listening

Listening

Objectives:1. State why listening is important2. Distinguish hearing from listening3. Provide various meanings of listening4. Describe the nature and stages of the

listening process5. Explain the purposes of listening6. Identify the barriers to effective listening7. Suggest ways to improve listening8. Identify ways to give and receive feedback9. Recognize various propaganda techniques

Listening Quiz

1A. selfishB. interestingC. generous

2A. comicalB. honestC. ungrateful

3A. spoiledB. cleverC. easygoing

4A. punctualB. blandC. skeptical

5A. bigmouthB. depressingC. pushy

6A. talentedB. brilliantC. inconsiderate

7A. sloppyB. frankC. helpless

8A. childishB. nastyC. cultured

9A. creativeB. timidC. narrow-minded

10A. forgetfulB. ambitiousC. disorganized

Most basic of the four major areas of language

development

Listening is the first language skill which we

develop – S. Lundsteen (Wolvin, 1988)

As children, we listen before we speak, we speak

before we read and read before we write.

Listening Facts

10%12 yearsWriting

45%0-very few hoursListening

30%1-2 yearsSpeaking

15%6-8 yearsReading

% of Time We Use the Mode

Formal Years of Training

Mode of Comm.

Listening Facts•Confident people tend to listen to content better than

unconfident people.•How much of what we know have we learned by

listening?•What percentage of the time are we distracted,

preoccupied or forgetful?•How much do we usually recall immediately after we

listen to someone talk?•How much to we recall after 48 hours?

85%

75%

50%

25%

Quick Facts about Listening

•What percentage of the time do we spend listening?

•What percentage of the population had had formal educational experience with listening?

45%

Less than 2%

From the International Listening Association

Hearing…is the physiological process of receiving aural and visual stimuli.

It begins when the listener takes in the sound of the speaker’s voice.

It is the passive phase of speech reception since we can hear without effort.

Good hearing is important to listening because hearing provides the raw material on which the listening process operates.

Good hearing though is not synonymous to good listening. (Clevenger, 1971)

Listening…

is more than hearing. It is the described as the active phase of speech reception, a physiological process guided and controlled by the habits, attitudes, and conscious intentions of the listener.

He chooses from those complex stimuli certain information that will be useful in formulating his response.

These distinctions are helpful in clarifying the meaning of listening.

Definitions of Listening…

If “hearing is the apprehension (to become aware of through the senses) of sound and listening is the comprehension (to embrace or understand a thing) of aural symbols, then, listening can be more accurately defined as “the attachment of meaning to aural symbols.”

(Nichols, 1954)


A term for a whole group of mental processes which enable us to interpret the meaning of messages. It is a cognitive process that involves perception, comprehension, and other mental processes.

(Baird and Knower, 1968)


As a process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli.

(Wolvin, 1988)


“…is the combination of what we hear, what we understand, and what we remember.”

(Brooks, 1993)

“Responses”

11.A. Sorry, it's not mine. B. Yes, please. C. Yes, I wish you would.

12.A. That's fine. B. I promise to do it. C. No kidding.

13.A. Yes. Thanks for offering. B. No way. You still owe me $15. C. I'm glad for you.

14.A. Yes, you may. B. Sure. Go ahead. C. Sorry, I can't today.

15.A. I'm glad you think so. B. You are sure. C. I'd be glad to.

16.A. Sorry, I'll do it right now. B. Yes. I'll tell him you called. C. You decide.

17.A. Yes. You can keep it. B. Yeah. I'll bring it on Monday. C. Sure. How much is it?

18.A. Okay. What time? B. Yes, you may go. C. No. You can drop it.

The Nature of Listening…

1.Listening is a dynamic, transactional process.

It involves both the speaker and the listener as they send and receive messages. Therefore, it is THEIR responsibility to make sure that messages originating from the source must be understood, interpreted, and evaluated by the receiver.

The Nature of Listening…2. Listening is an active

process not a passive one.

DeVito (1982) stresses that listening does not just happen; you have to make it happen. It demands physical energy which the listener needs so that he can focus on the message cues. It requires mental energy so the listener can actively participate as decoder of the speaker’s messages as well as encoder of his return messages or feedback.

The Nature of Listening…3. Listening is a complex

process.

maskingmental

reorganization identification of words

note sequencing

appreciation

forming sensory

impressions

auditory acuity auditory analysis

The Stages of Listening…

(1)HEARING(2)IDENTIFYING and RECOGNIZING(3)AUDING

The Stages of Listening…HEARING• auditory acuity – ability of the ear to

respond to various frequencies or tones at various intensities, referred to as levels of loudness

Human speech frequencies range from 250 to 4,000 cycles per second although the critical range of auditory acuity is 1000 and 2500 cycles per second.

The Stages of Listening…HEARING• masking – occurs when the background

noise received by the ear falls within the same frequency range as the message one is intending to receive.

Competing conversation often “masks” the intended oral message. Meanwhile, “white noise” results when the competing or extraneous sound are composed of all frequencies.


HEARING

• auditory fatigue - results from continuous exposure to sounds of certain frequencies


IDENTIFYING and RECOGNIZING• auditory analysis – process of

comparing the sounds that are heard with the ones that are familiar to the listener; the sounds are recognized according to their likenesses and differences

• mental reorganization – listener uses a system that will help him/her retain and structure the incoming sounds


IDENTIFYING and RECOGNIZING

• association – upon hearing to certain sounds, a listener already ‘links’ these sounds with previous experiences, memories, and backgrounds


AUDING – listener assimilates the words and responds to them with understanding and feeling

• indexing – arranging the listening material according to importance

• making comparisons


AUDING

• noting sequence – arranging the material according to time, space, position, or some other relationship

• forming sensory impressions – translating the material to sensory images

• Appreciating – responding to the “aesthetic nature of the message”

Purposes in Listening…

1) Appreciative listening – listening for pleasure or enjoyment

2) Empathic listening – listening to provide emotional support

3) Comprehensive listening – listening to derive information, facts, ideas, and principles

4) Critical listening – listening to make an evaluation in order to make an intellectual judgment, to criticize, to evaluate ideas of others

Barriers to Effective Listening…

1) Hastily branding the subject as uninteresting or irrelevant.SUGGESTION: Seek ways to make the subject interesting and useful to you.

2) Focusing attention on appearance or delivery. SUGGESTION: Judge content NOT delivery.

3) Avoiding difficult and unpleasant material.SUGGESTION: Practice listening in a wide variety of situations.


4) Getting over stimulated by what the speaker’s say.

SUGGESTION: Keep your emotions in check.

5) Listening primarily for facts. SUGGESTION: Focus on ideas.


6) Trying to outline everything that the speaker says.

Key-word outline Precis writing or precis method Fact versus principle Mapping Annotation method Cornell System (Walter Paule)

Becoming a better note-taker will surely help you become a better listener.

Mind Map Sample


7) Faking attention. SUGGESTION: Don’t pretend to listen.8) Creating or yielding easily to

distractions. SUGGESTION: Fight or resist distraction.

9) Engaging in “private planning”. SUGGESTION: Set aside unrelated personal problems or concerns.

10) Wasting the advantages of thought speed. SUGGESTION: Capitalize on the advantages of thought speed.

Guides to Effective Listening…

(1) Listen actively. (2) Listen with empathy. Feel what the

speaker feels.

(3) Listen for total meaning.(4) Listen with an open mind.(5) Give effective feedback. Feedback is the

response or reaction (overt and covert) of the listener as perceived by the source in the communication transaction.

Effective feedback is immediate, honest, appropriate, clear, and informative.

(6) Listen critically.

Propaganda Techniques(1) Name-calling a device that affixes an

unfavorable label or name to a person or thing.

(2) Glittering generalities – attaching a vague but virtuous-sounding label to a person, cause or object.

(3) Irrelevant personal attacks(4) False appeal to authority.(5) Transfer.(6) Half-truth.

Propaganda Techniques(7) Card-stacking – selecting only favorable

evidence and omitting unfavorable evidence.

(8) Plain-folks device – stresses humble origins and modest background.

(9) Bandwagon (10) False causality – assigns a false or wrong

cause to a certain happening or effect(11)False analogy – results when the

instances compared are not closely similar in all essential respects.

(12)Hasty generalization – a claim made on the basis of too little evidence.