Blog Post 1

In Chapter 4, Compassionate and Critical Listening within, Communication A Critical/Cultural Introduction, Warren and Fassett(2015) state that, “We take hearing to be a passive act, contrasted with the more active practice of listening. In this way, listening is a practice that requires our active attention and focus” (p. 64). People experience hearing and listening on nearly a daily basis. One, can casually switch between the two throughout an entire day, and to some this is called selective listening.

Selective listening is when you are hearing all the things around you but only choose to pay attention or listen when we find that the information being given is important to that moment in time. Christina discussed this in class with everyone, how towards the beginning of the semester students tend to pay more attention and actively listen. Eventually this starts slowing down and they become more selective to what they want to hear as the semester goes on. 

I think the main reason for this is because of all the content thrown at us everyday. During a video we watched in class, the speaker said that media needs to use short, catchy, and flashy headlines just to grab attention from people. With so much information at the tip of our fingers, it’s inevitable to choose only bits and pieces of it to retain and I think this is a view lots of people have. Usually people listen to material that pertains to them so they can remember and use it later on. 

When it comes to hearing versus listening at home I am one to definitely say that as a child I would choose when to listen and what I would listen to. I would choose to listen to my mother but tended to only hear what my brothers had to say. In other words, I didn't focus on what they wanted me to, but ignoring them was normal for me and to be honest, still happens today. In today’s culture that’s what many families are like, at least from all the stories I hear about friends at this age. 

Have you ever read an entire page of a book then had to stop and go back to the top to reread the page because you didn't pay attention to anything you just read? That’s just another example of the idea, hearing versus listening, and there are endless more when it comes to this topic. Overall, we will never be able to focus and listen to everything going on around us but maybe after reading this, it can bring awareness to how much you hear versus listen to things in your life. Both are crucial parts of life and everyone has to decide for themselves when to do which.