Compassionate Critical Listening

"I do not merely hear with my ears, I hear with my whole body. My ears are at best the focal organs of hearing." Don Ihde

Listening is something that we are constantly doing in our everyday lives. We are surrounding ourselves with noise and sounds, and we have different types of listening styles to how we interpret what we hear. In the TED talk that we watched in class he spoke about how we are able to develop our listening skills and ways that we can become better listeners. Some of the ways that were talked about in the TED video to become a better listener was to meditate or have moments of silence. In an article by psychology today they gave some other key ideas of ways to become a better listener. One of those ideas is to comprehend what is being said. We also talked about this idea in class and how sometimes when someone is talking to us instead of fully engaging in the conversation we are thinking about what we should say next. The article also mentioned to notice the others body language and changes in tone. Both the article and in class also mentioned how it is important to not interrupt and let the person finish speaking.

One of the biggest distinction that can be made is between hearing and listening. This was mentioned in chapter 4 and immediately made me think of all the times in my life that I do one but not the other. One example would be in class when the instructor is giving important information and I hear it but than go home and don't understand what I need to be doing because I wasn't listening when the instructor was speaking. I also listen a  lot differently when in a classroom compared to when I am at my house with family, because these are two different types of genres. Genres invite specific modes of listening as mentioned in chapter 4.

Dialogic listening is genuine understanding of others. Changing minds.org defines dialogic listening as "seeking to improve upon empathetic and active listening by focusing on the actual communication and seeking of true understanding. Understanding is seen as emergent rather than created. It emerges from a two-way conversation that works to connect both people in an open partnership." In chapter 4 Conquergood mentions four pitfalls in our performance as listeners. These four pitfalls are: custodian's rip-off, enthusiast's infatuation, curator's exhibitionism and skeptic's cop-out. The custodian's rip-off is defined in chapter 4 as being "more interested in how she or he might personally  benefit from engaging with the other." Or only listening to benefit ourselves. The enthusiast's infatuation is defined as "differences of the other are superficially oversimplified or ignored," or hearing what you want to hear. The curator's exhibitionism is defined as "focusing almost exclusively on the difference of others." The last of the for pitfalls of listening is the skeptic's cop-out which is defined as to"refuse to engage in any way with those who are different." Listening is something that is very important in our every day lives and if we focus on improving our critical listening than we will have a better understanding of others.




https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-do-life/201405/how-become-better-listener

http://changingminds.org/techniques/listening/dialogic_listening.htm