Student Resource
Gamble, The Public Speaking Playbook, 2nd Edition
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Lecture Notes
Chapter 4: Listening Critically
Learning Objectives
1-1 Define listening
1-2 Explain listening’s role in a free society
1-3 Identify benefits of effective listening
1-4 Explain four types of listening
1-5 Describe cultural diversity’s impact on listening
1-6 Behave like an effective listener, demonstrating critical thinking and listening skills
Outline
I. In order to assess the quality, appropriateness, and value of spoken words, we need to posses
two key skills: the ability to listen and the ability to think critically.
A. There are six stages of listening: hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting,
evaluating and responding.
1. Hearing is an involuntary psychological process and listening is a voluntary
mental process.
a. Receive aural stimuli
b. Attending involves our willingness to focus on and organize particular
stimuli.
c. Speakers must work to retain attention of listeners
i. Focus on subjects of particular interest to receivers
ii. Use words and images that evoke pictures in the minds of
receivers
iii. Incorporate activity and movement into presentations
iiii. Tell stories that create suspense, describe conflict, or evoke
humor
2. During the understanding stage we focus on meaning, using information to
decode messages.
Student Resource
Gamble, The Public Speaking Playbook, 2nd Edition
SAGE Publishing, 2018
a. Don’t jump to conclusions-listen to the entire speech
3. During remembering we mentally save what we’ve gained from the speaker’s
message for further use.
a. A good speaker builds redundancy into their speech
4. During the interpreting stage, we seek to understand the message from the
speaker’s perspective.
a. Keeps from imposing our meaning onto the speaker’s ideas
b. To interpret a speaker’s message accurately we may
i. Relate what the speaker says to what we already know
ii. Compile questions to ask to clarify things
iii. Paraphrase the speaker’s thoughts in our own words
5. During the responding stage, we react and provide feedback.
a. Occurs during and after speech
II. When listening, it is imperative the speaker understand the cultural differences of the
audience members.
A. For each of us, culture, lifestyle, attitudes, and values influence and help determine
several factors.
1. What we attend to
2. What we comprehend
3. How we evaluate communication
4. What we retain
B. Culture affects willingness to listen.
1. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to asses the values, beliefs, and behaviors of our
own culture as superior to those of other cultures, can impede our ability to be
receptive to the words of a speaker from a culture other than our own.
2. Attuning to differences between cultures can help diminish the impact of the
prejudices, biases and misconceptions developed over the years.
III. There are several benefits of critical listening.
A. Reducing stress, more learning, improved speaker-audience relationships, improved
decision making, improved speaking and a better society are beneficial to the critical
listening process.
1. As information is communicated, complex data are simplified, objectives are
clarified, and stress levels of listeners drop.
2. Listeners learn more about the speaker and the subject.
Student Resource
Gamble, The Public Speaking Playbook, 2nd Edition
SAGE Publishing, 2018
3. Listen can create bonds between people from diverse backgrounds.
4. Exposure to a wide range of information, attitudes, and beliefs provides for a
better opportunity to develop better judgment.
5. Speakers are more comfortable delivering a speech when they have the full
attention of the audience.
6. People who listen critically to the messages of others and do not just accept
what is presented to them can spot fallacies.
IV. Listening theorists identify four different types of listening: appreciative, empathic,
comprehensive and critical/deliberative.
A. Appreciative is listening for pleasure.
1. Live concerts, movie, play, and local comedy club
B. Empathic listening is to provide emotional support.
1. Serves a therapeutic function
a. Used most in interpersonal relationships
C. Comprehensive listening is designed to get information
1. Asking for directions
2. Attending a presentation
D. Critical/deliberative listening allows you to make an evaluation
1. Make judgments about its worth and validity
2. Decide whether to accept or reject it
3. Goes beyond comprehensive listening to separate fact from fiction
V. To become more effective at both speaking and listening, you need to recognize those
internal and external factors that contribute to deficient listening or non-listening.
A. The first listening behavior encourages listeners to stay tuned in.
1. Poor listeners don’t pay attention to the speaker.
2. Keep eyes focused on speaker, adopt an attentive posture, and work to remain
alert.
B. The second listening behavior encourages listeners to react honestly.
1. Nonlisteners pretend they are listening.
2. Take notes
C. The third listening behavior encourages listeners to give a fair hearing.
1. Nonlisteners prejudge the speech and/or speaker
2. Wait until conclusion to evaluate effectiveness
Student Resource
Gamble, The Public Speaking Playbook, 2nd Edition
SAGE Publishing, 2018
D. The fourth listening behavior encourages listeners to control emotional reactions.
1. Nonlisteners allow their emotions to get the best of them.
2. Nonlisteners allow particular words spoken by the speaker to interfere with
their ability to listen.
a. Trigger words
3. Don’t mentally argue with a speaker during the presentation
E. The fifth listening behavior encourages listeners to challenge themselves.
1. Nonlisteners often avoid material that is challenging.
2. Nonlisteners refuse to stretch their minds.
3. Clear your mind of extraneous thoughts, reading up on the speaker’s subject
prior to the presentation or researching the speaker.
F. The sixth listening behavior encourages listeners to focus on the value of the speech.
1. Nonlisteners tend to be egocentric
2. Focus on the value to be found in every speech
G. The seventh listening behavior encourages listeners to control the physical
environment.
1. Nonlisteners let themselves to be distracted by many things.
2. Resist multi-tasking while listening
H. The final listening behavior encourages listeners to use their time wisely.
1. The average person speaks at a rate of 150-175 words per minute.
2. The average listener comprehends at about 400-500 words per minute.
a. The difference between the two is called speech-thought differential.
3. Nonlisteners waste extra time by daydreaming instead of focusing on the
speech.
a. Make good use of “spare” mental lag time
b. Interact with the speech’s content by producing your own examples or
relating to the speaker’s experiences.