Instructor Resources for Chapter 7
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Chapter Outline
Opening scenario: Uniquely Qualified to Listen
I. The Nature of Listening
a. What is listening?
i. Listening styles
ii. Listening effectively
b. The importance of listening effectively
c. Some misconceptions about listening
i. Myth: Hearing is the same as listening.
ii. Myth: Listening is natural and effortless.
iii. Myth: All listeners hear the same message.
d. Culture and sex affect listening behavior
Learn it, apply it, reflect on it
II. Ways of Listening
a. Stages of effective listening
i. Hearing
ii. Understanding
iii. Remembering
iv. Interpreting
v. Evaluating
vi. Responding
b. Types of listening
i. Informational listening
ii. Critical listening
iii. Empathic listening
iv. Other types of listening
c. Effective listening online
i. Finding an effective listener online
ii. Being an effective listener online
Learn it, apply it, reflect on it
III. Common Barriers to Effective Listening
a. Noise
b. Pseudolistening and selective attention
c. Information overload
i. Sources and effects of information overload
ii. Managing information overload online
d. Glazing over
e. Rebuttal tendency
f. Closed-mindedness
g. Competitive interrupting
Learn it, apply it, reflect on it
IV. Becoming a Better Listener
a. Becoming a better informational listener
i. Separate what is and isn’t said.
ii. Avoid the confirmation bias.
iii. Listen for substance more than for style.
b. Becoming a better critical listener
i. Be a skeptic.
ii. Evaluate a speaker’s credibility.
iii. Understand probability.
c. Becoming a better empathic listener
i. Listen nonjudgmentally.
ii. Acknowledge feelings.
iii. Communicate support nonverbally.
Learn it, apply it, reflect on it
In-text boxes:
a. Assess Your Skills: People, action, content, time: What’s your listening style?
b. Got Skills? Paraphrasing
c. At a Glance: HURIER model of effective listening
d. Communication/Light Side: Need someone to listen? Just click
e. Fact or Fiction? Communication technology can impair listening ability.
f. At a Glance: Barriers to effective listening
g. Got Skills? Listening empathically during grief
Key Terms
closed-mindedness
competitive interrupting
confirmation bias
critical listening
empathic listening
glazing over
HURIER model
information overload
informational listening
listening
pseudolistening
rebuttal tendency
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selective attention
skepticism vividness effect
Definitions for Key Terms
closed-mindedness: tendency not to listen to anything with which one disagrees
competitive interrupting: using interruptions to take control of a conversation
confirmation bias: the tendency to pay attention only to information that supports one’s values
and beliefs while discounting or ignoring information that doesn’t
critical listening: listening with the goal of evaluating or analyzing what we hear
empathic listening: listening in order to experience what another person is thinking or feeling
glazing over: daydreaming during the time not spent listening
HURIER model: a model of effective listening that involves hearing, understanding,
remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding
information overload: the state of being overwhelmed by the amount of information one takes in
informational listening: listening to learn something
listening: the active process of making meaning out of another person’s spoken message
pseudolistening: using feedback behaviors to give the false impression that one is listening
rebuttal tendency: the tendency to disrupt listening to internally debate a speaker’s point and
formulate a reply while the person is still speaking
selective attention: listening only to what you want to hear
skepticism: the practice of evaluating the evidence for a claim
vividness effect: the tendency for dramatic, shocking events to distort one’s perception of reality
Discussion Questions
• What does it mean to listen? How is it different than merely hearing? In what instances do
you hear someone without listening?
• Why do you suppose people tend to overestimate how good they are at listening?
• Which stage in the effective listening process do you think is the easiest? Which is the most
challenging? Do you think everyone in your class would have the same answers?
• What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of online support groups? Under what
circumstances would you prefer to join an online support group?
• Which type of listening—informational, critical, empathic—do you engage in most often?
Which type do you enjoy the most? Why?
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• When are you most likely to engage in pseudolistening or glazing over? How can you
improve your listening in these situations?
• How would you remain an effective listener and manage information overload in
electronically mediated communication?
• What is the difference between interrupting and competitive interrupting? Why do people
engage in competitive interrupting?
• When do you notice yourself falling victim to the confirmation bias? What can you do to
prevent it?
• What does it mean to be skeptical? How does being skeptical help you to be a better listener?
Additional Resources
• An ILA definition of listening. (1995). ILA Listening Post, 53, 1.
• Brownell, J. (2015). Listening: Attitudes, principles, and skills (5th ed.). New York, NY:
Routledge.
• Nichols, M. P. (2009). The lost art of listening: How learning to listen can improve
relationships (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford.
• Ruggiero, V. R. (2011). Beyond feelings: Critical thinking (9th ed.). New York, NY:
• Selby, J. (2007). Listening with empathy: Creating genuine connections with customers and
colleagues. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads.
• Wolvin, A. D. (Ed.). (2010). Listening and human communication in the 21st Century.
Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Learning Objectives in CONNECT for Interpersonal Communication
The Nature of Listening
• Define listening.
• Differentiate between hearing and listening.
• Recognize the people-oriented style of listening.
• Recognize the action-oriented listening style.
• Recognize the content-oriented style.
• Recognize the time-oriented listening style.
• Compare and contrast the main listening styles.
• Distinguish between listening and listening effectively.
• Recall that college students spend more time listening than engaging in any other
communicative behavior.
• Recognize the importance of effective listening across contexts.
• Recall that many people overestimate their listening abilities.
• Differentiate between hearing and listening.
• Explain why it is myth that listening is natural and effortless.
• Recognize that listening is a learned skill and not an innate ability.
• Recall that not all listeners hear the same message.
• Explain the relationship between listening behavior and how much a culture values time.
• Compare and contrast listening behavior in men and women.
Way of Listening
• Recognize the six stages of the HURIER model of listening.
• Explain the hearing stage of the HURIER model.
• Explain the understanding stage of the HURIER model.
• Explain the remembering stage of the HURIER model.
• Recall that most people do not remember what they hear or do not remember it accurately.
• Define mnemonic device.
• Explain the first part of the interpreting stage of the HURIER model.
• Explain the second part of the interpreting stage of the HURIER model.
• Explain the evaluating stage of the HURIER model.
• Describe the responding stage of the HURIER model.
• Define stonewalling.
• Define backchanneling.
• Define paraphrasing.
• Define empathizing.
• Define the supporting response.
• Define analyzing.
• Define advising.
• Understand that different listening responses are appropriate depending upon the context.
• Explain how cultural expectations influence listening responses.
• Recognize that different types of listening are used to achieve different goals.
• Explain informational listening.
• Explain critical listening.
• Explain empathic listening.
• Explain the two skills required for empathic listening.
• Differentiate between empathic and sympathetic listening.
• Explain inspirational listening.
• Explain appreciative listening.
• Recall the effective listening is not limited to face-to-face interaction.
• Explain how to find a good listener online.
• Describe the benefits of online support groups.
• Identify ways to listen effectively online.
Common Barriers to Effective Listening
• Recognize that is difficult to be a good listener.
• Define noise.
• Identify strategies for overcoming noise.
• Define pseudolistening.
• Define selective attention.
• Identify different reasons people engage in pseudolistening and selective attention.
• Define information overload.
• Identify sources of information overload.
• Recall that information overload interrupts our attention.
• Explain two outcomes of conversational overload when using social media.
• Define glazing over.
• Compare and contrast glazing over from pseudolistening.
• Recall three problems that can occur from glazing over.
• Define the rebuttal tendency.
• Identify two reasons why the rebuttal tendency is a listening barrier.
• Define closed-mindedness.
• Explain why people can effectively listen to ideas with which they disagree.
• Define competitive interrupting.
• Distinguish between the goals of interrupting and the goals of competitive interrupting.
Becoming a Better Listener
• Recall that we can become better listeners with education and practice.
• Recall that separating what is and is not said is a technique for improving informational
listening.
• Define paraphrase.
• Identify effective paraphrasing techniques.
• Explain how avoiding the confirmation bias can improve informational listening.
• Define the vividness effect.
• Recall that listening for substance more than style is a method for improving informational
listening.
• Define skepticism.
• Recall that being a skeptic can help improve critical listening.
• Recall that good critical listeners pay attention to a speaker’s credibility.
• Identify the qualities that make a speaker credible.
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• Distinguish between experience and expertise.
• Recognize the role of bias in credibility.
• Recall that good critical listeners understand probability.
• Recognize the relationship among possibility, probability, and certainty.
• Distinguish what is probable from what is possible.
• Recognize the elements of effective empathic listening.
• Explain how listening nonjudgmentally can improve empathic listening.
• Explain how acknowledging feelings can improve empathic listening.
• Distinguish terminator from continuer statements.
• Explain how communicating support nonverbally can improve empathic listening.
In-Class Exercises
In-Class Exercise A: Hearing What Isn’t Said
1. This exercise focuses on informational listening, using the psychological technique called
priming, which was also used in a previous in-class exercise. Priming has the effect of
making people believe they have heard something that they haven’t actually heard, so a good
informational listening skill is to be able to separate what was heard from what was not.
2. The exercise involves reading lists of words aloud to your students, and then asking them to
write down as many of the words as they can remember. Each list of words is suggestive of a
particular word that is not included in the list (e.g., frosty, chilly, and icy are all related to
cold, but the word cold would be omitted from the list). After having students recall the
words they heard, read off individual words from the list and ask, by show of hands, how
many students wrote down each word. Include the primed word (the word suggested by each
list but not included on it), and take note of how many students recalled having “heard” it.
Then note that you didn’t actually read the primed word, but that students were primed to
think of it because of the other words on the list. Some students will have a difficult time
believing you didn’t read the primed word!
3. Two examples of priming lists are shown below. It is important that each list include
unrelated words as well as words suggestive of the primed term. You may elect to come up
with your own lists to use in addition to these.
Priming Task Lists
Primed term: Cold
Icy
Table
Frost
Sweater
Snow
Carport
Chilly
Painting
Light bulb
Icicle
Pine tree
Candle
Echo
Winter
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Primed Term: Old
Retired
Locker
Cash
Elderly
Music
Pension
Walnut
Spark
Grandparent
Frosting
Slush
Brink
Cane
Licorice
Feeble
Desert
Clock
Arthritis
Blanch
In-Class Exercise B: Pass It On—The Confirmation Bias in Listening
1. This exercise focuses on the critical listening skill of avoiding the confirmation bias. It is a
version of the “pass it on” game in which a story is whispered from one person to the next
and the final recipient repeats it aloud. The activity is best done in groups of 8–10 students.
2. After groups are formed, give one student in each group a copy of one of the stories below.
Each student with a story should be told to whisper that story verbatim to another student in
the group, being careful not to let any other students see the printed story. The student
receiving the story should then whisper it from memory to another student in the group, and
so on until it has been whispered to the last student in the group.
3. The last student who receives the story in each group should then repeat the story aloud from
memory for the class, while you check the recitation against the printed story that began that
group’s exercise. In particular, note whether the gender of any of the characters has been
switched. The stories all contain instances of gender-atypical roles, such as a male nurse or a
female engineer. Through the telling and retelling of the story, students may have the
tendency to switch the portrayal of these characters to their stereotypical genders (thus, a
female nurse and a male engineer).
4. If such gender switching has occurred, use it as an illustration of the confirmation bias.
People tend to listen and attend to things that fit their preconceived notions more than things
that don’t, and one form of preconceived notion is the stereotype. Since some professions are
strongly gender stereotyped, the confirmation bias suggests that we are likely to “hear”
portrayals of these professions in gender-typical ways, even if they are not presented that
way.
5. Of course, the activity also serves as an exercise in hearing and remembering detail, so you
can make note of how well the final student remembers the details of each story, as well.
Sample Stories for Pass-It-On Task
[These are sample stories, and you should feel free to come up with your own. What both of
these stories have in common is one character (a nurse in the first story and an engineer in the
second) whose gender is not the stereotypical gender for that profession. You’ll notice that
all the other principal characters in each story are of the opposite gender.]
Last night something very strange happened. I was walking my dog past the front of the
hospital, when all of a sudden she started barking loudly and I noticed a woman passed out
on the sidewalk. She was unconscious but still breathing, so I ran inside the hospital, found a
nurse, and brought him out with me to check on the woman. She had short red hair, was
about 5’7”, around 160 pounds, and had been carrying two shopping bags containing bread,
paper towels, dish soap, rice, white wine, and sunflower seeds. The nurse brought the woman
inside to the ER, and then I continued on my walk with my dog.
Yesterday at work this team of engineers and architects came in to meet with my boss.
Apparently they’re going to extend one of our office buildings by about 46 feet in one
direction and about 22 feet in the other. My boss said he’s never supervised a project this big
before, and one of the engineers said that she hadn’t, either. During the renovation, six guys
in our accounting department, three guys in our legal department, and everyone in my unit
are going to have to relocate temporarily. After the project is done, though, the new space
should be great.
In-Class Exercise C: Paraphrasing
1. This activity gives students practice at paraphrasing, or reflecting their own interpretations of
a speaker’s statement back to the speaker. It is an important skill for all forms of effective
listening. The activity should be done in groups of 4–6 students.
2. Give each student one phrase. Some examples are listed below, and you should feel free to
add examples. You might photocopy this list (one copy per small group) and then cut out
individual phrases to give each student in the group.
3. In their groups, students should take turns reading their phrases. After a student has read
a phrase aloud to the group, other group members should respond by paraphrasing what
they believe they are hearing. For example, after hearing the phrase “I’ve got two final
exams and a term paper due next week and I’m way behind in my reading,” students might
respond by saying “It sounds like you’re stressed!” or “I guess you’re gonna be pulling some
all-nighters” or “It sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate.” These are all different ways of
paraphrasing and responding to the student’s statement. In paraphrasing, what’s important is
that the listener reflect his or her own understanding of the speaker’s statement back to the
speaker.
4. Encourage students to evaluate and discuss each other’s paraphrases. In particular, have them
identify whether a paraphrase focuses more on the content of a statement (“It sounds like
you’ve got a lot on your plate”) or more on the listener’s empathy (“It sounds like you’re
stressed”).
Example Statements for Paraphrasing Activity
1. It doesn’t matter how hard I try; there’s no way I can get better than a B average in
school.
2. I wish my boss would understand that I have a life outside of work.
3. My parents can’t understand why I want to go to graduate school. They think I should
just get a job and start making money.
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4. I don’t know how I’m supposed to afford college if the university keeps raising tuition.
5. My supervisor at work is driving me crazy; she won’t get off my back about every little
thing.
6. I have so much reading to get done. Why can’t professors give us a break?
Out-of-Class Exercises
Out-of-Class Exercise A: How I Spend My Communication Time
1. In this exercise, students will keep a journal for one week in which they record how they
spend their time as communicators. The activity is to be done individually.
2. For one week, students should keep a notebook with them at all times. Whenever they
engage in a communicative activity—talking, reading, writing, listening face-to-face,
listening to media, surfing the Internet, etc.—they should write down how long the activity
lasted (e.g., “Talked to Sue for 3 minutes, listened to Sue for 3 minutes,” “Wrote e-mails for
30 minutes”).
3. At the end of the week, students should analyze their records and figure out the percentage of
their overall communication time they spent talking, reading, writing, and listening. Students
are likely to be surprised at how much of their communication time is spent listening.
4. You might have students write up a short paper reporting the findings of their record-keeping
activity. Also, you may choose to shorten the activity—for example, 2–3 days instead of a
week.
Out-of-Class Exercise B: Listening Among the Hearing Impaired
1. In this exercise, students will gather information about how people with hearing impairments
“listen.” This exercise can be done individually or in pairs.
2. Since the first element in the HURIER model is hearing, the question arises as to how people
who are deaf or hearing impaired can listen. For this exercise, students should research the
question and report their findings in writing or in a multimedia presentation.
3. Students might begin their research online by visiting websites for the hearing impaired. If
your college or university has a department of speech and hearing sciences, students might
also gather information and resources by emailing with faculty or students in that department.
The point of the activity is for students to learn—from the perspective of those with hearing
impairments—how a hearing impairment affects the ability to listen and attend to others.