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Chapter 6
Listening
CHAPTER OUTCOMES
• Outline the listening process and styles of listening
• List the reasons why we listen
LECTURE NOTES
• How We Listen
ƒ Listening and hearing are not the same thing.
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Hearing is the physiological process of perceiving sound.
ƒ The Listening Process involves the following sequence of steps and decisions:
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Selecting involves choosing what we hear.
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Attending is where we decide to focus attention on communication.
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Understanding occurs when we interpret and make sense of messages.
ƒ Personal Listening Preferences describes the following four distinct listening styles:
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People-oriented listeners listen with relationships in mind and are good at assessing
others’ moods.
• Why We Listen discusses the different ways in which people listen, plus the benefits of
listening well.
ƒ Meeting Listening Goals
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People listen to meet various goals.
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Informational listening (comprehensive listening) is used to understand a message
and involves questioning techniques.
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Critical listening (evaluative listening) involves:
Ɠ Determining the thesis or main point of the speaker’s message
Ɠ Focusing your efforts on listening
Ɠ Decoding nonverbal cues that come through
Ɠ Using your memory to remember what people tell you
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Empathic listening is when we try to get to know each other’s feelings.
Ɠ Rephrasing or paraphrasing thoughts and feelings is helpful in this kind of
listening.
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Appreciative listening is when the goal is to take pleasure in the sounds that we
receive.
ƒ The Value of Listening Well
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Effective listening can help satisfy career goals.
• Listening Challenges describes a number of listening barriers, which are factors that
interfere with our ability to comprehend information and respond appropriately.
ƒ Environmental Factors
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Environmental factors such as noise, temperature, and visual distractions may hamper
ƒ Hearing and Processing Challenges
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A person’s physical or medical issue in the hearing process can interfere with listening
ability.
ƒ Multitasking
ƒ Boredom and Overexcitement
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Both boredom and overexcitement can distract us from listening effectively.
ƒ Attitudes About Listening examines how personal attitudes about listening can affect
our ability to listen.
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Overconfidence and laziness may cause people to use their high self-expectations as an
excuse to not prepare or pay attention.
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Listening apprehension (also called receiver apprehension) causes people to feel
anxious or nervous about listening because they may not like what they hear.
ƒ Unethical Listening Behaviors are aspects of incompetent communication and include
the following:
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Defensive listening is responding with aggression and arguing with the speaker
without fully listening to the message.
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Selective listening is zeroing in only on bits of information that interest you and
disregarding other parts of messages, especially when feeling insecure or defensive.
• Listening in Context examines the ways in which the context of communication influences
listening.
ƒ The Relational and Situational Listening Contexts
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The situational context may cause listening apprehension or distracting background
ƒ The Cultural Listening Context
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Listening behaviors are different in different cultural contexts.
ƒ The Technology Listening Context
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Technology can be both helpful and hurtful to the listening process.
CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What does it mean for you to “listen well”? What kinds of behaviors do you exhibit when
you are really trying to listen?
2. What makes a good listener?
• Be sure that students focus on differences between good listening and pseudolistening.
How can you tell one from the other? What specific characteristics identify a good
listener? One important aspect to discuss is restating what the person says. This is a
3. Do listening habits change based on gender? What if the listening partners are of the same
sex? What if they’re of the opposite sex?
• Students will likely have a lively conversation on this point. Consider asking students
4. Do you ever try to listen while you’re doing other things? How does that affect your
listening skills?
5. Why is it difficult to listen to a boring speech? Who holds the responsibility for making a
speech less boring—the speaker or the listener? Why?
6. Is there a situation where you are apprehensive about listening? Describe situations where
someone could exhibit listening apprehension.
7. Is it ever OK not to listen? When would that be? What factors of a particular situation
would make it acceptable to not listen?
PERSONAL WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
1. When Do You Listen?
2. What Kind of Listener Are You?
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3. How Can You LISTEN to That???
Ask students to listen to a speaker who they find particularly oppositional to their own
4. Where Do We See Listening?
Have students watch a half-hour television show and document all the listening events
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Tuning Out
Goal: To understand that we are culturally programmed to automatically choose not to
listen to particular things
Time Required: 15 minutes
Materials: Television
Directions:
1. If you have a television in the room, turn the television on for the first 5 minutes of
2. Don’t offer any explanation, just have the television on. Be sure that at least one set
of commercial breaks is part of the viewing. While the television is on, take notes on
3. After the prescribed viewing time is over, tell students to take out a clean piece of
paper for a quiz. Ask them to answer questions about those things you took notes on.
After the students self correct the quiz, discuss with them why they got certain things
2. Operator
Goal: To learn how content information changes when poor listening skills are used
Time Required: 20 minutes
Materials:
2. One chair facing the classroom for student volunteers
Directions: This is the classic game of operator.
2. Keep one volunteer in the room; send the rest out in the hallway to wait. Seat the
remaining volunteer in a chair in front facing the class.
4. After you finish reading the article, call in one student from the hallway. Have the
5. Once the first student volunteer has related the article to the second student, have the
6. Ask this last student to relate the article to the class. Finally, with all students in the
room, reread the article to the class.
Debriefing:
Lead students in a discussion about what facts from the article were forgotten and what
3. What Did You Hear?
Goal: To practice good listening skills
Time Required: 10 minutes
Materials:
1. Access to the Internet, either during class or ahead of time
3. Blank paper and writing implements for students
Directions:
1. Have students listen to the speech and write their answers to the following questions:
• What is the thesis or main point of the speaker’s message?
• What nonverbal cues helped you to determine the meaning of the speaker’s
message?
Debriefing:
Have students discuss their own interpretations of the speaker’s message. Why are there
differences in their interpretations? What were some listening challenges students faced
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4. Listening Through Barriers
Goal: To understand how barriers can affect listening
Time Required: 5 minutes
Materials: Short script, such as the Pledge of Allegiance or the Preamble to the U.S.
Constitution
Directions:
2. Give one volunteer the script.
4. Have the student read the script on one side of the door while the other student
listens. Then, bring the student in from outside the classroom.
Debriefing:
5. Identifying Listening
Goal: To differentiate among different kinds of listening
Time Required: 10 minutes
Materials: Clip from a news talk show and method of displaying it to students
Directions:
1. Show a clip from a news talk show where pundits are discussing a topic with each
other.
2. Have students identify the different kinds of listening they see happening, such as
defensive, selective, hurtful, and so on.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. What are the differences between hearing and listening?
3. What are the differences between active listening and passive listening? Which do you
use most often?
4. What are the characteristics of a time-oriented listener?
5. Define critical listening.
9. One of the most frequently recommended suggestions for listening well is simply to stop
talking. Do you agree with that? Why or why not?
MEDIA
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Walt Disney Pictures, 2010)