Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
Lecture Notes
Chapter 7: Listening
Outline and Key Terms
I. Why Is Listening Important?
A. Listening and Education
1. Listening is often the primary channel of instruction at all levels of
education.
2. Listening is a fundamental element of instruction and key to academic
success.
a. Listening is critical in the relationships that develop between
students and instructors and between students and academic
advisers.
b. These relationships require effective listening by all parties
involved.
3. Listening is the least taught and most taken-for-granted type of communication
skill.
B. Listening and Career
1. Effective listening skills are vital to career success and advancement.
2. Employers frequently rank listening as one of the most sought-after
skills.
a. Most success and achievement from organizational and
personal standpoints can be connected to effective listening.
b. “Job success and development of all employees, regardless of
title, position or task will continue to be directly related to the
employees’ attitudes toward, skills in, and knowledge about
listening.”
C. Listening and Religion and Spirituality
1. Listening is also important in religion and spirituality.
2. Listening in this area includes intrapersonal listening when engaged in
meditation and prayer.
3. Interpersonal listening occurs when listening to sermons or music and
studying sacred and holy texts.
D. Listening and Health Care
1. The extent to which both patients and providers listen effectively has an
impact on the establishment of correct diagnoses.
2. Effective listening also affects whether patients accurately follow
provider instructions.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
3. Listening is vital to successful communication among health care
workers.
E. Listening and Relationships
1. Listening is fundamental in relationship development and maintenance.
2. When both partners engage in effective listening, they tend to have
more successful, long-lasting, and positive relationships.
3. Effective listening is essential to every action that takes place within
relationships at all levels of development.
F. Listening Objectives
1. A single communication exchange can have multiple goals.
a. Relational development and enhancement
b. Gaining and comprehending information
c. Critical listening
d. Enjoyment and appreciation
e. Therapeutic listening
2. All listening situations may entail more than one objective.
II. Active Listening
A. Many people use hearing and listening interchangeably, but they are not the same.
1. Hearing is the passive physiological act of receiving sound that takes places
when sound waves hit your eardrums
2. Listening is the active process of receiving, attending to, interpreting, and
responding to symbolic activity.
3. Listening, unlike hearing, is active because it requires a great deal of
work and energy.
4. It is a process rather than an act because it has multiple steps.
a. Receiving sensory stimuli as sound waves that travel from the source to
your eardrums is the first listening process step.
1) The entire listening process is not just about aural stimuli, or
hearing.
2) Taste, touch, smell, and sight can be used to make sense of a
message.
b. Attending to stimuli occurs when we perceive and focus on stimuli.
1) We pick up on only some of the stimuli with which we are
bombarded.
2) We attend to the stimuli most necessary to accomplish the task
at hand.
c. Interpreting occurs when we assign meaning to sounds.
1) We use multiple sensory channels and accompanying stimuli
when listening.
2) We especially use sight and visual stimuli.
d. Responding is our reaction to communication from another person.
1) Responses, or feedback, to messages occur throughout the entire
communication interaction.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
2) We may express responses verbally and/or nonverbally.
3) Responding during the receipt of a message can show our
reaction about what is being said.
4) Any active response or unintended response lets the sender
know how we feel about the message.
e. Reflecting (aka paraphrasing) involves summarizing in our own words
what another person has said to convey understanding of the message.
1) Paraphrases are sometimes accompanied by requests for
clarification.
2) Reflecting assists in ensuring accuracy of message
understanding.
3) Reflecting also serves to exhibit attentiveness to the message
and concern about accurate interpretation.
III. Engaged and Relational Listening
A. Engaged Listening—involves making a relational connection with the source of the
message.
1. Engaged listening involves caring, trusting, wanting to know more, and
feeling excited, enlightened, attached, and concerned.
2. Disengaged listening includes standard attempts to be friendly and positive in
boilerplate responses to technical questions and apologies from organizational
representatives who have received a complaint.
3. Engaged Listening for a Transactional World
a. Engaged listening enables us to grasp a deeper understanding of
a message that goes beyond what can be achieved though mere
active listening.
b. When reflecting, we may not actually understand the overtones
of the message, even though we can paraphrase the message.
c. Active, but disengaged, listeners may miss the deeper
significance of a message.
B. Relational Listening—involves recognizing, understanding, and addressing
the intrinsic interconnection of relationships and communication
1. Listening relationally will enhance your understanding of personal
relationships and the meaning of communication taking place.
2. Requires the listener to perceive how communication affects the relationships
3. Requires the listener to perceive how the relationship affects communication
4. Relational listening entails recognizing the salient features of communication,
considering how a given message affects the relationship, and addressing this
impact in an appropriate manner.
IV. Critical Listening
A. Critical listening involves analyzing the accuracy, legitimacy, and value of messages
and evidence produced to support claims.
1. This assessment could be positive or negative.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
2. The need for critical listening pervades daily life.
B. Elements of Critical Listening
1. Evaluation of Plausibility
a. Plausibility is the extent to which the message seems legitimate.
b. When unsure of a message’s plausibility, follow your instincts.
c. Evaluation of plausibility is the first line of defense as a critical listener.
2. Evaluation of Source
3. Evaluation of Consistency
a. Consistency concerns whether the message is free of internal
contradiction.
b. Consistency also concerns whether the message is in harmony with
information you already know is true.
4. Evaluation of Evidence
a. Evaluating evidence involves considering verifiability, quantity, and
quality.
b. Verifiability indicates that the material being provided can be confirmed
by other sources or means.
c. The more arguments, data, and people that are consistent with the
message, the better.
d. Evaluations of quality include determining issues such as lack of bias,
sufficient expertise, and recency.
V. Fallacious Arguments
Fallacious arguments—arguments that appear legitimate but are actually based on faulty
reasoning or insufficient evidence
A. Argument Against the Source—attacks the source of a message rather than the
message itself
B. Appeal to Authority—using a person’s credibility or authority in one area to support
an argument in another area
C. Appeal to People (aka Bandwagon appeal)—claims that something is true simply
because everyone else agrees that it is true
D. Appeal to Relationships—uses relationships to justify behaviors or ideas
E. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc and Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc—argues that
something is caused by what came before it, or by the thing with which it coincides;
confuses a temporal connection for a causal connection
F. Hasty Generalization—concluding that something is true based on a single
occurrence or insufficient data or sample size
G. Red Herring—using another issue to divert attention away from the issue being
discussed
H. False Alternatives—only providing two options, one of which is significantly
weaker, when other options may be available
I. Composition Fallacy and Division Fallacy—composition fallacy argues that the
parts are the same as the whole; division fallacy argues that the whole is the same as
the parts
J. Equivocation—uses ambiguities of language to make an argument
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
VI. Recognizing and Overcoming Listening Obstacles
A. Environmental distractions—result from the physical location where listening takes
place
B. Medium distractions—result from limitations or problems inherent in certain media
and technology
C. Source distractions—result from auditory and visual characteristics of the message
source
D. Factual diversion—frequently results when so much emphasis is placed on details,
the overall information is compromised
E. Semantic diversion—results from distraction due to words or phrases that are
unfamiliar or that have a negative connotation
F. Content (representational) listening—results from a focus on the content level
meaning of the message with disregard of the social or relational levels of meaning
G. Selective listening—results from shutting off messages that oppose the listener’s
views and interests and only attending to those with which the listener agrees
H. Egocentric listening—results from focusing on self-presentation as a speaker, rather
than on the message of the other person
I. Wandering thoughts—results from daydreaming or thinking about things other than
the message being presented
J. Experiential superiority—takes place when there is a disregard for the speaker
because the listener believes she or he possesses more or superior knowledge and
experience than the speaker does
K. Message complexity—occurs when a person finds a message so complex or
confusing that he or she stops listening
L. Past experience with the source—is an obstacle when previous encounters with the
message source lead listeners to ignore the message