assignment listening exercise 5.2 pavane and galliard

Medieval & Renaissance

Tips for the listening exam.

To succeed on listening exams you need to do more than just listen to the overall sound of a piece. You need to dig down into the music with your ears and hear what is going on in the music. To do this you should be constantly asking yourself the question: what am I hearing? Can you discern the texture, the instrumentation, the tempo, the form, and the melodic style? Often there will be one single characteristic that will give away the genre, or at least enable you to eliminate all but a couple of possibilities. This of course assumes that you have done your homework and know what to be listening for. This document is designed to help you train your ear to listen for some of those telltale characteristics.

You will need to study the characteristics of each piece that will enable you to recognize that piece when you hear them. Often it’s best to learn how to identify the genre first. Every genre has certain general characteristics. If you can recognize them, that will often make identification of the specific title and composer much easier.

In most of the periods of history there is a clear dividing line that will enable you to eliminate around half of the genres you’ve listened to: vocal vs. instrumental. For example, later in the semester when we study the Classical period, if you hear someone singing you know the piece cannot be a symphony or string quartet. In the Medieval and Renaissance periods, however, there just wasn’t much instrumental music that was written down. Because of that, we don’t have the benefit of grouping our pieces by whether they are instrumental or vocal—all but two of them involve singing. That said, those two strictly instrumental works will stand out so much that they are probably a good place to start.

Remember, the question that should always be in your mind during a listening exam is “what am I hearing?”

I Hear Instruments Only—No Singing

There are only two pieces you could be listening to. Both are examples of anonymously composed Renaissance dance music and so only the title will change. I’ve listed the title, composer, and genre information for both pieces. Below that we’ll delve into what you should listen for in order to tell them apart.

• Pavane by Anonymous; a renaissance dance
• Galliard  by Anonymous; a renaissance dance

There are two clear characteristics to listen for when trying to tell which one of the dances you’re hearing: meter and instrumentation. Meter refers to the organization of the beats. As you tap your foot to the beat you’ll notice that some beats are stronger than others – important moments in the music will seem to line up with those stronger beats. Try to determine whether the beats are grouped “strong-weak-strong-weak” (duple meter) or “strong-weak-weak-strong-weak-weak” (triple).  Pavane is duple and  Galliard is triple. Triple meter dances tend to have a more lively and fun quality to them, while duple meter dances tend to be more stately and serious sounding. This is certainly the case with these two pieces so listen for the emotion of the piece as another clue to the meter. Next, each dance is performed by different instruments. Pavane begins with a hand drum introduction. Then a group of instruments play through the dance’s melody once. Most of these instruments are relatively loud winds: shawms (early oboes) and sackbuts (early trombones). This makes for a fairly strong sound. Next, the tune is played through again by a vielle (early violin) with lute (early guitar) accompaniment. Then the initial group plays through the piece one more time, the hand drum keeping a steady beat the entire time. By contrast,  Galliard is performed entirely by softer flutes with a tambourine providing an underlying rhythmic accompaniment.

I Hear Singing and Instruments

Once again, there are only two possible pieces you could be listening to. Both are pieces of medieval secular music and both feature singing and polyphonic texture. However, they are easily distinguished by the instrumentation (the various voices and instruments that perform the piece). Because there is a little more to describe, I’ll list each piece separately.

• A Chantar M’er by Beatriz, Countess of Dia; a troubadour song.  Troubadours and trobairitz were solo artists so this piece features a single, female vocalist and two instruments, namely a vielle and a lute. This is the only piece on the exam sung entirely by a solo female voice. In the beginning the vielle and the singer take turns presenting the melody and the lute plays with the singer only. On the final verse of the text the violin plays the tune simultaneously with the singer. Remember that the Countess was writing around 1175AD and polyphony was in its early stages at this time. It is not surprising that the texture of this piece, while polyphonic, is quite simple. The only thing Beatriz wrote down was the melody that was to be sung (and in this performance played by the vielle also). Any additional lines were improvised on the spot, which is one reason they were so simple. This provides a contrast with the later chanson. Chansons evolved as a combination of the tradition of the troubadours’ secular songs and the more complex polyphony that had developed in the composition of sacred masses and motets. It’s also worth mentioning that we really have no idea how these pieces would have been performed in their day. In this performance, the musicians are clearly using a regular beat, though it speeds up and slows down somewhat. However, this is not something indicated in the written music that has survived. It is entirely possible that these pieces would have been performed without a steady pulse, much like a Gregorian chant. I have heard performances of this piece that take that approach. So while you should focus on the specifics of this performance as you prepare for the listening exam, keep in mind that there are many possible was to perform the piece since there is no way to know what Beatriz intended.
• Ce Moys de May by Guillaume Dufay; a chanson.  As was just mentioned, this piece was composed much later—roughly 250 years after A Chantar M’er . By this time polyphonic composition had become more sophisticated. This piece has three composed melodic lines, meaning nothing is improvised, and they are each quite active and involved. This more complex polyphony is one way to recognize this piece as compared to the troubadour song. The lively tempo and active lines will help you distinguish this piece from A Chantar M’er , which again is the only other piece with both instruments and voices. The tambourine is a pretty big clue as well. As with the troubadour song, however, there is a lot we don’t know about the composer’s intent. Did he mean for all three lines to be sung or just the highest part? In our performance all three lines are both sung and played by instruments, but if you search this piece on Spotify you’ll find other performances where a solo singer performs the top line and the lower lines are played by instruments.

I Hear Singing Only—No Instruments

We’ll need to find other ways to narrow down the possibilities: there are nine pieces that are performed by voices alone. I think the best characteristic to zero in on during the Medieval and Renaissance periods is texture. In some cases, such as monophony, texture will give you the genre, namely Gregorian Chant. In some others it will greatly narrow down the possible genre choices. Again, ask yourself “what am I hearing?”

There are only two monophonic pieces on this exam. If you hear monophonic texture it can only be one of the two chants. Remember that monophonic texture means that everyone is singing the same melodic line and there’s nothing else going on in the music. Imagine if we all sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in class. Even though there would be a lot of us singing, we’d all be on the same part or line of music. That’s what monophony is, and all chant features this simplest of textures. There are only two chants (and therefore only two examples of monophony) in your listening so if you can pick up on the texture you can narrow it down to two pieces: Gradual Viderunt Omnes and O Rubor Sanguinis . From there, listen to who is performing. They are listed below with some characteristics to listen for that will help you tell them apart.

• Gradual Viderunt Omnes  by Anonymous; a gregorian chant.  On our recording, this chant is sung by men. You’ll recall that in the monasteries, all-male establishments, these chants would have been sung on an almost hourly basis. O Rubor Sanguinis, on the other hand, is sung by women.
• O Rubor Sanguinis  by Hildegard of Bingen; a gregorian chant.  Because Hildegard of Bingen established an abbey, a place where the nuns lived and worked, this chant would have been sung by a female chorus just as it is in the performance on our Spotify playlist. That will also make it easy to distinguish from Viderunt Omnes .

If you hear a piece where some of the lines are held out and other lines are quite active, then the texture you are hearing is polyphony. There are seven pieces on the listening exam that are entirely vocal (no instruments) and polyphonic. Each of these has distinctive characteristics that will enable you to identify the piece on a listening exam if you know what to listen for. Let’s start with two examples of medieval polyphony.

• Viderunt Omnes  by Perotinus; organum.  When polyphonic texture first began to be used in sacred music it was called organum and it was quite basic. It began with two parallel melodic lines that moved in lockstep with each other. Gradually composers began to experiment with ways to make this more interesting, and some of the most significant developments took place in Paris at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Viderunt Omnes is Notre Dame school organum, and it has a very distinctive sound. The low part holds out the notes of a pre-existing Gregorian chant for a really, really long time. This creates a drone over which higher parts were composed. These upper parts were very active and used a repeated rhythmic pattern. Because the notes of the original chant are being stretched out, that means the text proceeds very slowly. The upper voice is therefore singing lots of pitches on each syllable of text. We call that a melisma. The long melismas in the upper voice of Notre Dame style organum constitute another really obvious characteristic. No other polyphonic genre from this period has such long melismas. I should mention that at about the 7:08 mark, the lower voices become more active. This is a brief exception to what you generally hear in Notre Dame style organum so I won’t use that portion of the piece on the exam. If you get Perotinus’ Viderunt Omnes on your exam, the musical excerpt will feature the long, droning low notes for which Perotinus is generally known. Along those same lines, you’ll notice that at times this piece reverts back to the original chant. Organum was the practice of embellishing monophonic Gregorian chant with sections of more musically interesting polyphony. When we use the word organum we are referring to those polyphonic sections, so on an exam the organum excerpt won’t be taken from the chant sections of the overall piece. That would be a trick question and I don’t do trick questions on listening exams. You’ll hear the characteristics you need to make the identification.
• Kyrie from Messe de Nostre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut; mass.  Like Viderunt Omnes , this “Kyrie” from Machaut’s most famous mass features alternating sections of monophony and polyphony. Just as in the organum, any exam excerpt will come from the polyphonic sections as they are what constitute the most historically significant portions of this composition. Unlike the organum, however, the pre-existing chant melody on which this piece is based is not held out to nearly the same degree. For this reason the melismas in this piece are not nearly as long as the ones in the Notre Dame organum. You can hopefully hear how angular and dissonant medieval polyphony is compared to that of the Renaissance. So if you hear the clashing sounds and irregular rhythms of the middle ages without the long drones of organum, you’re hearing this Kyrie.

Next let’s examine two secular pieces from the Renaissance period. Both are madrigals that are clearly meant for entertainment at court and that makes them stand out. The madrigal genre developed in Italy and the first piece is an example of the Italian madrigal. The second is from England. The English fell in love with Italian madrigals and then over time adapted the genre into something uniquely English. Both pieces make use of word painting, but of course are sung in their respective languages.

• Ecco Mormorar L’onde  by Claudio Monteverdi; a madrigal. The madrigal genre arose out of a desire to more fully express the imagery and emotion found in poetry. In this text the poet describes a peaceful seaside landscape at sunrise. Monteverdi composed music that enables us to hear the murmuring waves (that’s what “ecco mormorar l’onde” means), feel the gentle laughing breezes, and watch the glowing sunrise (represented in the poem by the Roman goddess Aurora). Monteverdi is so skilled at writing expressive music that you’ll almost certainly recognize the piece by the fact that it makes you feel the way you would if you were standing on the peaceful shore at dawn. However, it’s also worth noting that because of this desire for expression the tempo changes to fit the text. In the beginning, the tempo is moderately slow as we hear the murmuring waters. When the text talks about the laughing breezes the tempo becomes faster. As the sun rises the polyphony becomes imitative. Imitation was common in sacred music at the time so it provides an element of majesty for the arrival of the goddess of the dawn.
• “As Vesta Was” from Latmos Hill Descending  by Thomas Weelkes; an English madrigal.  The genre of this piece really stands out. First of all, it’s the only piece in English. I wouldn’t rely too much on that as it’s easy to get the language confused in a polyphonic texture (everyone sings different words at the same time), but it is a characteristic that sets it apart from all the others. Second, it is the fastest, happiest sounding piece on the test. That’s really what English madrigals were all about—fun and frolic. In case you’re worried that you might get this mixed up with the Medieval chanson Ce Moys de May which is also somewhat lively, just remember that our English madrigal is sung a cappella, meaning there is no instrumental accompaniment, while in Ce Moys instruments play along with the voices.

Now the last three polyphonic pieces are probably the most difficult to distinguish as they are all examples of the Renaissance a cappella style of sacred music. The good news is that if you hear rich, flowing, serene Renaissance polyphony it can really only be one of these three so you’ve narrowed your choices considerably. We’ll start with Josquin’s motet.

• Ave Maria  by Josquin des Prez; motet.  Josquin had a taste for very clear sections, each section sounding somewhat different than the one before. Some sections feature imitation, meaning a polyphonic texture in which a melodic idea is repeated in every voice part successively. Other sections feature what I like to call dialogue – an imitative texture in which two parts are woven together in a long phrase which is then imitated by two different parts. Finally there are sections of the Josquin motet which are homophonic—a texture in which all the parts move together. This makes the text very clear as everyone is singing the same syllable of text at the same time. Josquin liked the contrast and variety that these different sections provided. Palestrina, on the other hand, strove for greater consistency—his music just seems to flow continuously from beginning to end. If you hear serene Renaissance polyphony with contrasting sections you it can’t be one of the Palestrina pieces. It must be Josquin’s motet, Ave Maria .
• “Gloria” from Missa Papae Marcelli  by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina; mass.  This movement from the Missa Papae Marcelli (or Pope Marcellus Mass) not only avoids contrasting sections, it almost entirely avoids imitation. While there are six voice parts, each part moves in sync with the others. This means that everyone is, for the most part, singing the same words at the same time. This is called homophonic texture. While the Josquin piece has some short sections of homophony, the fact that the Gloria is consistently homophonic provides a clear difference between the two that you can hear.
• “Agnus Dei” from Missa Papae Marcelli by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina; mass.  The Agnus Dei is as consistent in its texture as the Gloria, but the texture is imitative polyphony. However, the imitation in this piece is less obvious than in the Josquin piece because Palestrina made sure that the listener would be able to follow the text. He does this in two ways: the use of long melismas and keeping each phrase of text separate (e.g. the 2nd phrase “qui tollis peccata mundi” doesn’t begin until each voice has completed the 1st phrase “Agnus Dei”). This is helpful for us as those long melismas provide a clear contrast with the Gloria which is much more syllabic. It also means that the Agnus Dei has an even more smooth and flowing quality than the Gloria. So basically if you have narrowed your choice down to these three pieces, and you hear clearly contrasting sections within the piece, it must be Josquin’s motet. If you hear a fairly consistent texture throughout the piece then you’re hearing Palestrina’s famous mass, and you need to then figure out which of the two movements it is. At that point listen for texture (homophony = Gloria, imitative polyphony = Agnus Dei) and overall text setting (syllabic = Gloria, melismatic = Agnus Dei).

I hope this has been helpful in training your ears for what to listen to. Please don’t think that you can read these tips once and then recognize these characteristics during the listening exam without any additional preparation. It takes a lot of practice to hear some of these things, especially some of the details that are not immediately apparent on the surface of the music. You’ll want to familiarize yourself thoroughly with the contents of this sheet so that you’re not wasting time looking things up during the exam. One thing I do suggest you look at during the exam is this final table below. During the exam, double check this list after you’ve selected your answer (title, composer, and genre) for each question. That won’t cost you much time but it will help prevent mistakes where you accidentally clicked on the wrong composer or genre for a piece you recognized. Good luck on the test!

Titles, Composers, & Genres for the Medieval & Renaissance Music Exam

• Authored by : Elliott Jones. Provided by : Santa Ana College. Located at : http://www.sac.edu . License : CC BY: Attribution

The Art of Listening

Pavane & Galliard

Sir Toby Belch:   What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight? Sir Andrew  Aguecheek:  Faith, I can cut a caper.                                                                  (Shakespeare: Twelfth Night )

In this painting of Good Queen Bess ‘cutting a caper’ with her favourite favourite, the Earl of Leicester, it’s assumed that the couple are dancing the Lavolta, described by the Oxford English Dictionary  as ‘a lively dance for two persons, consisting a good deal in high and active bounds’ (how else are we to explain away the queen’s apparently miraculous powers of levitation?)

Lavolta is a subspecies of the genus Galliard (‘a quick and lively dance in triple time’) and, as such, would have been frequently paired with a much more ‘grave and stately’ duple-time Pavane;   My Ladye Nevells Booke contains ten examples of such Pavane/Galliard pairings.

Here’s an example of Lavolta  (with the female dancer, I’m afraid, not quite achieving the gravity defying feats of her royal counterpart):

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as “fair use”, for the purpose of study, and critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of the copyright owner(s).

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• Pavanes et Galliards

Byrd, William (1543 - 1623)

The Gaillard, also originating from Italy, is a lively dance consisting of four hopping steps and a high leap, an opportunity for the athletic gentlemen to show off for their partners.

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5.2: Five Stages of Listening

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• Page ID 107111

• Lisa Coleman, Thomas King, & William Turner
• Southwest Tennessee Community College

Learning Objectives

• Explain the receiving stage of listening.
• Explain the understanding stage of listening.
• Explain the remembering stage of listening.
• Explain the evaluating stage of listening.
• Explain the feedback stage of listening and the two types of feedback.
• Understand the difference between formative and summative feedback.

Stage 1: Receiving

Receiving is the intentional focus on hearing a speaker’s message, which happens when we filter out other sources so that we can isolate the message and avoid the confusing mixture of incoming stimuli. At this stage, we are still only hearing the message. Notice in Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) that this stage is represented by the ear because it is the primary tool involved with this stage of the listening process.

During a crowded event in an outdoor amphitheater, for example, when the person on stage starts speaking, the cheering and/or yelling is sometimes so loud that the speaker can't be heard easily despite using a speaker system. In this example, the difficulty of receiving the message is due to the external noise. This is only one example of the ways that hearing alone can require sincere effort, but you must hear the message clearly before you can continue the process of listening.

Stage 2: Understanding

In the understanding stage, we attempt to learn the meaning of the message, which is not always easy. For one thing, if a speaker does not enunciate clearly, it may be difficult to tell what the message was—did your friend say, “I think she’ll be late for class,” or “my teacher delayed the class”? Notice in Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) that stages two, three, and four are represented by the brain because it is the primary tool involved with these stages of the listening process.

Even when we have understood the words in a message, because of the differences in our backgrounds and experience, we sometimes make the mistake of attaching our own meanings to the words of others. For example, say you have made plans with your friends to meet at a certain movie theater, but you arrive and nobody else shows up. Eventually, you find out that your friends are at a different theater all the way across town where the same movie is playing. Everyone else understood that the meeting place was the “west side” location, but you misunderstood it as the “east side” location and therefore missed out on part of the fun.

The consequences of ineffective listening in a classroom can be much worse. When your professor advises students to get an “early start” on your speech, he or she probably hopes that students will begin their research right away and move on to developing a thesis statement and outlining the speech as soon as possible. However, students in your class might misunderstand the instructor’s meaning in several ways. One student might interpret the advice to mean that as long as she gets started, the rest of the assignment will have time to develop itself. Another student might instead think that to start early is to start on the Friday before the Monday due date instead of Sunday night.

As mentioned more than once in this textbook, meanings are in people, not in words . This means that much of our understanding of others is influenced by our own perceptions and experiences. Therefore, at the understanding stage of listening, we should be on the lookout for places where our perceptions might differ from those of the speaker, and be willing to ask questions to clarify the speaker's meaning.

Stage 3: Remembering

Remembering begins with listening; if you can’t remember something that was said, you might not have been listening effectively. Researchers Wolvin and Coakley note that the most common reason for not remembering a message after the fact is because it wasn’t really learned in the first place (Wolvin & Coakley, 1996). However, even when you are listening attentively, some messages are more difficult than others to understand and remember. Complex messages that are filled with detail call for keen listening skills. Moreover, if something distracts your attention even for a moment, you could miss out on information that explains other new concepts you hear when you begin to listen fully again.

You can improve your memory of a message by processing it meaningfully—that is, by applying it in ways that are meaningful to you (Gluck, et al., 2008). Instead of simply repeating a new acquaintance’s name over and over, for example, you might remember it by associating it with something in your own life. “Emily,” you might say, “reminds me of the Emily I knew in middle school,” or “Mr. Impiari’s name reminds me of the Impala my father drives.” Keep in mind that if understanding has been inaccurate, recollection of the message will be inaccurate too.

Stage 4: Evaluating

The fourth stage in the listening process is evaluating or thinking critically about the message. We might think, “This makes sense” or conversely, “This is very odd.” Because everyone embodies biases and perspectives learned from widely diverse sets of life experiences, evaluations of the same message can vary widely from one listener to another. Even the most open-minded listeners will have opinions of a speaker, and those opinions will influence how the message is evaluated. People are more likely to evaluate a message positively if the speaker speaks clearly, presents ideas logically, and gives reasons to support the points made.

Unfortunately, personal opinions sometimes result in prejudiced evaluations. Imagine you’re listening to a speech given by someone from another country and this person has an accent that is hard to understand. You may have a hard time simply understanding the speaker’s message. Some people find a foreign accent to be interesting or even exotic, while others find it annoying or even take it as a sign of ignorance. If a listener has a strong bias against foreign accents, the listener may not even attempt to attend to the message. If you mistrust a speaker because of an accent, you could be rejecting important or personally enriching information. Good listeners have learned to refrain from making these judgments and instead to focus on the speaker’s meanings.

Stage 5: Responding Through Feedback

Feedback--response to the message--is the fifth and final stage of the listening process. Although Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) represents this stage of listening by the lips because we often give feedback in the form of words, feedback can be either v erbal or nonverbal.    Almost anything a listener says or does can be interpreted as feedback. Making eye contact and nodding your head when a classmate or instructor is speaking are examples of positive nonverbal feedback.  On the other hand, looking at your mobile phone would likely be construed as negative nonverbal feedback.  Positive verbal feedback could be saying, "great job" or telling the speaker you found his or her message interesting. 

Formative Feedback

Not all responses occur at the end of the message. Formative feedback is a natural part of the ongoing transaction between a speaker and a listener. As the speaker delivers the message, a listener signals his or her involvement with focused attention, note-taking, nodding, and other  nonverbal behaviors that indicate understanding or failure to understand the message. These signals are important to the speaker, who is interested in whether the message is clear and accepted or whether the content of the message is meeting the resistance of preconceived ideas. Speakers can use this feedback to decide whether additional examples, support materials, or explanation is needed.

Summative Feedback

Summative feedback is given at the end of the communication. When you attend a political rally, a presentation given by a speaker you admire, or even a class, there are verbal and nonverbal ways of indicating your appreciation or disagreement. Maybe you’ll stand up and applaud a speaker you agreed with or just sit staring in silence after listening to a speaker whose message you didn't appreciate. In other cases, a speaker may be attempting to persuade you to donate to a charity, so if the speaker asks for money and you make a donation, you are providing feedback on the speaker’s effectiveness. At the same time, we do not always listen most carefully to the messages of speakers we admire. Sometimes we simply enjoy being in their presence, and our summative feedback is not about the message but about our attitudes toward the speaker. If your feedback is limited to something like, “I just love your voice,” you might be indicating that you did not listen carefully to the content of the message.

There is little doubt that by now, you are beginning to understand the complexity of listening and the great potential for errors. By becoming aware of what is involved with active listening and where difficulties might lie, you can prepare yourself both as a listener and as a speaker to minimize listening errors with your communication.

Key Takeaways

• The receiving stage of listening is where an individual hears a message being sent by a speaker.
• The understanding stage of listening occurs when a receiver interprets or attaches meaning to the message.
• The remembering stage of listening is when a listener either places information into long-term memory or forgets the information presented.
• The evaluating stage of listening occurs when a listener thinks critically about and judges the content of the message or the character of the speaker.
• The responding stage of listening occurs when a listener provides verbal or nonverbal feedback to the speaker or message.
• During the responding stage of listening, listeners can provide speakers with formative or summative feedback. Formative feedback is given while the speaker is engaged in the act of communicating. Summative feedback is given when the communicator has concluded the message.
• Reflect on your listening in class or in other settings where remembering information is important. What helps you remember important information?  What keeps you from remembering important information accurately?
• Give an example of a time when you felt that your message was misunderstood or you felt as though the listener dismissed it. How did you know your message had been misunderstood or rejected? As a communicator, is there anything you could have done differently?
• Make a list of positive formative feedback you and other listeners could give during a lecture or a classmate's speech.  How might this positive feedback affect the communicator?
• Make a list of negative feedback you and other listeners might give during a lecture or speech.  How might this negative feedback affect the communicator?

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Chapter 5 Activities

Learning Objectives

5.1   Define listening and explain how it differs from hearing .

5.2   Dispel a number of misconceptions about listening.

5.3   Identify the components of effective listening.

5.4   Identify barriers to successful listening.

5.5   Outline several types of listening.

5.6   Describe steps to becoming a better listener.

In everyday life we often worry about how to construct and deliver messages, but rarely do we consider how critical it is to receive those messages in an effective way. Make no mistake, though; listening is as important to good communication as speaking or writing. Listening is a positive; it is the cornerstone to understanding others and understanding the world. This chapter presents a comprehensive look at this crucial skill, offering insight on how to overcome impediments to effective listening and hints for improvement.

• Activity: Telephone I

Put yourself and 5 or 6 friends in a line or circle. A moderator begins the game by whispering a sentence to the first person. This sentence should be written in advance and should only be known to the moderator. The first person who receives the sentence then whispers it to the next person and so on to the end. When it gets to the final person in the group, she or he should say the sentence aloud. The first person will read the sentence provided by the moderator and participants can discuss how much difference there is between the two versions and speculate on where there might have been listening failures.

• Activity: Telephone II

Follow the same procedure as in the first activity, but instruct participants, after they hear the message (not during hearing, but after ), to write down what they heard and whisper-read it to the next person. In this way, any changes in the message is committed to paper, and at the end of the chain of whispers the moderator can post the note cards for everyone to see. It should be pretty clear where the message started and continued to go off track and the listening errors can be pin-pointed and identified.

• Activity: Selective Listening

You can be the moderator for this exercise. Compose a list of objects, all similar in theme. For example, you might use things that make up a sandwich: turkey, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, mustard, cheese. Or you could use pieces of furniture found in a house: table, bed, lamp, desk, rug, cabinet. In any event, your list should be somewhat long, maybe 15 to 20 words, and have some repeated words. Using the sandwich option: turkey, lettuce, tomato, mayo, mustard, cheese, ham, lettuce, pickles, onion, olives, lettuce. Read the list to the group and then give them 30 seconds to write down as many words as they can remember. Most people will remember the word that was repeated most frequently and several will typically write down words that obviously belonged on the list but not actually stated. You’ll get a few people offering bread , sandwich , and food or furniture , sofa , and dresser . Again, you can identify not only individual listening problems, but can discuss what types of listening errors (or noise) produced the results you see.

1.       What are the 5 primary types of listening and when is each employed?

Sample answer : There are five types of listening: informative, appreciative, relational, critical, and discriminative. Informative listening takes place when our primary goal is to understand the message, and we can consider ourselves successful if the meaning we make from what we hear is as close as possible to what the speaker had intended. Appreciative listening means listening for enjoyment or pleasure. Relational listening is lending someone a sympathetic ear, trying to identify with him or her. Critical listening happens when we need to make a decision based on the information offered us and when we want to evaluate or analyze what’s being said. Discriminative listening occurs when we pay close attention to more than the simple denotative meaning of the words we hear.

2.       List and describe at least 10 of the 16 steps to becoming a better listener.

Sample answer: An individual can become a more effective listener by searching for something of interest, being aware of what is not said, being transactive, expending energy, reconciling through speed and speech speed, and focusing attention on central ideas. Other ways to become an effective listener include taking meaningful notes, using mnemonics, resisting external distractions, holding one’s rebuttal, being alert for green-flag words, keeping an open mind, analyzing nonverbal messages, evaluating and critiquing content rather than delivery, practicing listening, and behaving like a discriminative listener.

Go to the Source

Nichols, M. P. (2009). The Lost Art of Listening. New York: Guilford Press.

Nichols, R. G. (1955). “ Ten Components of Effective Listening. ” Education, 75: 292–302.

Wolvin, A., and C. G. Coakley. (1996). Listening. Madison, WI: Brown and Benchmark.

• Florida Cooperative Extension Service ( http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/he748 )

This University of Florida Leadership Development program has prepared a training program to help its leaders improve their listening skills. It’s a solid curriculum to boost anyone’s listening abilities.

• International Listening Association ( http://www.listen.org/ )

The ILA promotes the study, development, and teaching of listening and the practice of effective listening skills and techniques. This professional organization is made up of a network of professionals who exchange information on teaching methods, training experiences and materials, and pursuing research on listening as it affects business, education, and intercultural/international relations.

Select your Country

We saw in the Baroque dance suite that the dances were in pairs: Allemande–Courente and then Sarabande–Gigue. Those dances had tempos of slow/fast and this continues with our next pair, the Pavane and Galliard .

The Pavan came from Italy and our first printed sources for the music come from 1508 from the composer Joan Ambrosio Dalza. His book of lute music included five pavane alla venetiana and four pavane alla ferrarese . On the title page of the book, these works were collectively described as ‘padoane diverse’ , which gives us the clue that they came from the city of Padua. Another theory has it that ‘pavane’ comes from the Italian word ‘pavona’ or ‘peacock’ indicating the parallel dignity of the dance and the spread of the peacock’s tail. In the dance, the couples walk and pause and exhibit their fine clothing.

The pavane was a slow dance. Arbeau’s 1588 book, Orchésography , describes it as a dance for many couples in procession. Each dancer was free to add his own ornamentation to his steps. One of the uses for the pavane would be a stately procession around the room to show off one’s attire. It is said that the halting and hesitating step that brides take to the altar (step – pause, step – pause) is a relic of the pavane.

Renaissance Dance Pavane

Now that you’d shown off your fine clothes, it was time to dance and that’s where the galliard kicks in.

The galliard was a lively dance with jumps and pauses. The basic dance consisted of 4 ‘grèves’, where the dancer hops on the ball of one foot while making a gesture with the other foot as though to kick someone, and then ending with a big jump with two feet ( saut majeur ) and closing with a posture of rest, with one foot in front of the other – the jump and the rest together are called the ‘cadence’. Of course, extra motions could be added just as adding beat in the air while doing the big jump, and so on. These 5 steps: the grèves and the cadence were known as the cinque pas .

Arbeau: Orchésography : The grève done with the right and left foot, 1588

The dance is fast, but then the music must be slow enough to accommodate all these athletic kicks and jumps. Arbeau said that the galliard must be slower for big men than for small men since the big men will take longer to execute the steps.

To see a galliard in dance, with increasingly complex steps, but still with the cinque pas as the basis, this video gives an example:

Galliard Performed by Students of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance

As you can hear, the music isn’t fast, but the dancers may have some complex actions to execute.

Arbeau, in laying out the galliard, made it a paired dance: it starts on the left foot, and then after the cadence , starts again on the right foot. After these 10 steps, you start again on the left foot.

Arbeau: Orchésography : The Galliard, 1588

Arbeau goes on to urge dancers to be in control of their movements so that damsels don’t show their knees from bouncing around and to take care not to kick their partners in their motions.

Once you conquered the basic steps, the flourishes could be added. One of the most infamous of these was the volta or as it was known in England, lavolta . During the volta, the woman is held in the air by the man as he turns 270 degrees, all of this taking place during one 6-beat measure. This would replace the cinque pas .

This one starts with a more standard galliard before launching the lavolta step.

Arbeau thought this particular figure was unduly vulgar for something to be done in a gentlewoman’s ballroom. As you can see in this painting, the woman is at an angle to the man and he’s supporting her in the air with his leg. This is how it was described in Arbeau, although not how it was done in the videos.

Unknown: Dancing the La Volta , ca 1580 (Penshurst Place, Kent)

These two dances were dances of the court, being developed without folk-music antecedents. As you can see in the video, and as described by Arbeau, they begin with a bow to one’s partner. The dances were designed to show off one’s clothes and then one’s skill on the dance floor. The galliard, in particular, could be danced on a number of different levels – the simple steps of a beginning or the more complex jumps and kicks that could be added as one grew in confidence and ability.

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CHAPTER 5: LISTENING

Introduction to Communication textbook.

Learning Objectives

After reading this module you should be able to:

• Understand the difference between listening and hearing.

• Identify a variety of listening styles.

• Explain the challenges to effective listening.

• Define the stages of listening.

5.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

“Are you listening to me?” This question is often asked because the speaker thinks the listener is nodding off or daydreaming. We sometimes think that listening means we only have to sit back, stay barely awake, and let a speaker’s words wash over us. While many Americans look upon being active as something to admire, to engage in, and to excel at, listening is often understood as a “passive” activity. More recently, O, the Oprah Magazine (2006) , featured a cover article with the title, “How to Talk So People Really Listen: Four Ways to Make Yourself Heard.” This title leads us to expect a list of ways to leave the listening to others and insist that they do so, but the article contains a surprise ending. The final piece of advice is this: “You can’t go wrong by showing interest in what other people say and making them feel important. In other words, the better you listen, the more you’ll be listened to.”

You may have heard the adage, “We have two ears but only one mouth”—an easy way to remember that listening can be twice as important as talking.

As a student, you most likely spend many hours in a classroom doing a large amount of focused listening, yet sometimes it is difficult to apply those efforts to communicate in other areas of your life. As a result, your listening skills may not be all they could be. In this chapter, we will examine listening versus hearing, listening styles, listening difficulties or barriers, listening stages, and listening critically.

“LOUD speaker” by woodleywonderworks is licensed under CC BY 2.0

5.2 LISTENING VS. HEARING

Hearing is an accidental and automatic brain response to sound that requires no effort. We are surrounded by sound most of the time. For example, we are accustomed to the sounds of airplanes, lawn mowers, furnace blowers, the rattling of pots and pans, and so on. We hear those incidental sounds and, unless we have a reason to do otherwise, we train ourselves to ignore them. We learn to filter out sounds that mean little to us, just as we choose to hear our ringing cell phones and other sounds that are more important to us.

Listening, on the other hand, is purposeful and focused rather than accidental. As a result, it requires motivation and effort. At its best, listening is active, focused, concentrated attention for the purpose of understanding the meanings expressed by a speaker . We do not always listen at our best. Later in this chapter, we will examine some of the reasons why and some strategies for becoming more active critical listeners.

BENEFITS OF LISTENING

Listening should not be taken for granted. Before the invention of writing, people conveyed virtually all knowledge through some combination of showing and telling. Elders recited tribal histories to attentive audiences. Listeners received religious teachings enthusiastically. Myths, legends, folktales, and stories for entertainment survived only because audiences were eager to listen. Nowadays, however, you can gain information and entertainment through reading and electronic recordings rather than through real-time listening. If you become distracted and let your attention wander, you can go back and replay a recording. Despite that fact, you can still gain at least four compelling benefits by becoming more active and competent at real-time listening.

YOU BECOME A BETTER STUDENT

When you focus on the material presented in a classroom, you will be able to identify not only the words used in a lecture but their emphasis and their more complex meanings. You will take better notes, and you will more accurately remember the instructor’s claims, information, and conclusions. Many times, instructors give verbal cues about what information is important, specific expectations about assignments, and even what material is likely to be on an exam, so careful listening can be beneficial.

YOU BECOME A BETTER FRIEND

When you give your best attention to people expressing thoughts and experiences that are important to them, those individuals are likely to see you as someone who cares about their well-being. This fact is especially true when you give your attention only and refrain from interjecting opinions, judgments, and advice.

PEOPLE WILL PERCEIVE YOU AS INTELLIGENT AND PERCEPTIVE

When you listen well to others, you reveal yourself as being curious and interested in people and events. In addition, your ability to understand the meanings of what you hear will make you a more knowledgeable and thoughtful person.

GOOD LISTENING CAN HELP YOUR PUBLIC SPEAKING

When you listen well to others, you start to pick up more on the stylistic components related to how people form arguments and present information. As a result, you have the ability to analyze what you think works and doesn’t work in others’ speeches, which can help you transform your speeches in the process. For example, really paying attention to how others cite sources orally during their speeches may give you ideas about how to more effectively cite sources in your presentation.

Answer the following questions with a peer:

1. With a partner, discuss how you find out when you haven’t been listening carefully.

2. What are some of the consequences of poor listening?

5.3 LISTENING STYLES

If listening were easy, and if all people went about it in the same way, the task for a public speaker would be much easier. Even Aristotle, as long ago as 325 BC, recognized that listeners in his audience were varied in listening style. He differentiated them as follows:

Rhetoric falls into three divisions, determined by the three classes of listeners to speeches. For of the three elements in speech-making—speaker, subject, and person addressed—it is the last one, the hearer, that determines the speech’s end and object. The hearer must be either a judge, with a decision to make about things past or future, or an observer. A member of the assembly decides about future events, a juryman about past events: while those who merely decide on the orator’s skill are observers.

Thus Aristotle classified listeners into those who would be using the speech to make decisions about past events, those who would make decisions affecting the future, and those who would evaluate the speaker’s skills. This is all the more remarkable when we consider that Aristotle’s audiences were composed exclusively of male citizens of one city-state, all prosperous property owners.

Our audiences today are likely to be much more heterogeneous. Think about the classroom audience that will listen to your speeches in this course. Your classmates come from many religious and ethnic backgrounds. Some of them may speak English as a second language. Some might be survivors of war-torn parts of the world such as Bosnia, Darfur, or northwest China. Being mindful of such differences will help you prepare a speech in which you minimize the potential for misunderstanding.

Part of the potential for misunderstanding is the difference in listening styles. In an article in the International Journal of Listening , Watson, Barker, and Weaver identified four listening styles: people, action, content, and time (1995).

The people-oriented listener is interested in the speaker. People-oriented listeners listen to the message in order to learn how the speaker thinks and how they feel about their message. For instance, when people-oriented listeners listen to an interview with a famous rap artist, they are likely to be more curious about the artist as an individual than about music, even though the people-oriented listener might also appreciate the artist’s work. If you are a people-oriented listener, you might have certain questions you hope will be answered, such as: Does the artist feel successful? What’s it like to be famous? What kind of educational background does he or she have? In the same way, if we’re listening to a doctor who responded to the earthquake crisis in Haiti, we might be more interested in the doctor as a person than in the state of affairs for Haitians. Why did he or she go to Haiti? How did he or she get away from his or her normal practice and patients? How many lives were saved? We might be less interested in the equally important and urgent needs for food, shelter, and sanitation following the earthquake.

The people-oriented listener is likely to be more attentive to the speaker than to the message. If you tend to be such a listener, understand that the message is about what is important to the speaker.

Action-oriented listeners are primarily interested in finding out what the speaker wants. Does the speaker want votes, donations, volunteers, or something else? It’s sometimes difficult for an action-oriented speaker to listen to the descriptions, evidence, and explanations with which a speaker builds his or her case.

Action-oriented listening is sometimes called task-oriented listening. In it, the listener seeks a clear message about what needs to be done and might have less patience for listening to the reasons behind the task. This can be especially true if the reasons are complicated. For example, when you’re a passenger on an airplane waiting to push back from the gate, a flight attendant delivers a brief speech called the pre-flight safety briefing. The flight attendant does not read the findings of a safety study or the regulations about seat belts. The flight attendant doesn’t explain that the content of his or her speech is actually mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. Instead, the attendant says only to buckle up so we can leave. An action-oriented listener finds “buckling up” a more compelling message than a message about the underlying reasons.

Content-oriented listeners are interested in the message itself, whether it makes sense, what it means, and whether it’s accurate. When you give a speech, many members of your classroom audience will be content-oriented listeners who will be interested in learning from you. You, therefore have an obligation to represent the truth in the fullest way you can. You can emphasize an idea, but if you exaggerate, you could lose credibility in the minds of your content-oriented audience. You can advocate ideas that are important to you, but if you omit important limitations, you are withholding part of the truth and could leave your audience with an inaccurate view.

Imagine you’re delivering a speech on the plight of orphans in Africa. If you just talk about the fact that there are over forty five million orphans in Africa but don’t explain further, you’ll sound like an infomercial. In such an instance, your audience’s  response is likely to be less enthusiastic than you might want. Instead, content-oriented listeners want to listen to well developed information with solid explanations.

People using a time-oriented listening style prefer a message that gets to the point quickly. Time-oriented listeners can become impatient with slow delivery or lengthy explanations. This kind of listener may be receptive for only a brief amount of time and may become rude or even hostile if the speaker expects a longer focus of attention. Time-oriented listeners convey their impatience through eye rolling, shifting about in their seats, checking their cell phones, and other inappropriate behaviors. If you’ve been asked to speak to a group of middle school students, you need to realize that their attention spans are simply not as long as those of college students. This is an important reason speeches to young audiences must be shorter or broken up by more variety than speeches to adults.

In your professional future, some of your audience members will have real time constraints, not merely perceived ones. Imagine that you’ve been asked to deliver a speech on a new project to the board of directors of a local corporation. Chances are the people on the board of directors are all pressed for time. If your speech is long and filled with overly detailed information, time-oriented listeners will simply start to tune you out as you’re speaking. Obviously, if time-oriented listeners start tuning you out, they will not be listening to your message. This is not the same thing as being a time-oriented listener who might be less interested in the message content than in its length.

IDENTIFYING YOUR LISTENING STYLE

It is important that you realize that your listening style is relational and situational. For example, if you are in a deeply committed relationship, you may be more people-oriented in your listening because you are invested in the other person’s feelings and well-being more so than the person that bags your groceries or takes your order at a restaurant. The situational context requires you to focus more on action, content, or time. In the workplace, you will respond with an action orientation and may think of your assignment as a to-do list. In an emergency, you are aware more of time and may not be as worried about the emotional feelings of the person involved but their safety. And in a final review session, you may be much more content focused while normally in class you might focus on what the professor is wearing or what the person next to you is eating. All of these examples represent the way listening styles can shift. You can think of your own listening style as fluid- but you probably recognize the one you tend to be most of the time. Would it surprise you to know that your gender may also play a part in your listening style? Males are generally action-oriented listeners, whereas women are generally more people-oriented listeners (Barker & Watson, 2000). It is key to remember that your listening preference does not equate to your ability and that you want to be able to adapt and apply different listening styles at different times.

1. In a small group, discuss what each person’s usual listening style is. Under what circumstances might you

practice a different listening style?

2. Make a list of benefits and drawbacks to each of the HUMAN COMMUNICATION: AN OPEN TEXT 135

listening styles discussed in this section.

3. As you prepare for your next speech, identify ways that you can adapt your message to each of the

listening styles noted in this section.

5.4 WHY LISTENING IS DIFFICULT

WHY LISTENING IS DIFFICULT

At times, everyone has difficulty staying completely focused during a lengthy presentation. We can sometimes have difficulty listening to even relatively brief messages. Some of the factors that interfere with good listening might exist beyond our control, but others are manageable. It’s helpful to be aware of these factors so that they interfere as little as possible with understanding the message.

Noise is one of the biggest factors to interfere with listening; it can be defined as anything that interferes with your ability to attend to and understand a message. There are many kinds of noise, but we will focus on only the four you are most likely to encounter in public speaking situations: physical noise, psychological noise, physiological noise, and semantic noise.

H. Rayl and are available under the CC-BY 4.0 license.

PHYSICAL NOISE

Physical noise consists of various sounds in an environment that interfere with a source’s ability to hear. Construction noises right outside a window, planes flying directly overhead, or loud music in the next room can make it difficult to hear the message being presented by a speaker even if a microphone is being used. It is sometimes possible to manage the context to reduce the noise. Closing a window might be helpful. Asking the people in the next room to turn their music down might be possible. Changing to a new location is more difficult, as it involves finding a new location and having everyone get there.

PSYCHOLOGICAL NOISE

Psychological noise consists of distractions to a speaker’s message caused by a receiver’s internal thoughts. For example, if you are preoccupied with personal problems, it is difficult to give your full attention to understanding the meanings of a message. The presence of another person to whom you feel attracted, or perhaps a person you dislike intensely, can also be psycho-social noise that draws your attention away from the message.

PHYSIOLOGICAL NOISE

Physiological noise consists of distractions to a speaker’s message caused by a listener’s own body. Maybe you’re listening to a speech in class around noon and you haven’t eaten anything. Your stomach may be growling and your desk is starting to look tasty. Maybe the room is cold and you’re thinking more about how to keep warm than about what the speaker is saying. In either case, your body can distract you from attending to the information being presented.

SEMANTIC NOISE

Semantic noise occurs when a receiver experiences confusion over the meaning of a source’s word choice. While you are attempting to understand a particular word or phrase, the speaker continues to present the message. While you are struggling with a word interpretation, you are distracted from listening to the rest of the message. An example of semantic noise is a euphemism. Euphemism is diplomatic language used for delivering unpleasant information. For instance, if someone is said to be “flexible with the truth,” it might take us a moment to understand that the speaker means this person sometimes lies.

Many distractions are the fault of neither the listener nor the speaker. However, when you are the speaker, being aware of these sources of noise can help you reduce some of the noise that interferes with your audience’s ability to understand you.

5.5 STAGES OF LISTENING AND INEFFECTIVE LISTENING BEHAVIORS

Communication Elements, 9 elements of communication process Lunenburg, F. C. (2010). Communication: The process, barriers, and improving effectiveness. Schooling , 1 (1), 1-10.

As you read earlier, there are many factors that can interfere with listening, so you need to be able to manage a number of mental tasks at the same time in order to be a successful listener. Author Joseph DeVito has divided the listening process into five stages: receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding (2000).

STAGE 1: RECEIVING

Receiving is the intentional focus on hearing a speaker’s message, which happens when we filter out other sources so that we can isolate the message and avoid the confusing mixture of incoming stimuli. At this stage, we are still only hearing the message. There are many reasons that we may not receive a message. We often refer to these as listening barriers. If we have barriers to our listening, it is important to be able to recognize them and avoid those behaviors that contribute to poor listening.

STAGE 2: UNDERSTANDING

In the understanding stage, we attempt to learn the meaning of the message, which is not always easy. For one thing, if a speaker does not enunciate clearly, it may be difficult to tell what the message was—did your friend say, “I think she’ll be late for class,” or “my teacher delayed the class”?

Even when we have understood the words in a message, because of the differences in our backgrounds and experience, we sometimes make the mistake of attaching our own meanings to the words of others. For example, say you have made plans with your friends to meet at a certain movie theater, but you arrive and nobody else shows up. Eventually, you find out that your friends are at a different theater all the way across town where the same movie is playing. Everyone else understood that the meeting place was the “west side” location, but you wrongly understood it as the “east side” location and therefore missed out on part of the fun.

The consequences of ineffective listening in a classroom can be much worse. When your professor advises students to get an “early start” on your speech, he or she probably hopes that you will begin your research right away and move on to developing a thesis statement and outlining the speech as soon as possible. However, students in your class might misunderstand the instructor’s meaning in several ways. One student might interpret the advice to mean that as long as she gets started, the rest of the assignment will have time to develop itself. Another student might instead think that to start early is to start on the Friday before the Monday due date instead of Sunday night.

So much of the way we understand others is influenced by our own perceptions and experiences. Therefore, at the understanding stage of listening, we should be on the lookout for places where our perceptions might differ from those of the speaker.

STAGE 3: REMEMBERING

Remembering begins with listening; if you can’t remember something that was said, you might not have been listening effectively. The most common reason for not remembering a message after the fact is because it wasn’t really learned in the first place. However, even when you are listening attentively, some messages are more difficult than others to understand and remember. Highly complex messages that are filled with detail call for highly developed listening skills. Moreover, if something distracts your attention even for a moment, you could miss out on information that explains other new concepts you hear when you begin to listen fully again.

It’s also important to know that you can improve your memory of a message by processing it meaningfully—that is, by applying it in ways that are meaningful to you. Instead of simply repeating a new acquaintance’s name over and over, for example, you might remember it by associating it with something in your own life. “Emily,” you might say, “reminds me of the Emily I knew in middle school,” or “Mr. Impiari’s name reminds me of the Impala my father drives.”

Finally, if understanding has been inaccurate, recollection of the message will also be inaccurate.

STAGE 4: EVALUATING

The fourth stage in the listening process is evaluating or judging the value of the message. We might be thinking, “This makes sense” or, conversely, “This is very odd.” Because everyone embodies biases and perspectives learned from widely diverse sets of life experiences, evaluations of the same message can vary widely from one listener to another. Even the most open-minded listeners will have opinions of a speaker, and those opinions will influence how the message is evaluated. People are more likely to evaluate a message positively if the speaker speaks clearly, presents ideas logically, and gives reasons to support the points made.

Unfortunately, personal opinions sometimes result in prejudiced evaluations. Imagine you’re listening to a speech given by someone from another country and this person has an accent that is hard to understand. You may have a hard time simply making out the speaker’s message. Some people find a foreign accent to be interesting or even exotic, while others find it annoying or even take it as a sign of ignorance. If a listener has a strong bias against foreign accents, the listener may not even attempt to attend to the message. If you mistrust a speaker because of an accent, you could be rejecting important or personally enriching information. Good listeners have learned to refrain from making these judgments and instead to focus on the speaker’s meanings.

STAGE 5: RESPONDING

Responding—sometimes referred to as feedback—is the fifth and final stage of the listening process. It’s the stage at which you indicate your involvement.

Almost anything you do at this stage can be interpreted as feedback. For example, you are giving positive feedback to your instructor if at the end of the class you stay behind to finish a sentence in your notes or approach the instructor to ask for clarification. The opposite kind of feedback is given by students who gather their belongings and rush out the door as soon as class is over.

Formative Feedback

Not all response occurs at the end of the message. Formative feedback is a natural part of the ongoing transaction between a speaker and a listener. As the speaker delivers the message, a listener signals his or her involvement with focused attention, note-taking, nodding, and other behaviors that indicate understanding or failure to understand the message. These signals are important to the speaker, who is interested in whether the message is clear and accepted or whether the content of the message is meeting the resistance of preconceived ideas. Speakers can use this feedback to decide whether additional examples, support materials, or explanation is needed.

Summative Feedback

Summative feedback is given at the end of the communication. When you attend a political rally, a presentation given by a speaker you admire, or even a class, there are verbal and nonverbal ways of indicating your appreciation for or your disagreement with the messages or the speakers at the end of the message. Maybe you’ll stand up and applaud a speaker you agreed with or just sit staring in silence after listening to a speaker you didn’t like. In other cases, a speaker may be attempting to persuade you to donate to a charity, so if the speaker passes a bucket and you make a donation, you are providing feedback on the speaker’s effectiveness. At the same time, we do not always listen most carefully to the messages of speakers we admire. Sometimes we simply enjoy being in their presence, and our summative feedback is not about the message but about our attitudes about the speaker. If your feedback is limited to something like, “I just love your voice,” you might be indicating that you did not listen carefully to the content of the message.

There is little doubt that by now, you are beginning to understand the complexity of listening and the great potential for errors. By becoming aware of what is involved with active listening and where difficulties might lie, you can prepare yourself both as a listener and as a speaker to minimize listening errors with your own public speeches. 

INEFFECTIVE LISTENING BEHAVIORS

At times, the barriers to effective listening (i.e., why listening is difficult) cause us to engage in ineffective listening behaviors. When our goal is to create shared meaning with others, these behaviors interrupt this process.

Pseudo-listening – pretending to listen and appears attentive but is not listening to understand or interpret the information (listeners may respond with a smile, head-nod, or even a minimal verbal acknowledgment but are ignoring or not attending).

Selective Listening – selecting only the information that the listeners identify as relevant to their own needs or interests (listeners may have their own agenda and disregard topics if they do not align with their current attitudes or beliefs).

Insulated Listening – ignoring or avoiding information or certain topics of conversation (the opposite of selective listening).

Defensive Listening – taking innocent comments as personal attacks (listeners misinterpret or project feelings of insecurity,jealousy, and guilt, or lack of confidence in the other person).

Insensitive Listening – listening to information for its literal meaning and disregarding the other person’s feeling and emotions (listeners rarely pick-up on hidden meanings or subtle nonverbal cues and have difficulty expressing sympathy and empathy).

Stage Hogging – listening to express one’s own ideas or interests and be the center of  attention (listeners often plan what they are going to say or interrupt while the other person is talking).

Ambushing – careful and attentive listening to collect information that can be used against the other person as an attack (listeners question, contradict, or oppose the other person to trap them or use their own words against them).

Multitasking – listening without full attention while attempting to complete more than one task at a time (listeners are actually “switch tasking” and your brain is switching from one task to another rapidly and the information is lost). Review the article from the NPR broadcast, “Think You’re Multitasking? Think Again” (Hamilton,2008).

5.6 LISTENING CRITICALLY AND ETHICALLY

As a student, you are exposed to many kinds of messages. You receive messages conveying academic information, institutional rules, instructions, and warnings; you also receive messages through political discourse, advertisements, gossip, jokes, song lyrics, text messages, invitations, web links, and all manners of communication. You know 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.

Critical listening in this context means using careful thinking and reasoning to see whether a message makes sense in light of factual evidence.

Critical listening can be learned with practice but is not necessarily easy to do. Some people never learn this skill; instead, they take every message at face value even when those messages are in conflict with their knowledge. Problems occur when messages are repeated to others who have not yet developed the skills to discern the difference between a valid message and a mistaken one. Critical listening can be particularly difficult when the message is complex. Unfortunately, some speakers may make their messages intentionally complex to avoid critical scrutiny. For example, a city treasurer giving a budget presentation might use very large words and technical jargon, which make it difficult for listeners to understand the proposed budget and ask probing questions.

IMPROVE CRITICAL LISTENING

Critical listening is first and foremost a skill that can be learned and improved. Recognizing the Difference between Facts and Opinions Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is credited with saying, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” Part of critical listening is learning to separate opinions from facts, and this works two ways: critical listeners are aware of whether a speaker is delivering a factual message or a message based on opinion, and they are also aware of the interplay between their own opinions and facts as they listen to messages.

In American politics, the issue of health care reform is heavily laden with both opinions and facts, and it is extremely difficult to sort some of them out. A clash of fact versus opinion happened on September 9, 2010, during President Obama’s nationally televised speech to a joint session of Congress outlining his health care reform plan. In this speech, President Obama responded to several rumors about the plan, including the claim “that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false—the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” At this point, one congressman yelled out, “You lie!” Clearly, this congressman did not have a very high opinion of either the health care reform plan or the president. However, when the nonpartisan watch group Factcheck.org examined the language of the proposed bill, they found that it had a section titled “No Federal Payment for Undocumented Aliens.”

Often when people have a negative opinion about a topic, they are unwilling to accept facts. Instead, they question all aspects of the speech and have a negative predisposition toward both the speech and the speaker. This is not to say that speakers should not express their opinions. Many of the greatest speeches in history include personal opinions. Consider, for example, Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he expressed his personal wish for the future of American society. Critical listeners may agree or disagree with a speaker’s opinions, but the point is that they know when a message they are hearing is based on opinion and when it is factual.

UNCOVERING ASSUMPTIONS

If something is factual, supporting evidence exists. However, we still need to be careful about what evidence does and does not mean. Assumptions are gaps in a logical sequence that listeners passively fill with their own ideas and opinions and may or may not be accurate. When listening to a public speech, you may find yourself being asked to assume something is a fact when in reality many people question that fact. For example, suppose you’re listening to a speech on weight loss. The speaker talks about how people who are overweight are simply not motivated or lack the self-discipline to lose weight. The speaker has built the speech on the assumption that motivation and self-discipline are the only reasons why people can’t lose weight. You may think to yourself, what about genetics?

By listening critically, you will be more likely to notice unwarranted assumptions, which may prompt you to question the speaker if questions are taken or to do further research to examine the validity of the speaker’s assumptions. If, however, you sit passively by and let the speaker’s assumptions go unchallenged, you may find yourself persuaded by information that is not factual. When you listen critically, you might hear information that appears unsupported by evidence. You shouldn’t accept that information unconditionally.

FACTS VS. ASSUMPTIONS

Facts are verified by clear, unambiguous evidence. Assumptions are not supported by evidence.

Human progress has been possible, sometimes against great odds, because of the mental curiosity and discernment of a few people. In the late 1700’s when the technique of vaccination to prevent smallpox was introduced, it was opposed by both medical professionals and everyday citizens who staged public protests. More than two centuries later, vaccinations against smallpox, diphtheria, polio, and other infectious diseases have saved countless lives, yet popular opposition continues. Listeners should always be open to new ideas. We are not suggesting that you have to agree with every idea that you are faced with in life; rather, we are suggesting that you at least listen to the message and then evaluate the message.

Note-taking is a skill that improves with practice. You already know that it’s nearly impossible to write down everything a speaker says. In fact, in your attempt to record everything, you might fall behind and wish you had divided your attention differently between writing and listening. Careful, selective note-taking is important because we want an accurate record that reflects the meanings of the message. However much you might concentrate on the notes, you could inadvertently leave out an important word, such as “not,” and undermine the reliability of your otherwise carefully written notes. Instead, if you give the same care and attention to listening, you are less likely to make that kind of a mistake.

It’s important to find a balance between listening well and taking good notes. Many people struggle with this balance for a long time. For example, if you try to write down only key phrases instead of full sentences, you might find that you can’t remember how two ideas were related. In that case, too few notes were taken. At the opposite end, extensive note-taking can result in a loss of emphasis on the most important ideas.

To increase your critical listening skills, continue developing your ability to identify the central issues in messages so that you can take accurate notes that represent the meanings intended by the speaker.

LISTENING ETHICALLY

Ethical listening rests heavily on honest intentions. We should extend to speakers the same respect we want to receive when it’s our turn to speak. We should be facing the speaker with our eyes open. We should not be checking our cell phones. We should avoid any behavior that belittles the speaker or the message. Scholars Stephanie Coopman and James Lull emphasize the creation of a climate of caring and mutual understanding, observing that “respecting others’ perspectives is one hallmark of the effective listener.” Respect, or unconditional positive regard for others, means that you treat others with consideration and decency whether you agree with them or not. Professors Sprague, Stuart, and Bodary (2012) also urge us to treat the speaker with respect even when we disagree, don’t understand the message, or find a conversation boring. This doesn’t mean we must accept everything we hear; however, ethically we should refrain from trivializing each others’ 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.

COMMUNICATION CODE OF ETHICS

In 1999, the National Communication Association officially adopted the Credo for Ethical Communication. Ultimately, the NCA Credo for Ethical Communication is a set of beliefs communication scholars have about the ethics of human communication Questions of right and wrong arise whenever people communicate. Ethical communication is fundamental to responsible thinking, decision making, and the development of relationships and communities within and across contexts, cultures, channels, and media. Moreover, ethical communication enhances human worth and dignity by fostering truthfulness, fairness, responsibility, personal integrity, and respect for self and others. We believe that unethical communication threatens the quality of all communication and consequently the well-being of individuals and the society in which we live. Therefore we, the members of the National Communication Association, endorse and are committed to practicing the following principles of ethical communication:

▪ We advocate truthfulness, accuracy, honesty, and reason as essential to the integrity of communication.

▪ We endorse freedom of expression, diversity of perspective, and tolerance of dissent to achieve the informed and responsible decision making fundamental to a civil society.

▪ We strive to understand and respect other communicators before evaluating and responding to their messages.

▪ We promote access to communication resources and opportunities as necessary to fulfill human potential and contribute to the well being of families, communities, and society.

▪ We promote communication climates of caring and mutual understanding that respect the unique needs and characteristics of individual communicators.

▪ We condemn communication that degrades individuals and humanity through distortion, intimidation, coercion, and violence, and through the expression of intolerance and hatred.

▪ We are committed to the courageous expression of personal convictions in pursuit of fairness and justice.

▪ We advocate sharing information, opinions, and feelings when facing significant choices while also respecting privacy and confidentiality.

▪ We accept responsibility for the short- and long-term consequences of our own communication and expect the same of others.

Prior to this chapter, you may not have thought of listening as a skill or even something that we can improve upon. Hopefully, you now have a deeper understanding of the role that effective listening plays in our professional, personal and even public lives. Listening is an intentional act that requires effort on our part and respect for others. It is also beneficial for us to understand others’ listening styles so that we can be more effective in how we speak with or address them. Listening critically requires us to suspend our judgment of others or others’ ideas and understand their point of view before coming to our own conclusions. Indeed, listening is an inherently ethical act in which we recognize and acknowledge one another.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How does listening behavior affect the quality of our personal relationships? If someone that you are in a relationship with changes the way they listen to you, how might that affect the relationship in a positiveway?

2. After reading this chapter, in what ways will you consider improving your own listening behaviors?

3. In what ways does critical listening impact our professional relationships?

• ambushing

• critical listening

• defensive listening

• ethical listening

• insulated listening

• listening vs. hearing

• listening styles

• multitasking

• insensitive listening

• physical noise

• psychological noise

• physiological noise

• pseudo-listening

• selective listening

• semantic noise

• stage hogging

Bank, J. (2009). Cost of illegal immigrants. Ask Factcheck. Retrieved from http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/cost-of-illegal immigrants/

Cooperman, S. & Lull, J. (2012). Public speaking: The evolving art (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

DeVito, J. A. (2000). The elements of public speaking (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.

Hamilton, J. (2008, October 2). Think you’re multitasking? Think again . Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=95256794

Jarvis, T. (2009, November). How to talk so people really listen: Four ways to make yourself heard. O Magazine. Retrieved from: http://www.oprah.com/money/Communication-Skills-How-to Make-Yourself-Heard.

NCA. (1999). NCA credo for ethical communication [PDF file]. Retrieved from https://www.natcom.org/sites/default/files/pages/1999_Public_Statements_NCA_Credo_for_Ethical_Communication_ November.pdf

Watson, K., Barker, L., and Weaver, J. (1995). The listening styles profile (LSP-16): Development and validation of an instrument to assess four listening styles. International Journal of Listening,9 (1).

Retrieved from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/ 10904018.1995.10499138.

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34 Chapter 5: Listening

In our sender-oriented society, listening is often overlooked as an important part of the communication process. Yet research shows that adults spend about 45 percent of their time listening, which is more than any other communicative activity. In some contexts, we spend even more time listening than that. On average, workers spend 55 percent of their workday listening, and managers spend about 63 percent of their day listening. Owen Hargie,  Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice  (London: Routledge, 2011), 177. Listening is a primary means through which we learn new information, which can help us meet instrumental needs as we learn things that helps us complete certain tasks at work or school and get things done in general. The act of listening to our relational partners provides support, which is an important part of relational maintenance and helps us meet our relational needs. Listening to what others say about us helps us develop an accurate self- concept, which can help us more strategically communicate for identity needs in order to project to others our desired self. Overall, improving our listening skills can help us be better students, better relational partners, and more successful professionals.

Communication Studies Copyright © by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Academic practice
• General practice
• Task 1 Academic
• Task 1 General
• Task 2 (essay)

IELTS Listening Sample 5. Section 2

This is the second section of IELTS Listening test. Listen to the audio and complete all the questions. After you finish, press 'check' and move on to the next section.

Questions 11-16

Complete the table below.

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

Questions 17-20

Complete the information about ordering tickets below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.

Make sure that you receive a (18) of your booking!

The second way is to book your tickets (19) .

If you don’t want to plan your visit in advance, you can simply purchase the tickets (20) in ticket kiosks.

Each question correctly answered scores 1 mark. Correct spelling is needed in all answers.

• 24 / twenty-four
• 18 / eighteen
• 19 / nineteen
• Family ticket
• confirmation email / confirmation e-mail
• by telephone