This document summarizes techniques for improving listening and responding skills from Chapter 4 of the textbook. It discusses the difference between hearing and listening, types of listening like selective and defensive listening, challenges like listening fatigue, and bias. It also provides strategies for active listening such as paraphrasing, mirroring others, practicing recall tests, and listening empathetically. The overall goal is to enhance understanding of others and ability to communicate effectively.

1. CHAPTER 4
Listening and Responding
Copyright © 2022 W. W. Norton & Company

2. Listening and responding
2

3. 4.1 Listening as a process
• Hearing vs. listening
• Active listening vs. passive listening
3

4. 4
Ears
King (respect)
Eyes
One (focus)
Heart

5. Hearing versus listening
“Frankly, I’ve never given listening a
lot of thought. Which isn’t so good
because I’d say 80% of my work
involves listening to others. I’m a
floor manager at a large retail store,
and for a while, I felt like I didn’t
have time to really listen to my
coworkers’ complaints or questions.
Things started to get really tense,
and we weren’t working well as a
team. I now realize many of the
troubles I had were the result of
passive listening.” —Khalil

6. Stages of the listening process

7. The listening process
7

8. Back-channel cues (1)
• The responses that you make as part of the listening
process are a form of feedback that are called back-
channel cues.
• Nonverbal back-channel cues
• Verbal back-channel cues
8

9. Back-channel cues (2)
9

10. Conversational turn-taking
• Conversational turn-taking is the method by
which you alternate between being a speaker and a
listening.
• Turn-yielding signals
• Turn-denying signals
• You use turn-requesting signals.
10

11. Listening styles (1)
Your listening style is your preferred way of making
sense of spoken messages. Your attitudes, goals,
interests, gender, and personality may influence your
listening preferences.
11

12. Listening styles (2)
12

13. 4.2 The challenges of listening
• Listening fatigue
• The difference between the rate at which a person
speaks and your ability to process spoken messages
is called the speech-thought differential.
• Sensory overload
13

14. Types of listening (1)
• Selective listening
• In situations where we’d rather not acknowledge or
have to deal with something, we purposely insulate
or block out what we’re hearing.
• Pseudolistening
• Defensive listening
• Narcissistic listening
• Stage-hogging
• Monopolizing
• One-upping
14

15. Types of listening (2)
“I’m a die-hard Notre Dame fan.
When Jamal senses I’ve lost interest
in what he’s talking about, he’ll
mutter, ‘Notre Dame’ in the middle of
a sentence to catch my ear. I’ll say,
‘What? What did you say?’ It gets my
attention, but I can tell it bothers him
that he has to resort to this to get me
to listen.” —Terrell

16. Types of listening (3)
16

17. Close-mindedness
• Close-minded listening often coincides with
monopolizing.
• A close-minded listener might say things like:
 “It doesn’t matter what you say.”
 ”I’ve heard this all before.”
 “I don’t have time for this.”
 “My mind is made up . . . period!”
 “You’re entitled to your opinion.”
17

18. Interrupting
• Interrupting occurs when you say something
before someone has finished speaking.
• One form of interrupting is gap-filling, which occurs
when you interrupt to finish a person’s thoughts or
story or add details to a story.
18

19. Listening bias (1)
• A listening bias is a set of preconceived ideas or beliefs that affect
how you listen to others.
• You may also listen to speakers differently if they speak with an
accent—a distinctive way of speaking a language—different than
your own.
• A dialect is a distinct way of speaking your first language.

20. Listening bias (2)

21. Hearing impairment
• Hearing loss can occur suddenly as a result of an
accident, deafening noise, or illness.
• There has been a sharp increase in hearing loss,
possibly due to the use of personal audio devices.
• Individuals who suffer hearing loss experience
increased listening fatigue as a result of greater
effort to understand.
21

22. 4.3 Ways to improve listening and responding skills
• If you give your conversational partners as much
time as they need to communicate what’s on their
minds, it also gives you more time to decode and
form a comprehensive understanding of the
information they provide.
22

23. Postpone effectively (1)
• Postponement is when you delay a conversation
until you are ready to communicate effectively.
• Four ways to postpone effectively:
 State the reason for postponement.
 Recognize the person’s need to communicate.
 Agree on a time to reconvene.
 Follow through.
23

24. Postpone effectively (2)
“Sometimes I’ll argue with my
fiancée and say, ‘Forget it, I’m done.
I’m not talking about this anymore.’
She’ll say, ‘Well I’m not done. And we
will keep talking about this!’ I try to
walk away, and she’ll follow me
around the house and try to get me
to engage with her. Sometimes she
even grabs my car keys so I can’t
leave the house. I need to come up
with a better way to postpone.”
—Huang

25. Paraphrase (1)
• Another technique that may enhance your listening and
responding skills is paraphrasing—briefly restating in your own
words what you heard someone say in an attempt to capture the
essence of their message.
• Paraphrases often begin with sentence starters like: “So,” “Sounds
like,” “What I heard you say was,” or “In other words . . .”

26. Paraphrase (2)

27. Metacommunication
• Receptivity is a person’s willingness to receive a
message or engage in a conversation.
• Check to see if the receiver is ready to listen.
• Ask the receiver to paraphrase you.
27

28. Mirror your conversational partner (1)
Mirroring occurs when you consciously and
subconsciously imitate or reflect a speaker’s emotional
state and communicate behaviors, such as vocal tones,
speech patterns, gestures, and facial expressions.
28

29. Mirror your conversational partner (2)
29

30. Practice with recall tests
• Taking time to recall and process the information
others share with you trains you to focus, concentrate,
and sharpen your memory.
• People love it when you show an interest in them and
remember the things they’ve shared with you in
earlier conversations.
• Also pay attention to the information people leave
out.
30

31. Listen and respond empathetically (1)
• Empathetic listening occurs when you listen in
order to identify with and share the feelings of
another person.
• What are the other person's communication goals,
and how can you respond accordingly?
31

32. Listen and respond empathetically (2)
32

33. Empathetic listening (1)
33

34. Empathetic listening (2)
34

35. Credits
This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for Chapter 4.
For more resources, please visit It’s Interpersonal, An Introduction
to Relational Communication, at:
http://digital.wwnorton.com/interpersonal
Copyright © 2022 W. W. Norton & Company