177A Study Tool
Now that you have finished reading this chapter, you can:Outline the listening process and styles of listening:
c Hearing is physiologically perceiving sound; lis-
tening is the process of recognizing, understand-
ing, and interpreting the message (p. 152).
c Effective listening involves three components
(p. 152).
c The degree to which we are willing to listen is
the affective component (p. 153).
c The cognitive component involves selecting
(choosing one sound over others), attending
(focusing on the message), and understanding
(making sense of the message) (p. 153).
c The behavioral component includes recalling
information to communicate—remembering—
and responding, giving feedback (pp. 154–155).
c Active listeners make choices about selecting, at-
tending, and so on, and are more competent than
passive listeners (p. 155). Listening fidelity is
the degree to which the thoughts of the listener
agree with the intentions of the source of the mes-
sage (p. 155).
c People-oriented listeners listen with relationships
in mind (p. 157).
c Action-oriented listeners focus on tasks (p. 157).
c Content-oriented listeners carefully evaluate what
they hear (p. 157).
c Time-oriented listeners prefer information that is
clear and to the point (p. 157).
c Most people develop multiple listening preferences
(p. 157).List the advantages of listening well:
c Listening well helps your career, saves time and
money, creates opportunities, strengthens relation-
ships, and helps you achieve goals (p. 159).
c Informational listening is used to understand a
message (p. 160).
c In critical listening, you evaluate information,
evidence, ideas, or opinions (pp. 160–161).
c Empathic listening is an attempt to know how
another person feels, often using paraphrasing to
recognize and elaborate on the other’s feelings
(pp. 161–162).
c Appreciative listening is used when the goal is
simply to appreciate the sounds, such as listening
to music (p. 162).Identify challenges to good listening and their remedies:
c Listening barriers are factors that interfere with
our ability to comprehend information and re-
spond appropriately (pp. 162–163).
c Allergies and crying babies are examples of environ-
mental factors that impair our ability to listen (p. 163).
c Hearing loss challenges can be overcome with un-
derstanding of nonverbal behaviors (pp.163–164).
Proc essing challenges (for example, ADD) are faced
by many who have normal hearing.
c Multitasking, attending to several things at once,
limits focus on any one task (p. 164).
c A boring speaker or topic can be hard to follow, but
overexcitement can be distracting (pp. 164–165).
c Talking may be regarded as more powerful than
listening (p. 166).
c Overconfidence may cause us to become lazy and not
pay careful attention during communication (p. 166).
c Listening apprehension, anxiety or dread associated
with listening, may hinder concentration (p. 166, 168).Identify ethical factors in the listening process:
c Defensive listening is responding with aggression
and arguing with the speaker, without fully listen-
ing to the message (p. 168).
c Selective listening is zeroing in on bits of informa-
tion that interest you (pp. 168–169). Insensitive
listening occurs when we fail to pay attention to
the emotional content of someone’s message and
just take it at face value (p. 169).
c Self-absorbed listeners listen for their own needs
and may practice monopolistic listening, or
listening in order to control the communication
interaction (p. 170).
c Pseudolistening is pretending to listen while not
really paying attention (p. 170).Describe how various contexts affect listening:
c Different situations create different challenges
(p. 171).
c The dynamics of the relationship changes how you
listen (p. 171).
c The cultural context affects listening behavior
(pp. 172–173).
c Technology is an important context for listening
(p. 174).REAL REFERENCE
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