminative listener: 25

Responding

Reacting to indicate that we have heard, focused on, and interpreted a message.

Long-term memory

Relatively permanent storage of information.

Attending to Sound

When we hear sound, we have to arrange it in some meaningful way. For example, have you ever overheard someone speak in a language you don't understand? If you don't know a language, the words mean nothing. In addition to hearing the sounds, your brain must make sense of them—you must be able to give the sounds meaning. To construct meaning, we first have to focus our attention on a specific sound, or stimulus. This step in the listening process is called attending. Attending is really just "paying attention" or concentrating. We attend to sounds that are personally meaningful for us. For example, at a cocktail party, you may be having a conversation with someone and other people are talking a few feet away. You might "tune out" the other conversation to pay attention to your own. However, if someone in the other group mentions your name, your attention might be immediately drawn to what they are saying.

Improving Your Critical Listening

When we listen to critically evaluate or judge information, we must resist the temptation to make snap judgments before we have all the information. Having good critical listening skills is especially important when people are attempting to persuade us. he tips below might help you improve your critical listening skills: 26

Short-Term Versus Long-Term Memory

When we listen, we often consciously or subconsciously make a determination about whether we need to put the information into short-term or long-term memory. For example, if you intend to call the woman who gave you her phone number right away, you might remember the number long enough to dial it, but then not be able to recall it later. However, if you think the number is one you want to keep, you might try to commit it to long-term memory. The techniques we use to retain information in long-term memory vary. However, most studies show that we can improve our ability to recall information stored in long-term memory if we: -associate it with information we already know -use some sort of mnemonic device to help us remember -use repitition or rehearsal to commit something to memory -review what we have learned and test ourself As we all know, even with techniques to aid us, our memory can still be faulty at times.

Pleasurable Listening

When you listen for pleasure, you listen primarily for entertainment or for appreciation. Pleasurable listening includes listening to music, listening to radio broadcasts, watching and listening to movies, and playing audio books. With this type of listening, your attitude and your past experiences determine how you respond. If you have liked a certain type of music, a particular musical composer, or a performing artist in the past, you might be more likely to listen to that type of music, that composer's other works, or that artist in the future. The presentation of the music is also a factor, however. You might like one performer's version of a song and not another's. While engaged in pleasurable listening, some people focus on the lyrics, others on the beat, and still others on the melody. Pleasurable listening is a very personal matter, and how you engage in this type of listening, how you respond to it, and what you remember of the music are different for each individual.

Discriminative Listening

With discriminative listening (also know as informative or active listening), the primary purpose is to obtain information and to understand it. Much of what we learn comes from this type of listening. If you are a poor discriminative listener, you do not have the information you need to do well in school, on your job, or in many other situations you face as an adult. For example, you will not pass a driving test and receive your driver's license if you are a poor listener when you take your driver training. Improving your discriminative listening skills requires working on three important skills: Vocabulary You must understand the words you hear. Increasing your vocabulary improves your potential to be a better discriminative listener. Concentration You must be disciplined and motivated, and work to avoid distractions, so you can focus on the information. Memory You can improve your discriminate listening skills by improving your long-term memory using some of the techniques in this lesson.

__________ is an instinctive focus we have on a sound or word.

automatic attention

Listening to obtain and to understand information.

discriminative listening

Something that diverts our attention from an issue on which we are focused.

distraction

Listening to understand the point of view and feelings of another person.

empathic listening

Permanent storage of information is called __________.

long-term memory

Interpreting and evaluating messages to give them meaning is called __________.

understanding