Listening and Critical Thinking

1. Listening and Critical Thinking Chapter 4:

2. Types of Listening • Discriminative Listening: Identify • the physical ability to accurately distinguish auditory and/or visual stimuli • Did you “catch the cue” or “pick up on the details” • Comprehensive Listening: Understand • The ability to accurately understand the meaning of spoken and nonverbal messages • Empathic Listening: Feel • The ability to understand and identify with another person’s feelings of experiences • Analytical listening: Reason • The ability to evaluate another person’s message objectively • Appreciative listening: Like • The ability to take pleasure in another person’s message.

3. Retention • Residual Message: • We only remember 50% of what we hear immediately after hearing it. • Short Term Memory • Long Term Memory • Working Memory

4. Things to Consider

5. Consider… Listening Strategies • Utilize Thought Speed • Think 4-5 times faster than we speak • Listen to Nonverbal Behavior as well as Verbal Behavior • Listen to Feedback • Listen Before you Leap • Count to 10 • Minimize Distractions

6. Consider…Listening Strategies • Paraphrase • Restating what people say in a way that indicates you understand them • Give Feedback • Evaluative: makes an assessment; opinion; • Non-Evaluative: shows support, encourages additional information; • Listen Physically • Adopt an open posture • Maintain comfortable eye contact • Lean slightly forward • Face the person

7. Consider…Gender Differences MEN WOMEN Relationship Oriented Respond to the Mood Use empathic and appreciative listening Provide more feedback See listening as a way to do something for the other person • Content oriented • Hear Facts • Use comprehensive and analytical listening • Short and Sweet • Shortest path from A – B • See listening as a way to solve a problem

8. Consider…Notes as a Listening Tool • People who take notes remember more than those who don’t take notes • Taking too many notes though can actually hurt your ability to understand and remember information • Effective listeners adjust their note-taking style so that it reflects the speaker’s style and organizational pattern.

9. Consider…Be a Critical Thinker • Critical thinking: • the process you use to analyze what you read, see, or hear to arrive at a justified conclusion or decision • Fact vs Inference • Solid Arguments • Fallacies in Arguments

10. Fact vs Inference • Fact: statement that can be proved true or false; backed up by verifiable date • Inference: a conclusion based on a fact; an assumption (pg. 79)

11. Consider… Solid Arguments • Claim: a statement that identifies your belief or position on a topic. • If we enter this residence we may find information which will help us catch the criminal. • Data: Evidence to support a claim. • The suspect lived there. • Warrant: Explains how and why the evidence supports a claim. • Many suspects keep incriminating information in their homes or on laptops in the home. Toulmin Model

12. Fallacies of Argument Fallacy Match the Fallacy Because I stepped on the white lines, my baseball team lost. You should vote for a Democrat because our family has always voted for the Democrat. Everybody else has an IPhone so I should too. Olympic athletes eat Wheaties so it must be a good cereal. How can he stand for family values, he doesn’t even have any kids. Once my friend had a bad experience with a Dell computer so they must be lousy brand. • Attack the Person • Appeal to Authority • Appeal to Popularity • Appeal to Tradition • Faulty Cause • Hasty Generalization

13. In Conclusion… • Effective listening is a learned skill that takes a lot of time, practice, and patience. • If we use effective listening strategies , pay attention to gender and cultural differences, and utilize critical thinking skills, we can improve our effectiveness as a listener.