Introduction

This chapter addresses the critical importance of listening on the speech process and the strategies
for its improvement. Listening is an essential skill for effective communication in all Areas of our
lives. This Chapter 3 offers to us strategies for improvement in the understanding and retention of
speech material, through effective listening and attention. Also gives us many tips to develop a
Critical analysis, a constructive post-speech feedback and respond to spoken or nonverbal
messages.

In public speaking situations, effective listeners respond nonverbally in the form of smiles, head
nods, and applause, as well as verbally by critiquing the speeches of others. Because overall
speaking effectiveness is very complex.

Listening and Responding Effectively

The communication is the process of creating shared meaning. For communication to be effective,
the speaker must present the message clearly and compellingly. However, it´s more important that
the listener understands and accurately remembers what was said.

Obviously, before you can listen, you must first hear what is said. Hearing is simply the biological
process that occurs when the brain detects sound waves.

There are 3 common basic listening problems: Missing what was said, Hearing what was said but
misunderstanding the message and not listening or not remembering what was said.

To overcome this problems a yet effective listening is a key to success most of the time.

Types of Listening

Although we spend most of the time we are communicating listening, the type of listening we
engage in varies based on the situation. So in order to be an effective listener in different situations,
you must consider your purpose for listening.

There are five different types of listening based on five different purposes. These are appreciative,
discriminative, comprehension, empathic and critical listening.

1. Appreciative listening: your goal is to enjoy the thoughts and experiences. You do not
have to focus as closely on specifics as you do in other listening situations.
Example: when we listen to music or speakers for enjoyment because we like their style.

2. Discriminative listening: your goal is to understand the speaker’s meaning conveyed in

other ways than the words themselves, such as, nonverbal cues as rate, pitch, inflection,
and gestures.
Example: when a doctor is explaining the results of a test, a patient listens carefully not
only to what the doctor is saying but also to the nonverbal cues that indicate whether the
results are troubling or routine.
 3. Comprehensive listening: your goal is to understand, remember, and recall what was said
Example: professors giving lectures, speakers at training seminars, and television
broadcasters projecting weather forecasts.

4. Empathic listening: your goal is to be a sounding board to help another sort through
feelings
Example: when we listen to a close friend grieve over the death of a loved one.

5. Critical listening: your goal is to evaluate the worth of a message

Example: when we listen to salespeople trying to convince us that their brand is better than
the others, we are listening critically. Because you need to hear, understand, evaluate, and
assign worth to the message, as well as remember and recall it, critical listening requires
more psychological processing than the others.

Improving Your Listening Skills

Effective listening is a complex psychological process made up of five steps. These steps are
attending, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding to the message. In this section,
there are some techniques for improving your skills related to each step.

Attending: is paying attention to what the speaker is saying regardless of extraneous interferences.
To be an effective listener, then, you need to train yourself to focus on what people are saying
regardless of potential distractions. Let’s consider four techniques for doing so.

 Get physically ready to listen: Good listeners create a physical environment that reduces
potential distractions and adopt a listening posture.
Example: we should focus our attention on what is being said by blocking out
miscellaneous thoughts. We can also adopt a listening posture by sitting upright, and so on.

 Resist mental distractions while you listen: Block out wandering thoughts when they
creep into your head while you listen.
Example: someone entering the room while the speaker is talking, text next to someone or
moving around because you are drowsy.

 Suspend judgment while you hear the speaker out. Far too often, we let a person’s
mannerisms and words “turn us off.” Listening should be objective to allow us understand
the speaker’s position before we react.
Example: when we get upset about gay marriage or abortion ideas.

 Identify the benefits of attending to the speaker’s words: At times, we do this almost
automatically, especially when your professor says something like, “Pay attention to this
because it will be on the test.” But you can also provide your own motivation.
Understanding and Remembering

Understanding is the ability to assign accurate meaning to what was said and Remembering is
being able to retain and recall information we have heard.

Sometimes we may not fully understand a speaker’s message because the speaker uses words that
are not in our vocabulary and we have difficulties remembering because we fail to realize personal
relevance while the message is being communicated.

To help us to understand and remember the messages you hear. Let us consider five listening
techniques:

 Determine the speaker’s organization: Determining the organization helps you establish
a framework for understanding and remembering the information, so when the speech is
over, we can cite the goal, the main points, and some of the key details.

 Ask questions: Although ethical listeners demonstrate respect by waiting until the speaker
is finished to ask questions, you can make notes of any questions you have as you listen.
Some of these questions may eventually be answered as the speaker moves through the
presentation, or use the questions to do additional research about the topic yourself later.

 Silently paraphrase key information: A paraphrase is putting into your own words the
meaning you have assigned to a message. It is not simply repeating what has been said.

 Observe nonverbal cues: We interpret messages more accurately when we observe the
nonverbal behaviors that accompany the words. Good speakers use their tone of voice,
facial expressions, and gestures to emphasize important points and clarify structure.

 Take good notes: Note taking is a powerful method for improving your memory of what
you have heard in a speech. Not only does note taking provide a written record that you
can go back to, but also by taking notes, you take a more active role in the listening process.

Evaluating and Responding

Evaluating is critically analyzing what is said to determine its truthfulness, utility, and
trustworthiness. Critical analysis is especially important when the speaker expects you to believe,
support, or act on what was said.

Responding is providing feedback to the speaker about what is being said. Responding to a speech
usually occurs nonverbally through behaviors, such as smiling, nodding one’s head in agreement,
and applauding after the speaker finishes, though in some cultures audience members may give
short verbal responses, as well.

Sometimes, however, you need to prepare a formal written evaluation, or critique, of a presentation
by a classmate, colleague, or employee. Typically, a critique is based on your critical analysis of
how well the speech and speaker performed on specific key criteria.