Jj is for Jottings 119.  Types of Listening and Nonlistening.

Following the discussion on hearing versus listening, I promised to discuss more aspects of listening in the next article.  We have established that hearing is a simpler process than listening, so there is more to be said about  listening.  We will look at the listening process, types of listening, and nonlistening.

THE LISTENING PROCESS.

The listening process involves the following steps:

• Being mindful. You consciously decide to be engaged in the moment.
• Physically receive the message i.e. hearing.
• Selecting and organising material. Your brain chooses what to focus on and what to ignore.  You also compare the sound with others you’ve previously heard, and categorise it.
• Interpreting communication. We put together all we have selected and organised to make sense of the situation.
• We communicate that we are paying attention, show interest in the communication and share our views.
• This is where you remember what you hear (maybe!)  We remember less than 50% of what we hear and the longer the time goes by, we remember even less than the 50%.
  

  Types of Listening and Nonlistening. Manuel is talking and Onecia and Querida are listening very attentively. Good listening skills, girls!

 

TYPES OF LISTENING.

We listen in several different ways because we don’t always have the same purpose for listening.

1. Informational Listening. We do this to gain and understand information.  This is the type of listening we (are supposed to) do in class when we are trying to take in and process new information.
2. Critical Listening. In this mode we are trying to form opinions, make judgements, or to evaluate people and ideas.  This is the type of listening a teacher does when listening to a student’s oral presentation.
3. Relational Listening. This is when our focus is on supporting another person or maintaining a relationship.  This is the type of listening we engage in with our close friends and family members.
4. Listening for Pleasure. This is listening for entertainment or enjoyment, such as listening to music or comedy.
5. Listening to Discriminate. We do this when we are discriminating between sounds. You would do this when you hear your baby crying.  You discriminate between an “I am hurt” cry, an “I am hungry” cry, or an “I’m awake now and I’m alone – is anybody there?” cry.

Here is a listening exercise which utilises this type of listening in another context.

There is a huge amount of Listening to Discriminate involved in learning to speak and to read.  In these cases the discrimination is most usually between speech sounds.  Here is some information on auditory discrimination of vowel sounds and vowel discrimination activities.

 

TYPES OF NONLISTENING.

Not listening properly is just plain rude, but it is amazing how often it happens.  There are several types of nonlistening:

1. This is pretending to listen, and making some sort of response, but not really engaging properly in the communication.  It is often not deliberately rude, but because the listener doesn’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. When I was in secondary school I worked at a pharmacy.  Sometimes, on a Saturday morning – always very busy – a woman would ring up and talk for ages.  The pharmacist didn’t want to be rude and cut her short, so he would put the phone down and continue to dispense prescriptions.  Every couple of minutes he would pick it up again, tune in for a bit, make some sort of response, and put the phone down again. Eventually the “conversation” somehow made its way to a closing point without, presumably, upsetting the customer.
2. Instead of turn-taking, we dominate the conversation by keeping the attention focused on ourselves.
3. Selective Listening. This is when we focus only on parts of the conversation.  Of course the speaker would assume that you were listening to all of it, and this may cause great confusion if the content of the conversation comes up at a later date.
4. Defensive Listening. This is deliberately listening for what we perceive to be personal attacks, criticism or hostility, when the speaker intended no offence.  This is a perfect example of how people filter everything through their own belief system, which obviously gets in the way of actually hearing the message.
5. Once again, we are not really listening to the real message.  Instead, we are gathering ammunition for our next attack on the other person.
6. Literal Listening. We are listening to only the content, but ignoring the relationship level of meaning.  The relationship level is frequently not in the words themselves, but in tone of voice, emphasis, hesitations etc.

 

GENDER DIFFERENCES.

Not surprisingly, there are gender differences when it comes to listening and speaking behaviours.  Men tend to listen and communicate to accomplish tasks.  Women tend to listen and communicate to build relationships.  Men tend to listen to the words only (the literal meaning).  On the other hand, women tend to listen for the hidden meanings, to interpret and read beyond just the words.

 

In the next article, we will talk about obstacles to listening, and tips for good listening.

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