Chapter 4 Listening & Learning PDF

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Lecture notes from the Mcgraw Hill textbook....

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COM 1053 SPRING SEMESTER 2021 INSTRUCTOR: Professor Harris

Effective Listening & Learning What is listening? ● Listening: ○ The active process of making meaning from another person's spoken message ● First, listening isn't all about hearing ○ Hearing: ■ The sensory process of receiving & perceiving sounds--listening is about creating meaning from what we hear ● Secondly, it’s about attending to someone’s words, or paying attention well enough to understand what that person is trying to communicate ○ It’s an active process ● Lastly, listening deals with spoken messages

We have different listening styles ● There are four listening styles & each of them consisting of a different set of attitudes & beliefs about listening: ○ People-oriented: ■ Listening style that consists of finding common interests with others & discerning their emotions & interests ■ Example: ● An employee listens to their customers, & tries to understand what they are thinking & feeling so that the employee can relate to them effectively

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○ Action-oriented style: ■ Listening style that looks for organization & precision ■ For example: ● They like neat, concise, error-free presentations ● OR like clear, straightforward way of communicating ○ Content-oriented style: ■ Listening style that hones in on intellectual challenges ■ For example: ● They like to attend to details & think things through ○ Time-oriented style: ■ Listening style that emphasizes efficiency ■ For example: ● They prefer conversations that are quick & to the point

Listen effectively. ● Effective listening requires listening with the conscious & explicit goal of understanding what the speaker intends to communicate

The Importance of Listening Effectively ● Listening topped the list of the most important communication skills in families, personal, & professional relationships

Stages & Styles of Effective Listening Stages of Effective Listening ● The HURIER model, created by Judi Brownell, is to describe the six stages of effective learning ● There is: ○ Hearing - physically perceiving sound ○ Understanding - comprehending the words we have heard ○ Remembering - storing ideas in memory ○ Interpreting - assigning meaning to what we have heard

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○ Evaluating - judging the speaker’s believability & intentions ○ Responding - indicating that we are listening ■ There seven types of response: ● Stonewalling: silence & lack of expression ● Backchanneling: facial expressions, nods, & vocalizations (“uhhuh”) ● Paraphrasing ● Empathizing ● Supporting ● Analyzing: explain your opinion or describing your experience ● Advising

Types of Listening ● When we talk about different types of listening, we are referring to the different goals we have when we listen to other people.

Informational listening is used when learning. ● Informational listening: ○ Listening to learn ○ Much of the listening you do in class or at work ○ Passive process

Critical listening is used for analyzing. ● Critical listening: ○ Listening with a goal of evaluating or analyzing what is being heard ■ The merits of a speaker’s words ○ Active process

Empathic listening is used for understanding the speaker. ● Empathic listening: ○ Involves trying to identify with the speaker by understanding & experiencing what he/she is thinking or feeling

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○ Most challenging form because we tend to focus on how we would be feeling not the speaker ○ There are 2 skills for this: ■ Perspective taking: the ability to understand a situation from another’s point of view ■ Empathic concern: ability to identify how someone else is feeling & to experience those feelings yourself ○ An opposite of empathic listening is sympathetic listening: ■ Which is feeling sorry for another person

Other types of listening exist. ● Inspirational listening: ○ Is listening to be inspired by what someone is saying ● Appreciative listening: ○ Is listening for pure enjoyment ● But the most common & important types of listening are informational, critical, & empathic.

Overcoming Barriers to Successful Listening Noise ● Noise: ○ Anything that interferes with a receiver’s ability to encode or decode a message ○ The 2 types of noise: ■ Physical: ● ex.) loud music or other people talking ■ Psychological: ● ex.) hunger, tiredness, or your environment (weather)

Pseudolistening & Selective Attention ● Pseudolistening:

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○ Pretending to pay attention to someone but not really listening ○ A variation of this is selective attention: ■ Meaning listening to only to what you want to hear & ignoring the rest ○ This is also unethical behavior

Information Overload ● Information overload: ○ The state of being overwhelmed by the huge amount of information taken in every day ○ This term was created in 1970 by sociologist Alvin Toffler ○ Information overload can interrupt our attention

Glazing Over ● Glazing over (daydreaming): ○ Actually listening to the speaker, but allowing your mind to drift. ● Reason we have this is because we think faster than we can speak ○ Most people can understand 600 words per minute, but we speak fewer than 150 words per minute ● This can lead to at least 3 problems: ○ Miss important details ○ Listen less critically ○ Can appear not to be listening

Rebuttal Tendency ● Rebuttal tendency: ○ The propensity to debate a speaker’s point & formulate a reply while that person is still speaking ● There are 2 reasons why for this: ○ 1. Requires mental energy that should be spent paying attention to the speaker ○ 2. Can easily miss some of the details that might change your response in the

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first place

Closed-Mindedness ● Close-mindedness: ○ The tendency not to listen to something with which we disagree ○ Many are close-minded only about particular issues, not everything ○ Listening to an idea does not necessarily mean accepting it.

Competitive Interrupting ● Competitive interrupting: ○ The practice of using interruptions to take control of the conversation ○ Some people interrupt as a way to dominate the conversation ■ Most interruptions aren’t competitive ■ For example: ● To express support or enthusiasm ● Ask for clarification ● To warn of an impending danger

Honing Your Listening & Learning Skills Become a Better Informational Listener Separate what is & isn’t said. ● Practice being aware of what is actually being said rather than inferring something else ○ Most effective way to determine if you understood the message is to paraphrase it ■ When paraphrasing during a conversation, you invited the speaker to correct your understanding

Avoid the confirmation bias. ● Confirmation bias: ○ The tendency to pay attention only to information that supports our values & beliefs, while discounting or ignoring information that doesn’t

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○ Becomes a problem when we need to make a decision about an issue, but we haven’t looked at all the sides ● To improve this, ask yourself if you looked at all the sides or if you're avoiding them because they may question your beliefs

Listen for substance more than style. ● Vividness effect: ○ Is the tendency of dramatic, shocking events to distort our perceptions of reality ● Be able to look past what is dramatic & vivid to focus on the substance of what your hearing ○ ex.) entertaining presentation vs. boring presentation

Become a Better Critical Listener Be a skeptic. ● Skepticism: ○ A method of questioning whether a claim is well supported by evidence; it isn’t about being cynical or finding fault ● Means setting aside your biases & being willing to be persuaded by the merits of the argument & the quality of the evidence. ○ To be a good critical listener, you don’t accept claims blindly, but question them

Evaluate a speaker’s credibility ● Credibility: ○ Refers to the reliability & trustworthiness of someone or something ● There are some qualities that makes a speaker more or less credible ○ Expertise ■ Speakers draw on their training & are recognized by certified institutions ○ Experience

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■ Having knowledge & wisdom on an area, but not being recognized by certified institutions ○ Bias ■ If a speaker has a special interest in making you believe some idea or claim ● This tends to lessen their credibility ■ ex.) a tobacco company claiming that smoking has health benefits

Understand probability. ● These are the “levels” of the merits of a claim: ● Possibility (less merit): ○ An event or fact is possible if there’s even the slightest chance, however small, that it might be true ■ ex.) “I can survive without water for a week.” ● Probability (moderate merit): ○ A statement has to have greater than 50% chance of being true ■ ex.) “I will get married someday.” ● Certainty (high merit): ○ A statement is certain only if its likelihood of being true is 100% & nothing less ○ There can be absolutely no chance that it isn’t true ■ ex.) “I will die someday.”

Become a Better Empathic Listener Listen non-judgmentally. ● Good empathic listening is about being open-minded & non-judgmental ● There are 2 strategies that are helpful for this: ○ 1. Listen without interrupting ○ 2. Think twice before offering unsolicited advice

Acknowledge feelings.

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● We do so with continuer statements: ○ Which are phrases that identify the emotions a person is experiencing & allow him or her communicate them ■ ex.) “That must make you feel very uncertain.” ● But avoid terminator statements: ○ Which are phrases that fail to acknowledge a speaker’s emotions, shutting down his or her opportunity to express them ■ ex.) “I’m sure the doctors are doing everything they can.”

Communicate support nonverbally. ● Facial expressions & touch are important empathic behaviors ○ A reassuring smile & a warm touch can make people feel you understand, support, & empathize with them

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