The Receiving Stage

Seminar 8 Speech materials development. Part I

Case Study #1

Make a list of personal factors which might inhibit effective listening comprehension and give reasons why this might be so.

Factors:

Your Patience Quotient

Effective listening takes time and patience. If you are trying to hear the facts of the conversation, chances are your listening will not be complete. Asking probing questions or letting someone say all he has to say without interrupting takes time. Ask any parent and he will tell you real listening is time consuming. Handling your own emotions including frustration and those of others is an effective listening factor. Deep breathing and focusing techniques can also help.

Cultural Influences

How you grew up and what culture is most familiar to you influences how you listen. Some individuals speak with their hands. Others view "talking out of turn" as disrespectful. Looking someone in the eyes may not go over well with Asian speakers, but be an expectation for others. Do your best to acknowledge your cultural influences and know that those you are listening too have cultural influences too.

Matching Styles

When you need to listen to someone, you must determine if the person speaking wants advice, support, validation of feelings or something else. Without this information, you may give advice when it is not wanted which will be perceived as ineffective listening. Nodding, attentive facial expressions and statements that summarize what you hear are better when someone wants to vent. Wright State University suggests that you determine whether you need to be a counselor or a coach. The coach offers advice, but the counselor sits back and asks penetrating questions.

Distractions

How much outside noise and distractions are occurring definitely influence someone's ability to listen. You will be a better listener with less chatter. Go to a quiet place. Let the person know that you need to take care of a few matters first and then you can fully hear what she has to say if this is the case. Turn cell phones off and minimize as many distractions as much as possible.

Behaviors

How you sit, whethere you sit or stand, and what you do with your hands can communicate listening or not. Nonverbal behaviors are very important to communicating that you value what someone is saying. Leaning forward shows concern while sitting back with your arms crossed does not. Making eye contact is critical in specific situations. If your mouth is turned down this might communicate disapproval or judgment. Watch yourself in the mirror when you listen for feedback on your own behavior

Hearing is simply the act of receiving sound. You can close your eyes to avoid seeing, pinch your nose to avoid smelling, and shrink away to avoid touch, but your ears have no flaps to cover them. Their structure suggests that for your own protection, your ears should never be closed, even when you sleep. Because you cannot close your ears, you receive and hear sounds constantly.

Attention

After the ear receives sound waves, the brain sorts them by importance. Think of the last time you had a conversation in the mall or cafeteria. Your brain was being bombarded by aural stimuli, or sounds, but your mind was able to block out the other sounds and focus on your friend’s voice. Attention can be selective or automatic.

Selective attention is the sustained focus we give to stimuli we deem important. We selectively pay attention to our

favorite television show, to our friends during conversation, and to the professors in our classes. Selective attention can be impeded by our mind’s instinct to pa automatic attention to certain stimuli.

Automatic attention is the instinctive focus we give to stimuli signaling a change in our surroundings (like a person

walking into the room), stimuli that we deem important (our name being shouted from across the room), or stimuli that we perceive to signal danger (like a siren or loud bang). The problem faced by all of us is that automatic attention competes with selective attention.

Working memory is the part of our consciousness that interprets and assigns meaning

Short-term memory is a temporary storage place for information. All of us use short-term memory to retain thoughts that we want to use immediately but do not necessarily want to keep for future reference. You might think of short-term memory as being similar to a Post-it note. You will use the information on the note for a quick reference but will soon discard it or decide to write it down in a more secure location.

Long-Term Memory

Information processed in working memory can also be stored in long-term memory for later recall. Similarly, information temporarily stored in short-term memory can be deemed important and subsequently stored in long-term memory. If short-term memory is the Post-it note in the listening process, long-term memory is the supercomputer.

Comprehension improves when:

- The listener is relaxed;

- The listener is physically alert;

- The content of the discourse is familiar;

- The speaker is familiar;

- The listener feels able to ask for clarification and knows how to do this

However, hearing is not the same as listening. Listening,as defined by the ILA, is

“the active process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken

and/or nonverbal messages. It involves the ability to retain information, as well

as to react empathically and/or appreciatively to spoken and/or nonverbal messages”

(1995, p. 1). As you can see, listening involves more than simply hearing. Notably,

listening is an active process involving the construction and retention of and reaction

to meanings we assign to information.

The importance of listening is even clearer when we consider how we use it in

our personal and professional lives. Listening helps us build and maintain relationships

and can even help us determine whether the person we are talking to is being

deceitful (di Batista, 1997). Listening is also recognized as an essential skill for business

success (Haigh, 2006). Because of effective listening, we are able to improve

workplace relationships and be more productive (Nichols, 2006). Listening is even

linked to successful communication within highly technical fields like medicine, in

which improved listening skills on the part of doctors are associated with fewer malpractice

Listening is classified into four main types: active listening,empathic listening, critical listening, and listeningfor enjoyment.

Active listeningis “involvedlistening with a purpose” (Barker, 1971). Active listening involves the steps of(1) listening carefully by using all available senses, (2) paraphrasing what is heard both

mentally and verbally, (3) checking your understanding to ensure accuracy, and (4)providing feedback. Feedback consists of the listener’s verbal and nonverbal responses to the speaker and the speaker’s message. Feedback can be positive, whereby the speaker’s message is confirmed, or negative, whereby the speaker’s message is disconfirmed.Valued in conversation, small-group discussion, and even question-and-answer sessions in public speaking, active listening is a communication skill worth learning.

Empathic listening is a form of active listening in which you attempt to understand the other person. You engage in empathic listening by using both mindfulness, which is being “fully engaged in the

moment” (Wood, 2002), and empathy,which is the ability to perceive another

person’s worldview as if it were your own.

In critical listeningyou challenge the speaker’s message by evaluating its accuracy, meaningfulness, and utility. Critical listening and critical thinking really go hand in hand: You cannot listen critically if you do not think critically. Skills in critical listening are especially important because we are constantly bombarded with commercials, telemarketing calls, and other persuasive messages. Later in the chapter we discuss several strategies you can use to listen and think critically.

Finally, listening for enjoymentinvolves seeking out situations involving relaxing, fun, or emotionally stimulating information. Whether you are listening to your favorite musical group or television show, or your friend telling a story, you continue listening because you enjoy it. Besides helping you relax, studies show that listening to enjoyable music can even

reduce pain for hospital patients (A dose of music may ease the pain, 2000).

The Receiving Stage

The first stage of the listening process is the receiving stage, which involves hearing and attending.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 845