LISTENING & RESPONDING

S. Shahbano Jabeen
In this lecture:

Importance
Process Types Tactics Barriers
Of Listening
of of
listening listening
Importance Of Listening

 Listening is a complex activity made up of five simple

processes: attending, understanding, remembering,
evaluating, and responding. Listening skill is important to
both effective personal and professional relationships.
Because we spend so much time listening, we adjust our
listening depending on its purpose in a particular
situation. The five types of listening we might use are
appreciative, discriminative, comprehensive, empathic,
and critical. To be an effective listener, you must master
each of the five processes of listening.
the five phases of
The Listening Process

Attending/Receiving
Understanding

Remembering

Evaluating
Responding
Process Attending—focusing
of listening
1. Get ready (physically &
mentally)
1.Attending,
2. Resist mental distractions
2.Understanding, 3. Don’t interrupt (Make
complete shift, don’t
3.Remembering,
rehearse)
4.Evaluating, and 4. Hear person out (don’t
check out)
5.Responding
5. Watch nonverbal cues
(do they match words?)
Process
of listening Understanding—decoding
message
1.Attending, 1. Ask questions (get details
& clarify words & feelings)
2.Understanding,
2. Paraphrase (content &
3.Remembering, feelings)
3. Empathize (empathy,
4.Evaluating, and
perspective taking,
5.Responding sympathy)
4. Check perceptions
Process
of listening
Remembering
1.Attending,
1. Repeat info
2.Understanding,

3.Remembering, 2. Construct mnemonics

(e.g., Great Lakes = HOMES)
4.Evaluating, and

5.Responding 3. Take notes

Process Evaluating
of listening 1. Analyze facts to
determine if they are true
1.Attending,
2. Test inferences to
2.Understanding, determine whether they are
valid.
3.Remembering, (1) What are the facts that support
this inference?
4.Evaluating, and (2) Is this information really central to
the inference?
5.Responding (3) Are there other facts or
information that would contradict this
inference?
 Responding
Process
of listening 1. Supportive messages
(state aim to help,
1.Attending, acceptance of other,
concern, availability to listen,
2.Understanding, being ally; acknowledge &
validate feelings; encourage
3.Remembering,
elaboration)
4.Evaluating, and
2. Disagree respectfully (“I”
5.Responding language, specific
examples, points of
disagreements)
Types of Listening_______

Appreciative Listening

Discriminative Listening

Comprehensive Listening

Empathic Listening

Critical Listening
1. Appreciative listening
 In an appreciative listening situation, your goal is to
simply enjoy the thoughts and experiences of others by
listening to what they are saying. (Wolvin & Coakley,
1996). With appreciative listening, you do not have to
focus as closely or as carefully on specifics as you do in
other listening situations. You might use appreciative
listening during a casual social conversation while
watching a ball game with friends or when listening to
your daughter describe the fish she caught on an outing
with her grandpa. Most people listen to music in this
way. Do you ever turn on the TV or radio just for
background sound?
2. Discriminative listening
 In a discriminative listening situation, your goal is to accurately
understand the speaker’s meaning. At times this involves listening
“between the lines” for meaning conveyed in other ways than the
words themselves. Discriminative listening requires us to pays
attention not only to the words but also to nonverbal cues such as
rate, pitch, inflection, volume, voice quality, inflection, and gestures.
So when a doctor is explaining the results of a test, a patient not
only listens carefully to what the doctor is saying but also pays
attention to the nonverbal cues that indicate whether these results
are troubling or routine. Likewise, we often choose to support
political candidates based on whether, when we listen, we believe
that we can trust that they will fufill their campaign promises. If
you’ve ever questioned the truthfulness of a friend’s claim, what
nonverbal cues helped convince you they were not telling the
whole truth?
3. Comprehensive listening
 In a comprehensive listening situation, your goal is not
only to understand the speaker’s message but also to
learn, remember, and be able to recall what has been
said. We listen comprehensively to professors lecturing
about key concepts, speakers at training seminars, and
broadcast news reports that provide timely information
about traffi c conditions.
4. Empathic listening
 When the situation calls for us to try to understand how
someone else is feeling about what they have
experienced or are talking about, we use empathic
listening. Therapists, counselors, psychologists, and
psychiatrists engage in empathic listening with their
clients as do those who answer telephone hotlines.
When your goal is to be a sounding board or help a
friend sort through feelings, you will want to begin with
empathic listening.
5. Critical listening
 In critical listening situations, your ultimate goal is to evaluate the
worth of a message. Because you need to hear, understand,
evaluate, and assign worth to the message, it requires more
psychological processing than the other types. Critical listening is
the most demanding of the types of listening because it requires
that you understand and remember both the verbal and nonverbal
message, assess the speaker’s credibility, and effectively analyze
the truthfulness of the message. Fortunately, we don’t need to
engage in critical listening all the time. But when we are talking with
salespeople or listening to political candidates, when we are
receiving an apology from someone who has violated our trust or
when we are being solicited for a donation, we need to engage in
critical listening.
Go to the link and listen to the video carefully.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBbEXJ-Uqi0

Yo u r g o a l i s t o l i s t e n s o t h a t y o u r e m e m b e r a n d c a n “ c r i t i c a l l y ” e v a l u a t e w h a t
you have heard. Be sure to take notes and record the main ideas the speaker
presents.
After you have heard the speech, analyze what you have heard. You can use the following questions to guide your initial
thinking:
• What was the purpose of the speech? What was the speaker trying to explain to you or convince you about?
• Was it easy or difficult to identify the speaker’s main ideas? What did you notice about how the speaker developed
each point she or he made?
• Did the speaker use examples or tell stories to develop a point? If so, were these typical examples, or did the speaker
choose examples that were unusual but seemed to prove the point?
• Did the speaker use statistics to back up what was said? If so, did the speaker tell you where the statistics came from?
Did the statistics surprise you? If so, what would you have needed to hear that would have helped you to accept them as
accurate?
• Do you think that the speaker did a good job? If so, why? If not, what should the speaker have done to be more
effective?
 Tactics and Barriers
A summary of the five aspects of listening

Good Listeners Bad Listeners

 ATTENDING The process of focusing on  Poor listeners may not hear what a
what a speaker is saying regardless of person is saying because of
competing stimuli that are potential daydreaming or distractions.
distractions.
 They;
 Good listeners attend to important
• fidget in their chairs, look out the
information.
window, and let their minds wander
 They;
• visibly react to emotional language
• ready themselves physically and
• listen the same way regardless of the
mentally
type of material
• listen objectively regardless of
emotional involvement
• listen differently depending on situations
 Tactics and Barriers
A summary of the five aspects of listening
Good Listeners
 UNDERSTANDING The process of
decoding a message accurately to
reflect the meaning intended by the
speaker
 Good listeners assign appropriate
meaning to what is said. They;
• seek out apparent purpose, main points,
and supporting information
• ask mental questions to anticipate
information
• silently paraphrase to solidify
understanding
• seek out subtle meanings based on
nonverbal cues
Bad Listeners
 Poor listeners hear what is said but
are either unable to understand or
assign different meaning to the
words.
 They
• ignore the way information is
organized
• fail to anticipate coming information
• seldom or never mentally review
information
• ignore nonverbal cues
 Tactics and Barriers
A summary of the five aspects of listening

Good Listeners Bad Listeners

 REMEMBERING The process of being  Poor listeners rely on a single
able to retain information and recall it hearing to retain what has been
when needed said.
 Good listeners mentally work to retain  They
what has been said.
• assume they will remember
 They
• seldom single out any information as
• repeat key information especially important
• mentally create mnemonics for lists of • rely on memory alone
words and ideas
• take notes
 Tactics and Barriers
A summary of the five aspects of listening
Good Listeners
 EVALUATING The process of critically
analyzing what you have heard to
determine its truthfulness.
 Good listeners assess the accuracy,
truthfulness, and extent to which they
agree with the speaker’s ideas.
 They;
• assess facts to determine if they are true.
• test the logic underlying speaker
inferences to see if they are valid.
Bad Listeners
 Poor listeners hear and understand
but don’t take time to consider the
accuracy, truthfulness, and extent
to which they agree.
 They;
• accept information at face value.
• don’t analyze the logic behind
inferences.
 Tactics and Barriers
A summary of the five aspects of listening
Good Listeners
 RESPONDING SUPPORTIVELY The process
of confirming the speaker’s feelings and,
when disagreeing or critiquing,
demonstrating respect for the speaker
 Good listeners provide emotional comfort
or demonstrate respect for the speaker
while disagreeing or critiquing.
 They;
• offer statements that acknowledge the
legitimacy of the speaker’s emotional state.
• use “I” centered statements that begin by
agreeing or acknowledging positives before
offering specific disagreements or
commenting on problems.
Bad Listeners
 Poor listeners ignore the speaker’s
emotional message or disagree or
critique in a manner that demeans.
 They
• respond without acknowledging the
explicit emotional pain or joy of the
speaker.
• couch statements in other-centered
language, fail to acknowledge
positives or areas of agreement, and
make comments that are overly
general, not specific, or negative
Listening Barriers

Distractions: Physical and Mental

Biases and Prejudices
Lack of Appropriate Focus
Premature Judgment
 Classroom Task
1. Define effective listening.
2. Explain two barriers that can disrupt effective listening.
3. Provide strategies for improving listening skills.
4. The type of barrier where one thinks they remember what
the speaker said as opposed to what the speaker
actually said.
5. The type of barrier where one focuses on what they
already believe about a topic rather than being open-
minded.
6. The definition of mnemonics.
Thank you
someone@example.com