4.6: Listening Critically

Learning Objectives

1. Define and explain critical listening and its importance in the public speaking context.
2. Understand six distinct ways to improve ability to critically listen to speeches.
3. Evaluate what it means to be an ethical listener.

Students are exposed to many kinds of messages: messages conveying academic information, institutional rules, instructions, and warnings. Students also receive messages through political discourse, advertisements, gossip, jokes, song lyrics, text messages, invitations, web links, and all other manner of communication. It’s not all the same, but it isn’t always clear how to separate the truth from the messages that are misleading or even blatantly false. Nor is it always clear which messages are intended to help the listener and which ones are merely self-serving for the speaker. Part of being a good listener is to learn when to use caution in evaluating the messages we hear.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Ben Smith – String telephone – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Scholars Stephanie Coopman and James Lull (2008) emphasize the creation of a climate of caring and mutual understanding, observing that “respecting others’ perspectives is one hallmark of the effective listener" (p. 60). Respect, or unconditional positive regard for others, means that you treat others with consideration and decency whether we agree with them or not. Professors Sprague, Stuart, and Bodary (2010). also urge us to treat the speaker with respect even when we disagree, don’t understand the message, or find the speech boring.

Doug Lippman (1998), a storytelling coach, wrote powerfully and sensitively about listening in his book:

Like so many of us, I used to take listening for granted, glossing over this step as I rushed into the more active, visible ways of being helpful. Now, I am convinced that listening is the single most important element of any helping relationship.

Listening has great power. It draws thoughts and feelings out of people as nothing else can. When someone listens to you well, you become aware of feelings you may not have realized that you felt. You have ideas you may have never thought before. You become more eloquent, more insightful.…

As a helpful listener, I do not interrupt you. I do not give advice. I do not do something else while listening to you. I do not convey distraction through nervous mannerisms. I do not finish your sentences for you. In spite of all my attempts to understand you, I do not assume I know what you mean.

I do not convey disapproval, impatience, or condescension. If I am confused, I show a desire for clarification, not dislike for your obtuseness. I do not act vindicated when you misspeak or correct yourself.

I do not sit impassively, withholding participation.

Instead, I project affection, approval, interest, and enthusiasm. I am your partner in communication. I am eager for your imminent success, fascinated by your struggles, forgiving of your mistakes, always expecting the best. I am your delighted listener (Lippman, 1998).

This excerpt expresses the decency with which people should treat each other. It doesn’t mean we must accept everything we hear, but ethically, we should refrain from trivializing each other’s concerns. We have all had the painful experience of being ignored or misunderstood. This is how we know that one of the greatest gifts one human can give to another is listening.

Key Takeaways

• Critical listening is the process a listener goes through using careful, systematic thinking and reasoning to see whether a speaker’s message makes sense in light of factual evidence. When listeners are not critical of the messages they are attending to, they are more likely to be persuaded by illogical arguments based on opinions and not facts.
• Critical listening can be improved by employing one or more strategies to help the listener analyze the message: recognize the difference between facts and opinions, uncover assumptions given by the speaker, be open to new ideas, use both reason and common sense when analyzing messages, relate new ideas to old ones, and take useful notes.
• Being an ethical listener means giving respectful attention to the ideas of a speaker, even though you may not agree with or accept those ideas.

Exercises

1. Think of a time when you were too tired or distracted to give your full attention to the ideas in a speech. What did you do? What should you have done?
2. Give an example of a mistake in reasoning that involved the speaker mistaking an assumption for fact.

References

• Coopman, S. J., & Lull, J. (2008). Public speaking: The evolving art. Cengage Learning, p. 60.
• Edward Jenner Museum. (n.d.). Vaccination. Retrieved from www.jennermuseum.com/Jenner/vaccination.html
• Factcheck.org, a Project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. (2009, September 10). Obama’s health care speech. Retrieved from http://www.factcheck.org/2009/09/obamas-health-care-speech
• Lippman, D. (1998). The storytelling coach: How to listen, praise, and bring out people’s best. Little Rock, AR: August House.
• Owen, R. (2010, May 23). Catholic church reburies “heretic” Nicolaus Copernicus with honour. Times Online. Retrieved from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7134341.ece
• Paz, C. (2020). All the President's lies about the Coronavirus. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/
• Sprague, J., Stuart, D., & Bodary, D. (2010). The speaker’s handbook (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage.
• Wikiquote. (n.d.). Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Retrieved from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Patrick_Moynihan