Public Speaking

Barriers to Listening (^45)
attention. Psychological factors such as an argument with a friend or a huge test com-
ing up in your next class can lessen your motivation to listen. You may also experience
receiver apprehension (RA) if you fear you’ll misinterpret, inadequately process, or
fail to adjust psychologically to a message that threatens or negatively challenges you.^17
And you may struggle to stay focused if you lack interest in the topic or find it difficult
to understand.
Stereotypes and prejudices can also hinder listening. Stereotyping puts people
into a category and then assumes they fit the characteristics of the category. Showing
prejudice or bias means listening to topics or speakers with preformed judgments,
whether negative or positive. To illustrate, supporters of gay marriage listened
enthusiastically to a marriage equality advocate, but they approached a defense of
marriage speaker with suspicion, and vice versa.
Because listening requires attention, maintaining focus is a major component.
However, attention constantly fluctuates, as this student explains:
I’m easily distracted.... It’s easy for me to either focus on one particular thing that
has been said, and then sort of drift off, exploring it further in my own mind, or—and
this applies more specifically to someone whose speaking style or subject does not
impress me—float off on unrelated topics (“I wonder where she gets her hair cut”).
Also, depending on the subject, I can get easily bored.
Paying attention can be hard partly because
you can think far more rapidly (about 500 words
per minute) than the fastest speaker can talk
(about 300 words per minute). Most people aver-
age about 150 words per minute, leaving you
with 350 words per minute of a speech–thought
differential.^18 The following four thought
patterns, illustrated in Figure 4.2, are common
during listening.^19
• Taking small departures from the communication
line. Small departures can distract and hinder
your comprehension, but they can also help
you follow a message if you use them to
produce your own examples, relate the mate-
rial to your personal experiences, answer the
speaker’s rhetorical questions, and otherwise
interact with the ideas during the departure.
• Going off on a tangent. When you leave the
speaker’s line of thinking and seize on one
idea, taking it in your own direction, your
attention is deflected, and you stop listening.
One distracting thought leads to another, and
before you know it, you’re several subjects
removed from the topic at hand.
• Engaging in a private argument. If you carry on a running debate or mental argument
that parallels the speech, you close your mind and stop trying to understand the
speaker’s reasoning. To counter this, identify arguments that don’t make sense, but
withhold your final judgment until you have heard the entire speech.
• Taking large departures from the communication line. Here, your attention wanders off
into unrelated areas; you bring it back and focus on the speech for a while; then, off it
goes again, and you find yourself thinking about a totally unrelated topic. This cycle
repeats indefinitely.
psychological factors
mental stressors or distrac-
tions that take away from
your desire or ability to focus
receiver apprehension (ra)
anxiety that people experi-
ence while listening to
messages that make them
uncomfortable
stereotyping place someone
in a category and then
assume the person fits
the characteristics of that
category
prejudice preformed biases
or judgments, whether nega-
tive or positive
speech–thought differential
the difference between
the rate you think (about
500 words per minute)
and the average speaking
rate (about 150 words
per minute)
Figure 4.2
Listening Thought Patterns These four thought patterns are typical
during listening. The first can be productive, but the rest characterize
poor listening.
Line of communication
Line of communication
Line of communication
Line of communication
Listener’s small departures
Ta ngent
Private argument
Large departures
(Usually most productive)
Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.