Unit 11: Listening

^{This overview contains text from Chapter 5: Listening from A Primer on Communication Studies (v. 1.0) (2012) which is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. Minor changes for readability.}

Overview

In our sender-oriented society, listening is often overlooked as an important part of the communication process. Yet research shows that adults spend about 45% of their time listening, which is more than any other communicative activity. In some contexts, we spend even more time listening than that. On average, workers spend 55% of their workday listening, and managers spend about 63% of their day listening (Hargie, 2011, p. 177).

Listening is a primary means through which we learn new information, which can help us meet instrumental needs as we learn things that help us complete certain tasks at work or school and get things done in general. The act of listening to our relational partners provides support, which is an important part of relational maintenance and helps us meet our relational needs. Listening to what others say about us helps us develop an accurate self-concept, which can help us more strategically communicate for identity needs in order to project to others our desired self. Overall, improving our listening skills can help us be better students, better relational partners, and more successful professionals.

Topics

There are four topics in Unit 11. Together, these sections will help you to complete the quiz for this unit.

Unit 11 contains the following topics:

• Topic 1: Understanding How and Why We Listen
• Topic 2: Barriers to Effective Listening
• Topic 3: Improving Listening Competence
• Topic 4: Listenable Messages and Effective Feedback

Learning Objectives

When you have completed this unit, you should be able to do the following:

1. Explain the Listening Process and Types of Listening: Describe the stages of listening and differentiate between the four main types of listening and listening styles.
2. Identify Barriers to Effective Listening: Discuss environmental, physical, cognitive, and personal factors that hinder effective listening, as well as common bad listening practices.
3. Develop Strategies for Listening Competence: Identify ways to improve listening at each stage of the process and in relational, professional, and cultural contexts.
4. Apply Active and Empathetic Listening Skills: Summarize the characteristics of active listening and practice empathetic listening in various contexts.
5. Use Critical-Listening Skills Effectively: Apply critical listening in interpersonal, educational, and mediated settings, and evaluate messages using competent feedback.
6. Create and Assess Listenable Messages: List strategies for making messages more listenable and evaluate the effectiveness of messages produced by others.
7. Engage in Self-Reflection and Evaluation: Discuss strategies for self-evaluating communication and improving listening competence.

Activities and Graded Assessments

Activities

Graded Quizzes and Assignments

At the end of the unit, please open your Moodle course and complete the following assessment(s):

• Quiz 11 (3%)

References

Hargie, O. (2011). Skilled interpersonal interaction: Research, theory, and practice. Routledge.