Listening Skills

Communication scholars estimate that listening takes up more waking hours than any other communication activity. Yet the typical person receives very little explicit listening instruction. In addition, people tend to think of listening as a passive rather than active behavior and, as a result, fail to recognize the amount of effort and skill it takes to be a good listener. The following information is designed to introduce you to two basic types of listening ? attentive and critical ? and to provide you with a clear sense of the skills you need in order to successfully respond to communication situations that require listening.

Listening Defined: the physical reality of hearing what another person says AND a suspenseful waiting that reflects psychological involvement with that person.

1. Attentive Listening

When people listen attentively, their goal is to understand and remember what they are hearing. In addition, attentive listeners have relational goals like giving a positive impression, advancing the relationship, or demonstrating care. Communication scholars have identified three listening skill clusters and accompanying behaviors that are used by attentive listeners. As you read the information below try to determine which, if any, of these behaviors you already use in your listening interactions. Then determine which new ones you should incorporate into your communication skill repertoire. As with learning any new skill, acquiring new communication behaviors requires practice. Be sure to take advantage of the practice time you are given in class before trying these behaviors out in other situations.

A. Attending skills
1. A posture of involvement: inclining one’s body toward the speaker, facing the speaker squarely, maintaining an open body position, positioning yourself an appropriate distance from the speaker
2. Appropriate body motion (occasionally nodding your head, using facial expressions to reflect emotions back to the speaker, adjusting your body position in non-distracting ways, etc.)
3. Eye contact (sustained, direct, reflective)
4. Nondistractive environment: doing as much as it takes to eliminate distracting noises, movement, etc.

B Following Skills
1. Door openers: noncoercive invitations to talk that tend to take one of four forms: a. description of another person’s body language, e.g. "You’re beaming, what’s up?" b. an invitation to talk or continue talking, e.g. "Please go on" c. silence, giving another person time to decide whether to talk d. attending to demonstrate interest, e.g. performing the attending skills described in section A above
2. Minimal encouragers: brief indicators to the other person that you’re with them, e.g. "mmhmm," "Oh?" "I see," "Right," "I understand," "Really?" "Go on," "Sure," etc.
3. Infrequent questions: open ended, asked one at a time; beware of the key listening error of asking too many questions
4. Attentive silence: most listeners talk too much, learn the value of using nonverbal attentive listening behaviors with verbal silence

C. Reflecting Skills
1. Paraphrasing: re-stating what you believe to be the essence of a speaker’s comments, e.g. "So you’re suggesting that we change the proposal?"
2. Reflecting feelings, e.g. "It sounds like you are angry with your group members"
3. Reflecting meanings (tying feelings to content), e.g. "So you were angry with your group members for pushing the proposal topic through without your input?"
4. Summative reflection, e.g. "If I understand correctly, you want the proposal topic to be changed and you want some kind of guarantee that proposal topics must be passed by all group members, right?" Some of the attentive listening behaviors described above may seem far more suited to an interpersonal communication situation than to a classroom lecture situation. The behaviors listed under A (attending skills) are the ones you are most likely to use in lecture classes. However, as indicated by the section of this Webpage devoted to Asking Questions, the skills under cluster C are useful for helping you ask good questions of clarification in class. In addition, the skills under clusters B and C are useful for helping you have good one-on-one exchanges with your professors, T.A.s, and classmates outside of class, for example, during office hours, lab sections, and group meetings. One important thing to remember about listening behaviors, however: they should never take attention away from the speaker. Like anything else, listening behaviors can be overdone and that undermines their usefulness.

2. Critical Listening
When people listen critically, their goal, in addition to understanding and remembering, is to evaluate (assess, interpret) what they are hearing. Whereas attentive listening emphasizes nonverbal skills along with some verbal skills, critical listening emphasizes critical thinking skills. Like Attentive listening, Critical listening is related to Asking Questions. Listening attentively enables you to ask good questions of clarification; listening critically provides the basis for good probing questions. Listed below are four critical thinking skills and two critical listening skills. Remember that practice is the key to successfully incorporating these skills into your communication repertoire.

A. Critical Thinking Skills
1. Questioning and challenging (from a position of goodwill and mutual goals)
2. Recognizing differences (e.g. between facts and opinions)
3. Forming opinions and supporting claims (determining what you think and why)
4. Putting ideas into a broader context (avoiding tunnel vision and bias)

B. Critical Listening Skills
1. Review and Preview as you listen: this involves anticipating where the speaker is going next, how the argument will be developed and what issues have been and/or should be covered.
2. Mapping as you listen: determining the thesis or purpose, identifying the main points, assessing the adequacy of the main points APPLICATION:
How do I put all this information into action so that I can speak or write effectively in this situation?