82 5.4 Listening to speeches
appropriateness, value, or importance of the information you hear. Related to
being a critical listener is being a critical thinker. Critical thinking is a mental
process of making judgments about the conclusions that are presented in what
you see, hear, and read. The goal of a critical listener or a critical thinker is to
evaluate information to make a choice. Whether you are listening to a political
candidate giving a persuasive presentation to get your vote, a radio announcer
extolling the virtues of a new herbal weight-loss pill, or someone asking you to
invest in a new technology company, your goal as a critical listener is to assess the
quality of the information and the validity of the conclusions that are presented.
We should emphasize that being a critical listener does not mean that you’re
looking only for what is wrong in what the speaker says; we’re not suggesting
that you listen to a speaker only to pounce on the message and the messenger
at the conclusion of the speech. Listen to identify what the speaker does that is
effective as well as to identify which conclusions don’t hold up. To be a rhetori-
cal critic is to evaluate the effectiveness and appropriateness of the message and
its delivery. The educator John Dewey penned a lasting description of criticism:
Criticism... is not fault-finding. It is not pointing out evils to be
reformed. It is judgment engaged in discriminating among values. It is
talking through as to what is better and worse... with some conscious-
ness of why the worse is worse.^24
How does a critical listener do all this? Consider the following skills.Separate Facts from Inferences
The ability to separate facts from inferences is a basic critical thinking and lis-
tening skill. Facts are information that has been proven true by direct observa-
tion. For example, it has been directly observed that water boils at 212 degrees
Fahrenheit and that the direction of the magnetic north pole can be found by
consulting a compass. An inference is a conclusion based on partial information
or an evaluation that has not been directly observed. You infer that your favor-
ite sports team will win the championship or that it will rain tomorrow. You
can also infer that if more Republicans than Democrats are elected to Congress,
the next president might be a Republican. But you can only know this for a fact
after the presidential election. Facts are in the realm of certainty; inferences are in
the realm of probability and opinion—where most arguments advanced by pub-
lic speakers reside. A critical listener knows that when a politician running for
office claims, “It’s a fact that my opponent is not qualified to be elected,” this
statement is not a fact; it is an inference.Evaluate the Quality of Evidence
Evidence consists of the facts, examples, opinions, and statistics that a speaker
uses to support a conclusion. Researchers have documented that the key ele-
ments in swaying a jury are the quality and quantity of the evidence that isM05_BEEB3981_05_SE_C05_065-094.indd 82 07/11/14 11:45 AM