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

1. Believe in Your Ability to Improve:

   • Recognize that improvement is possible with effort and dedication.

2. Be Prepared:

   • Set aside distractions (e.g., phones) and mentally prepare yourself for listening during conversations or lectures.

3. 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.