Blog 1

In class we talked about compassionate and critical listening. I think that sometimes we "hear" people talking but we either aren't thinking deeply about what that person is saying or we aren't listening at all. On the other hand if we "listen" to someone speaking we believe to be engaged and thinking carefully about the message. One type of listening is Dialogic listening. Dialogic comes from dialogue which changes the relationship between a student and a teacher. Dialogue is the quality of contact that exists for humans in tension with instrumental and objective contact. Some characteristics of dialogic listening is emphasizing conversation as shared activity, open-ended attitude toward conversation, focus on what is happening between both parties, and focusing on the present.

Other characteristics of critical listening is conquergood's performing as a moral act. These are also called pitfalls.These pitfalls that can cause problems during communication. One pitfall is the custodian's rip-off. That's when you engage with another for selfish reasons. The next pitfall is enthusiast's infatuation and the problem with this pitfall is that the differences of the others are superficially over simplified or ignored.  Exhibitionism is another pitfall, and this pitfall focuses almost exclusively on the differences of others. The last pitfall is called skeptic's cop-out and that focuses on differences of others. We need to be aware of all of these pitfalls because sometimes they can come with a cost. All of these listening skills are very important because if we didn't listen we wouldn't know what to do in life.