Review Questions
Chapter 5: Review Questions
These questions are designed to help you understand this chapter’s concepts and express your understanding in your own words. For answers to these questions, please refer to Appendix B: Review Questions via the link below.
- What are the fundamental differences between listening and hearing? Explain your definition of mindful listening in comparison to mindless listening.
- Identify the faulty listening behaviors described in the text and cite an example of each.
- In addition to faulty listening behaviors there are other reasons for poor listening. The recipe for inattention and mindless listening includes both things that can be avoided with effort and some inescapable facts of life. Identify nine reasons for poor listening.
- Take the Self-Assessment evaluation of your listening styles. What are the types of listening that you value most? Why?
- Define task-oriented listening and identify the guidelines one must follow to be more effective with this listening technique.
- Define relational listening and identify the necessary components of this approach. What are some of the drawbacks to this type of listening?
- Identify the necessary components of analytical listening.
- Being skeptical and cynical is useful with critical listening. Define this skill, and cite the procedures used by successful critical listeners.
- Identify five reasons for becoming a better listener.
Chapter 5: Answers to Review Questions
Your answers should include the following points:
- While it must be established early that listening and hearing are not the same thing, it is also import to clarify, with examples, the stages of listening as opposed to hearing. This should also include the contrast between mindful versus mindless listening.
- It seems apparent that listening ability declines with age. Adults need to be aware of the challenges, some of which are their own fault, hampering effective listening. Examples should include the faulty listening behaviors and personal experiences. This section of Chapter 5 highlights and underlines the faulty listening behaviors with succinct explanations.
- Care should be taken to separate the faulty listening behaviors from the reasons for poor listening. The first are conscious obstacles dealing with mindset and attitude; the latter often are unconscious attributes requiring more self-awareness strategies of the process taking place. Review the @Work Box on multitasking in this chapter and follow up with the many reasons for poor listening.
- This is designed to help discover listening tendencies. There is no right or wrong; it simply reflects your experiences and goals.
- Where the advantages of task-oriented listening assist in organization and efficiency, some people are too preoccupied to be aware of the process. Using the categories from the Self-Assessment chart on listening styles that apply to task-oriented listening can be a way to show the benefits and advantages of this approach.
- Emotional connections are easier for extroverts who are attentive and friendly. It can, however, get the listener too involved. The “Ethical Challenges of Relational Listening” section in this chapter underlines some of the drawbacks.
- “We have an affirmative responsibility to hear the argument before we disagree.” To do that, we must listen before evaluating, separate the message from the speaker, and search for value.
- Investigating the accuracy, validity, competence, evidence, and possible emotional involvement of the message itself has merit. The “Critical Listening” section in Chapter 5 offers guidelines for performing this task.
- The opening discussion of the chapter lists five benefits of effective listening. The reasons for improving these skills are numerous, however, and other advantages can be gleaned from additional material in the chapter.