Public Speaking Module 3

Public Speaking Module 3: Listening and Responding

• Module Learning Outcomes: Explain how to listen actively and productively to others. Demonstrate understanding of active listening principles. Recognize listening barriers and how to avoid them. Explain effective verbal and nonverbal feedback.

Active Listening

• Learning Outcomes: Demonstrate understanding of active listening principles. Explain the difference between hearing and listening. Describe different types of listening. Define attention, attitude, and adjustment as components of active listening. Explain the benefits for education, personal life, and career.

Hearing vs Listening

• Hearing: Biological, unintentional, passive process.

• Listening: Intentional, requires conscious attention, takes effort. One can hear without listening.

Types of Listening

• Appreciative: Enjoying; Music, poetry, actors, television.

• Relational: Connecting; Engaging to build relationships.

• Empathetic: Validating; Recognizing and supporting feelings.

• Critical: Objective evaluating; Analyzing, judging, making decisions.

• Informational: Understanding; Gaining and remembering information.

Understanding Active Listening

• Attention: Intentional processing; Organize ideas, distinguish main points, summarize mentally.

• Attitude: Open-minded; Acknowledge psychological deaf spots, listen to understand before evaluating.

• Adjustment: Adapt to speaker/situation; Focus on creating shared meaning.

Benefits of Active Listening

• Academic: Perform better on assignments and exams; Retain more course information; Higher GPA.

• Professional: Stronger analytical skills; Gain perspective and challenge assumptions; Higher productivity; Strong interviewing skills.

• Personal: Increased self-esteem; Conflict resolution and tension reduction; Stronger relationships.

Barriers to Listening

• Anticipating: Jumping to conclusions; Stopping listening or "half-listening" to focus on a response; Danger: Missing critical information, harming relationships.

• Judging: Focusing on the speaker instead of the message; Prematurely evaluating the speaker; Danger: Missing critical information, perceiving bias.

• Emotional Reactions: Strong emotions obstructing message processing; Caused by emotional triggers or contentious subjects; Danger: Missing most information, ineffective and premature responses.

Identifying Distractions

• Physical: Hear, see, touch, taste, smell.

• Psychological: Technology, needs (coffee/cigarettes), hunger, mood, conflicting event.

• Situational: Relationship, purpose.

Reducing Distractions

• Keeping an open mind: Recognizing that listening doesn't mandate adopting the speaker's perspective; Listen to learn new perspectives; Acknowledge and return to listening when emotions arise.

• Coming prepared: Knowing what's necessary to understand the speaker/topic; Having a listening goal.

• Taking notes: Organizing the message into main points, key ideas, and important details; Using methods like lists, outlines, concept maps, Cornell Method, and jotting questions.

Cornell Notes

• Method: Record, question, recite, reflect, review.

Feedback

• Learning Outcomes: Explain how to give effective verbal and nonverbal feedback. Describe three kinds of feedback. Describe types of nonverbal and verbal feedback. Explain elements of effective feedback. Identify how to respond productively to others.

Kinds of Feedback

• Appreciation: Relationships and connections.

• Coaching: Improve, learn, change.

• Evaluation: Ranking, rating, judging.

Types of Feedback

• Nonverbal: Varied across cultures; Affirming and appropriate cues; Eye contact, head nods, posture, note-taking; Avoid giving too many cues.

• Verbal: Utterances; Call and Response; Laughter.

Effective Feedback

• Timely: Immediate or shortly after the event.

• Behavioral: Identify behaviors, not character traits. Observational.

• Specific: Avoid vague descriptions; Use specific examples of observed behaviors.

• Reasonable: Expectations for performance. Balanced positive and constructive comments. Limited number of comments.

Providing Feedback

• Positive Format: Be honest in positive comments; Avoid using "you"; Sandwich method (affirmative, constructive, affirmative); Write questions/comments for later feedback.

Class Activity

• Groups of three: Watch a video; Person A: use 5 feedback principles for feedback. Person B: identify audience feedback. Person C: how principles are used.

Quick Review

• Types of listening; Active listening as a skill; Eliminating listening barriers; Reducing distractions; Feedback has 3 purposes; Effective feedback has 5 elements (timely, behavioral, observational, specific, reasonable); Positive format; Sandwich method.