Listening Strategy

CAVITE STATE UNIVERSITY
Silang Campus
Biga I, Silang, Cavite
✉ [email protected]
Name: Cherry Mae A. Galaites Section: English 3C

Topic: Listening Strategies Discipline: Mass Communication
Reference: Toppo, G., “Colleges Start Offering ‘Midnight Classes’ for Offbeat Needs,” USA Today, October
27, 2011, accessed July 13, 2012, http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011–10–26/college-
midnight-classes/50937996/1.
Listening Competence at Each Stage of the Listening Process
We can develop competence within each stage of the listening process, as the following list indicates (Ridge,
1993):
1. To improve listening at the receiving stage,

o prepare yourself to listen,
o discern between intentional messages and noise,
o concentrate on stimuli most relevant to your listening purpose(s) or goal(s),
o be mindful of the selection and attention process as much as possible,
o pay attention to turn-taking signals so you can follow the conversational flow, and
o avoid interrupting someone while they are speaking to maintain your ability to receive stimuli
and listen.
2. To improve listening at the interpreting stage,
o identify main points and supporting points;
o use contextual clues from the person or environment to discern additional meaning;
o be aware of how a relational, cultural, or situational context can influence meaning;
o be aware of the different meanings of silence; and
o note differences in tone of voice and other paralinguistic cues that influence meaning.
3. To improve listening at the recalling stage,
o use multiple sensory channels to decode messages and make more complete memories;
o repeat, rephrase, and reorganize information to fit your cognitive preferences; and
o use mnemonic devices as a gimmick to help with recall.
4. To improve listening at the evaluating stage,
o separate facts, inferences, and judgments;
o be familiar with and able to identify persuasive strategies and fallacies of reasoning;
o assess the credibility of the speaker and the message; and
o be aware of your own biases and how your perceptual filters can create barriers to effective
listening.
5. To improve listening at the responding stage,
o ask appropriate clarifying and follow-up questions and paraphrase information to check
understanding,
o give feedback that is relevant to the speaker’s purpose/motivation for speaking,
o adapt your response to the speaker and the context, and
o do not let the preparation and rehearsal of your response diminish earlier stages of listening.
Active Listening
Active listening refers to the process of pairing outwardly visible positive listening behaviors with positive
cognitive listening practices. Active listening can help address many of the environmental, physical, cognitive,
and personal barriers to effective listening that we discussed earlier. The behaviors associated with active
listening can also enhance informational, critical, and empathetic listening.
Active Listening Can Help Overcome Barriers to Effective Listening
Being an active listener starts before you start receiving a message. Active listeners make strategic choices
and act in order to set up ideal listening conditions. Physical and environmental noises can often be managed
by moving locations or by manipulating the lighting, temperature, or furniture. When possible, avoid important
listening activities during times of distracting psychological or physiological noise. For example, we often know
when we’re going to be hungry, full, more awake, less awake, more anxious, or less anxious, and advance
planning can alleviate the presence of these barriers. For college students, who often have some flexibility in
their class schedules, knowing when you best listen can help you make strategic choices regarding what class
to take when. And student options are increasing, as some colleges are offering classes in the overnight hours
to accommodate working students and students who are just “night owls” (Toppo, 2011). Of course, we don’t
always have control over our schedule, in which case we will need to utilize other effective listening strategies
that we will learn more about later in this chapter.
In terms of cognitive barriers to effective listening, we can prime ourselves to listen by analyzing a listening
situation before it begins. For example, you could ask yourself the following questions:
1. “What are my goals for listening to this message?”

2. “How does this message relate to me / affect my life?”
3. “What listening type and style are most appropriate for this message?”
As we learned earlier, the difference between speech and thought processing rate means listeners’ level of
attention varies while receiving a message. Effective listeners must work to maintain focus as much as
possible and refocus when attention shifts or fades (Wolvin & Coakley, 1993). One way to do this is to find the
motivation to listen. If you can identify intrinsic and or extrinsic motivations for listening to a particular message,
then you will be more likely to remember the information presented. Ask yourself how a message could impact
your life, your career, your intellect, or your relationships. This can help overcome our tendency toward
selective attention. As senders of messages, we can help listeners by making the relevance of what we’re
saying clear and offering well-organized messages that are tailored for our listeners. We will learn much more
about establishing relevance, organizing a message, and gaining the attention of an audience in public
speaking contexts later in the book.
Given that we can process more words per minute than people can speak, we can engage in internal dialogue,
making good use of our intrapersonal communication, to become a better listener. Three possibilities for
internal dialogue include covert coaching, self-reinforcement, and covert questioning; explanations and
examples of each follow (Hargie, 2011):
• Covert coaching involves sending yourself messages containing advice about better listening, such as
“You’re getting distracted by things you have to do after work. Just focus on what your supervisor is
saying now.”
• Self-reinforcement involves sending yourself affirmative and positive messages: “You’re being a good
active listener. This will help you do well on the next exam.”
• Covert questioning involves asking yourself questions about the content in ways that focus your
attention and reinforce the material: “What is the main idea from that PowerPoint slide?” “Why is he
talking about his brother in front of our neighbors?”
Internal dialogue is a more structured way to engage in active listening, but we can use more general
approaches as well. I suggest that students occupy the “extra” channels in their mind with thoughts that are
related to the primary message being received instead of thoughts that are unrelated. We can use those
channels to resort, rephrase, and repeat what a speaker says. When we resort, we can help mentally repair
disorganized messages. When we rephrase, we can put messages into our own words in ways that better fit
our cognitive preferences. When we repeat, we can help messages transfer from short-term to long-term
memory.
Other tools can help with concentration and memory. Mental bracketing refers to the process of intentionally
separating out intrusive or irrelevant thoughts that may distract you from listening (McCornack, 2007). This
requires that we monitor our concentration and attention and be prepared to let thoughts that aren’t related to a
speaker’s message pass through our minds without us giving them much attention. Mnemonic devices are
techniques that can aid in information recall (Hargie 2011). Starting in ancient Greece and Rome, educators
used these devices to help people remember information. They work by imposing order and organization on
information. Three main mnemonic devices are acronyms, rhymes, and visualization, and examples of each
follow:
• Acronyms. HOMES—to help remember the Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and
Superior).
• Rhyme. “Righty tighty, lefty loosey”—to remember which way most light bulbs, screws, and other
coupling devices turn to make them go in or out.
• Visualization. Imagine seeing a glass of port wine (which is red) and the red navigation light on a boat
to help remember that the red light on a boat is always on the port side, which will also help you
remember that the blue light must be on the starboard side.

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CAVITE STATE UNIVERSITY

Name: Cherry Mae A. Galaites Section: English 3C

Listening Competence at Each Stage of the Listening Process

1. To improve listening at the receiving stage,

Active Listening Can Help Overcome Barriers to Effective Listening

1. “What are my goals for listening to this message?”

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