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Running Head: LISTENING & COMMUNICATION
Listening and Communication
First Name; Middle Initial; Last Name
Institutional Affiliation
LISTENING AND COMMUNICATION
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Listening is a skill that is taken for granted throughout the majority of the population.
However, the skill is an imporant factor in the communication process, and should certainly be
examined more seriously in order to fully understand all of its positive personal and professional
effects. The exercises desribed below illustrate common tendencies that people have in regards to
listening as well as the bad habits that negates the activity entirely. Should the skill of listening
be mastered, the overall production, competence, and intentionality of an individual can increase
sugnificantly, making him particularly valuable in personal and professional relationships as
listening intently mitigates misunderstandings and makes the person being listened to feel
important.
Before continuing on, it is important to define what exactly listening is. In their book,
Michael Purdy and Deborah Borisoff (1997, p. 8) define the term as “Listening is the active and
dynamic process of attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to the
expressed (verbal and nonverbal) need, concerns, and information offered by other buman
beings.” The important parts to note here are the requirements of listening, that being to attend,
perceive, interpret, remember, and respond. This are the components that making listening what
it is, that being having the ability to focus on the subject, intake information, understand the
information, retain the information, and then reply to appropriately. This is a process, one that
people are not usually aware of, causing many to engage in conversations that are unprodutive
and not pleasurable. However, the skill essential to human beings, as it builds the foundation for
the aquisition of language as well as the ability to read and write. Listening is essential then,
when it comes to effective communication in all forms.
The first activity completed for this assignment was based on selective hearing. In this
exercise. A list of 20 fruits were recited to another individual who was given 30 seconds to write
LISTENING AND COMMUNICATION
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down as many of those fruits as he could remember. The list of fruits recited were as follows:
apple, banana, orange, grape, watermelon, honeydew, papaya, fig, strawberry, blueberry, peach,
pear, blackberry, raspberry, tangerine, lemon, lime, cherry, plum, and cantaloupe. The second
exercise required one person to describe a what she would want to exerperience while on
vacation. In this case, the description consisted of somewhere warm, close to the ocean, and of
some cultural importance. After describing the kind of place she would like to visit, the other
person was to suggest a place.
Finally, the third exercise was very personal, as it required some reflection on the kind of
bad habits one engages in when communicating with other people. The bad habits to review
included jumping to conclusions, interrupting the other person before he or she has finished what
he or she wanted to say, thinking about your reply instead of listening to what the other person is
saying, changing the subject to something you want to talk about, and providing advice when it
is not asked for. These are common actions that people partake in during conversatoins.
However, the continual usage of these habits can be deadly to relationships, as committing any
of these can resu...