Chapter 7 Listening

1. Inter-Act, 13th Edition Chapter 7 Listening

2. Chapter Objectives • Discuss the three challenges that make it difficult for us to effectively listen • List and describe the five steps in the active listening process • Discuss the guidelines and skills that can help you improve your ability to listen

3. Discussion Question: • Based on your work and life experience, what are some of the reasons why you and others have listened poorly?

4. Listening makes up 42-60% of our communication. Speaking Reading Writing Listening

5. Class Activity • A common complaint from women is that men don’t listen well…

6. Challenges to effective listening • Personal and cultural styles of listening • Listening Apprehension • Dual processes in listening

7. Personal & Cultural Styles of Listening • Content-oriented: prefer to focus on facts and evidence • People-oriented: prefer to focus on conversational partners and their feelings • Action-oriented: prefer to focus on point speaker is trying to make • Time-oriented: prefer brief and swift conversations

8. Listening Apprehension • Fear of misinterpretation • Fear of the psychological affect of the message

9. Dual Processes in Listening • Passive listening: effortless, thoughtless, and habitual process • Active listening: skillful, intentional, deliberate, and conscious process

10. The Active Listening Process The process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages • Attending • Understanding • Remembering • Critically Evaluating • Responding

11. Attending The process of willfully striving to perceive selected sounds that are being heard • Get physically and mentally ready to listen. • Make the shift from speaker to listener a complete one. • Resist tuning out. • Avoid interrupting.

12. Understanding Process of accurately decoding a message so that you share its meaning with the speaker • Identify the speaker’s purpose and key points. • Observe nonverbal cues. • Ask clarifying questions. • Paraphrase what you heard.

13. Paraphrase the following statements to reflect both the thoughts and feelings of the person speaking: • “I really like communication, but what could I do with a major in this field?” • “I don’t know if Pat and I are getting too serious too fast.” • “You can borrow my car, if you really need to, but please be careful with it. I can’t afford any repairs and if you have an accident, I won’t be able to drive to D.C. this weekend.”

14. Remembering Process of moving information from short-term memory to long-term memory Reasons we fail to remember Using repetition to remember • We filter out messages • We listen anxiously or passively • We remember “easy” or “desirable” messages • We forget the middle • Primacy effect • Recency effect • Repeat two, three, four times • Create mnemonics • Take notes

15. Mnemonics Any artificial technique used as a memory aid For example: take the first letter of a list you are trying to remember and create a word HOMES (the five Great Lakes) Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior

16. Note Taking • Take notes when you • are listening to • complex • information. • Brief outline: • Overall idea • Main points • Key developmental material

17. Critically Evaluating Information • Separate facts from inferences • Fact – a verifiable statement • Inference – a conclusion drawn from facts • Probe for information

18. Responding Process of providing feedback to your partner’s message • Back-channel cues: verbal and nonverbal signals demonstrating listener response to the speaker • Reply when message is complete • Respond to the previous message before changing the subject

19. Class Activity • Scenarios? • Form groups of 3 • Listener • Story Teller • Observer • Takes notes on verbal/nonverbal messages, examples of paraphrasing/questioning • What factors led to listening difficulties? What behaviors demonstrated effective listening?

20. Digital Communication Literacy • Extra effort is required to understand digital messages. • Critically evaluate social media messages to separate facts from inferences. • Recognize underlying motives, values, ideologies. • Digital messages should not completely replace face-to-face communication.

21. Homework • Create a communication improvement plan for developing/improving on a particular listening skill (questioning or paraphrasing) or an aspect of the listening process (attending, understanding, remembering, critically evaluating, and responding). • Be sure to also incorporate your class activity to illustrate your current assessment of your listening skills. • Check your assignment rubric and past assignment evaluations for additional support.