Page 150 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Self-Assessment

How Well Do You Listen?

When listening to a speaker, how often do you engage in the following listening behaviors?
Circle the number on the scale that best describes your listening behaviors.
Almost always Almost never
1. I dismiss the subject as uninteresting. 1 2 3 4 5
2. I criticize the speaker’s delivery. 1 2 3 4 5
3. I make a snap judgment about the speech. 1 2 3 4 5
4. I listen for facts rather than the main point 1 2 3 4 5
of the speech.
5. I write down virtually everything the speaker says. 1 2 3 4 5
6. I pretend to be paying attention when i’m not 1 2 3 4 5
interested.
7. I allow myself to be distracted. 1 2 3 4 5
8. I avoid listening to difficult material. 1 2 3 4 5
9. I let a speaker’s words stir up my emotions. 1 2 3 4 5
10. I daydream when a speaker speaks too 1 2 3 4 5
slowly.
Add up your the points to see how your listening skills measure up. Total
40–50 Excellent listening habits
30–39 Good listening habits, but could improve
20–29 Needs improvement in listening
10–19 Poor listening habits
Source: Based on Ralph G. Nichols, “Do We Know How to Listen? Practical Helps in a Modern Age,”
Speech Teacher, 10 (1961): 118-24.

(Exhibit 5.2). Types and their intended goals include but are not limited to listen-
ing to understand, listening to appreciate, listening to empathize, and listening
to fulfi ll the speaker’s need for feedback. An additional type, critical listening,
which involves assessing a speaker’s reasoning, is discussed at length in Chapter
15. Needless to say, these types and goals overlap. Thus, think of them as inter-
dependent rather than independent facets of model listening.

Goals of Listening

Listening to Understand

Understanding, in the truest sense of the word, is a multistep process. Further,
there are different levels of understanding, depending on the goal of the lis-
tener. The fi rst step in the process of understanding is to discriminate between
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differing auditory and visual stimuli. As infants we fi rst recognize parental
voices, then sounds, words, and eventually the complex structures of language. 117