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Chapter 6
Listening
What you’ll know:
• What listening is and why it is important to effective communication
• Three challenges to effective listening
• Five steps in the active listening process
What you’ll be able to do:
• Employ specific strategies to willfully attend to the messages you receive
• Employ specific strategies to understand the messages you receive
• Employ specific strategies to successfully remember the messages you receive
• Critically evaluate information in the messages you receive
• Provide appropriate feedback about the messages you receive
Chapter Outline
I. What is Listening: the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken
and nonverbal messages. Listening includes the processes of attending, understanding,
evaluating, remembering, and responding.
II. Challenges to Effective Listening
III. Active Listening
A. Attending: the perceptual process of selecting and focusing on specific stimuli from the
countless stimuli reaching the senses
1. Get physically and mentally ready to listen.
2. Resist mental distractions.
3. Make the shift fully from speaker to listener.
4. Observe nonverbal cues.
5. Hear a person out.
B. Understanding: decoding a message accurately to reflect the meaning intended by the speaker
1. Identify the main point.
2. Ask a question.
a. Content paraphrase: restating the denotative meaning of a statement
b. Feelings paraphrase: restating the message including its emotional components
D. Evaluating
1. Separate facts from inferences.
2. Probe for information.
E. Responding
1. General response guidelines:
a. Provide feedback cues.
b. Respond only after the speaker has finished.
c. Respond to the message before changing the subject.
2. Emotional support response guidelines
3. Critique response guidelines
4. Public speech evaluation response guidelines
Discussion and Assignment Ideas
I. Can listening be taught? If so, how should society teach better listening skills? If not, what can we
do to improve?
II. Quotes: These can be used to introduce topics, question perspectives, or gain individual opinion.
Providing students with a quote and prompting them to write or reflect on their personal feelings
about the quote can help to spark discussion and interest. Suggested prompts may include “Define this
concept in your own words”; “Do you agree with this statement? Explain”; “What text material can be
used to support or refute this idea?”
Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble.
—Frank Tyger
I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to
learn, I must do it by listening.
—Larry King
"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and
attended to my answer."
— Henry David Thoreau
III. How do you feel when someone listens to your stories intently? How do you feel when you can tell
someone is not listening? How can you be sure to convey active listening skills during all
conversations?
IV. Working in groups, have each person in class select a newspaper or magazine article and prepare
a two-minute reading of it. As each person reads, ask half the group to take notes and have the
other students use a mnemonic device of their choice to remember the content. At the end of each
reading, ask class members who did not take notes to pair up with a student who took notes.
Have the students share what they heard with each other and compare the results. Have students
discuss why they chose to write what they did. Did note-taking increase accuracy? What about
comprehension? Why or why not? How does this lesson help us become better listeners?
Technology Resources
Visit cengagebrain.com and explore Web Links: Mnemonics, www.mindtools.com to discover
mnemonic devices and strategies that might be useful to you.
Movies
Movies and movie clips can be used to help students grasp concepts. Clips can be shown in class, or
movies can be assigned as homework. Following the movie clips, ask students written or oral
questions. These questions should address pertinent concepts, thereby actively engaging students in
discussion.
The Soloist (2009)
Rated: PG-13 (Thematic elements, some drug use, and language)
Synopsis: This drama is based on the true story of Nathaniel Ayers, a musician who developed
schizophrenia and became homeless and played the cello in the streets of L.A. Steve Lopez, a
journalist, discovers Ayers and writes several stories about him and the problem of homelessness in
L.A. The complexities of the issue of homelessness and Ayers’ personal struggles are the focus of the
film.
Questions for discussion:
1. What type of listening to do you think Lopez engages in when he communicates with Ayers?
2. Do you think Ayers has never told his story before telling it to Lopez, or has no one ever really
listened? What is the difference between listening and hearing?
3. Do you think we (in the U.S.) listen to mentally disabled people differently than we listen to people
without mental disabilities?
4. How does listening to Ayers help Lopez learn about himself? How does listening to others give us
insight about ourselves?
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Rated: R (Profanity)
Synopsis: Erin Brockovich is a single mom who works as a clerk for a lawyer. In the course of her work,
she stumbles across a pro-bono case about water contamination. After doing some
investigating, she learns that the property named in the case, owned by a powerful utility company, has
been contaminated by a highly toxic, highly carcinogenic compound that can get into a person’s DNA.
Winning the case looks promising, but with the expense involved in fighting a corporate giant, Erin’s
boss is reluctant to pursue it. In the meantime, the time that Erin is spending on this case is straining
her relationship with her boyfriend and her children.
Questions for discussion
1. At times, Erin Brockovich demonstrates excellent empathic listening skills. However, there are
times when her attending listening skills are less effective. Find an example where she
demonstrates good empathy skills and another where she demonstrates poor attending skills.
2. How do the residents of the town react to the big corporate lawyers? Why do you think they react
in this way?
3. Erin learns the names, phone numbers, and case histories of more than 600 people by heart. How
does she remember and retain so much about the case histories?
Additional suggested movies: Twelve Angry Men (1957) (listening, group communication); The Red
Violin (1998) (listening); Dead Man Walking (1996) (listening)
Other Media Resources
Skills and Competency
Please refer to cengagebrain.com for the link to Skill Learning Activities: Questions and Paraphrases
and Test Your Competence: Evaluating Inferences. The following suggested answers to this activity can
also be found in the Communicate! online textbook resources.
Skill Building: Questions and Paraphrases
1. Question: Exactly what do you mean a “bore”? (clarify word meaning) What did you do during
class? (get details) Are you feeling angry or just frustrated? (clarify feelings)
Paraphrase: I sense you’re more angry than frustrated, because not only does Professor Romero
Test Your Competence: Evaluating Inferences
Chapter Activities
6.1: Conveying and Listening Effectively
Purpose: To allow students to experience the difficulty of listening effectively to a confusing
message, with additional external noise
Time: 20 minutes
• How would you rate your listening skills during this exercise?
• How hard was it to understand your partner? Why?
• What was missing from this exercise that you would normally have during a
conversation, enabling you to listen more effectively?
This activity can be used to review verbal, nonverbal, perception, and conversation
ideas as well as practice listening skills.
6.2: Listening and Gender
Purpose: To enable the possibility of gender empathy regarding listening differences
Time: 30 minutes
Process: Remind students that a common complaint from women is that men don’t listen well.
6.3: Group Listening in Conversation
Purpose: To provide a general introduction to listening challenges
Time: 40 minutes
Process: Form groups of five and instruct each to select a controversial topic for discussion.
Evaluation Checklist
Indicate your agreement with the following factors: 3 indicates high agreement, 2
indicates moderate agreement, and 1 indicates low agreement. Write comments to
support your perceptions.
_____ Group members were courteous.
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
6.4: Listening Log
Purpose: To evaluate and reflect on listening habits demonstrated in the media
Time: 25 minutes
Equipment: 10-minute video or audio clip of a talk show or other news interview program
Listening Habit
Guest 1
Guest 2
Host
Good listening skills
Demonstrated empathy
Paraphrased effectively
Listened correctly
Repeated information correctly
Asked effective questions
Separated facts from inferences
Poor listening skills
Demonstrated impatience
Paraphrased incorrectly
Paraphrased ineffectively
Reacted before the speaker finished
Asked misleading or ineffective
questions
Confused fact with inference
Go through the listening log and ask the class to report what they found. What factors led
to listening difficulties? What factors led to good listening behaviors? On balance, did the
host listen effectively? How did this affect the guest(s)? What about the
guests—were they good listeners? How did this affect the host? Why do you think
these kinds of listening behaviors show up in the media? Do you think this is typical of
most listening, or is it different because of the forum?
Journal Assignments
A. Listening Self-Analysis
How would you evaluate your listening skills? Which of the five steps in the listening process causes the
most difficulties for you? Are you consciously acting on all of the guidelines and suggested steps for the
listening process? What will you do to improve your listening abilities?
B. Children & Listening
What special difficulties might children have with listening? Did any of you experience those difficulties as
a child? If so, what helped you learn to listen more effectively?
C. Listening for Understanding
How do you listen differently when you are listening for understanding versus when you are listening for
pleasure? Use examples in your description.
