Listening to lecture
Understanding Listening in Public Speaking
Listening is the most frequent communication activity; however, people often don't excel at it.
Enhancing listening skills can significantly improve interpersonal relationships in various settings such as family, romantic partnerships, workplaces, and educational environments.
Listening vs. Hearing
Hearing:
A physiological process where sound waves hit the eardrums, leading to sound perception without effort.
Passive; can occur without active engagement.
Listening:
An active process involving effort to understand, process, and retain information.
Involves decoding and interpreting, signifying a psychological engagement.
Requires energy, which can lead to exhaustion with prolonged listening tasks.
Types of Listening
Comprehensive Listening:
Aim to understand and remember the information.
Empathetic Listening:
Focused on understanding the emotions and motivations of the other person; often relational in nature.
Appreciative Listening:
Engages with a focus on the aesthetics or rhythm, often used in appreciating performances like music.
Critical Listening:
Evaluating arguments and evidence, determining the strength of the speaker's points, often used in debates.
Application of Listening Styles
Different situations require different types of listening to be effective. For example:
Critical listening may not be suitable when a friend is sharing personal feelings, and empathetic listening may not suffice for a lecture.
As a speaker, incorporating structural elements like repetition and clarity in presentations aids audience engagement.
Planned Redundancy:
Repeating key phrases during speeches can establish rhythm and focus, as demonstrated by prominent speakers like Martin Luther King Jr.
Barriers to Effective Listening
Neuroplasticity:
Modern brains face challenges processing long or complex rhetorical information, leading to reduced attention spans.
Distractions:
Electronic distractions (e.g., phones) and environmental noise hinder effective listening.
Mind Wandering:
Listeners may mentally drift during a conversation, especially when they can process information much faster than it is spoken.
Preconceptions:
Past biases can negatively affect how we perceive and listen to others, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias.
Improving Listening Skills
Believe in Your Ability to Improve:
Recognize that improvement is possible with effort and dedication.
Be Prepared:
Set aside distractions (e.g., phones) and mentally prepare yourself for listening during conversations or lectures.
Effective Note-taking:
Develop a structure for note-taking (such as outlines or highlights with colored pens) to actively engage with the material.
Take selective notes rather than transcribing everything; focus on main ideas and questions for later clarification.
Writing by hand is often more beneficial than typing due to kinesthetic engagement with the content.