Course: CMM 128 Interviewing Practices

Lecture Notes

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Why Study Listening?

Why study listening?

1.    Listening is not taught in schools
If you looked at various communication activities and compared how much we do each of them and how much they are taught in our school system, you would notice something ironic.

Communication Activity | Which one do we do the most? | Which one is taught the most?
Listening | 1 | 4
Speaking | 2 | 3
Reading | 3 | 2
Writing | 4 | 1

Note that in a typical day, we do more listening that any other communication activity but this is the least taught subject in our school system.  Very few people ever have the opportunity to take a listening course (yes, they do exist.  The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh had one but not many other schools do).  This may be the only time that you at least get a chapter or a web page on the subject.  On the other hand, note that writing is taught the most, yet we do it the least.  At a very young age, children learn penmanship, then take writing and literature classes through college.

"Oh," you say, "Everyone knows how to listen."  Unfortunately, that is not the case.

2.    People listen poorly.
The average person can only hold 5 to 7 items of data in their short-term memory.  If they don't quickly get it into their long-term memory, it will be lost.  One often quoted statistic is that people only grasp 50% of what they hear and after two days; remember only half of that or 25% of the original message.

"So what," you might think, "If I didn't catch it the first time, I can just ask for the information again."

3.    Poor listening is costly
Sure, you might be able to ask for the information again but if you are paid for your time, your productivity will suffer as a result.

- The telephone company, for example, knows that if their directory assistance operators ask you to repeat information, the call will last at least 5 seconds longer.  Multiply that by the millions of calls they receive in a year and the result is that they will need to hire more people to handle the same number of calls.  If you aren't able to ask for the information again, the costs of poor listening can show up in other ways.
- Suppose a doctor told you to take one pill every 3 hours while you are awake.  Don't take the pills more than a half hour before or after a meal and don't drink any alcohol over the next 2 weeks while you're taking the pills.  If you miss a pill, just take two the next time but never take three at once.  In three weeks, you should come back to the office for a follow-up.  There are a lot of numbers in these directions and the average person is likely to forget many of these by the time he or she gets home with serious health consequences.
- If someone gives you directions to their house and you didn't hear part of it, you could end of lost, wasting lots of time and getting frustrated.

"Okay, you've convinced me," you may say, "I'll concentrate more when people are talking."  That's great but there's more to listening that concentrating.

4.  Listening can be improved in many ways
Certainly concentrating on being a better listener is the key.  The average person speaks from 120 to 180 words per minute but the average listener can listen over 4 times as fast, listening 400 words per minute or more.  Why, then, don't people use this time differential to catch the message and get it into their long-term message?  There are a variety of reasons but listed below are a variety of solutions that are divided into physical preparations, mental preparations and emotional preparations that a person can take to become a better listener.  These may also suggest things a speaker can do to help their audience listen better.