Summary

Listening is necessary to becoming a competent speaker and audience member. Keep the following principles in mind:

• Hearing and listening are not the same.
• Listening is the process of receiving, attending to, and assigning meaning to aural as well as visual and tactile stimuli.
• Active listening involves conscious and responsive participation.
• Active mindfulness involves conscious awareness of the transactions between speakers and listeners.
• Selective attention involves a conscious choice to focus on certain people and some messages.
• Sensorial involvement means listening with all the senses.
• Comprehension is understanding what was said.
• Retention is storing what was said in memory.

You should avoid common misconceptions about listening, such as:

• Listening is easy; it is not.
• Intelligence guarantees effective listening; it does not.
• There is no need to plan ahead; planning is essential.
• Reading skills correlate with listening skills. Such is not the case.

Obstacles to effective listening include:

• physical conditions
• cultural differences
• personal problems
• bias
• connotative meanings
• anxiety

Listening can have one of three goals:

• understanding
• appreciation
• critical listening

Techniques you can use to increase your overall listening skill include:

• setting goals
• blocking out distracting stimuli
• suspending judgment
• focusing on main points
• recognizing highlights and signposts
• taking effective notes
• being sensitive to metacommunication
• paraphrasing
• questioning