LISTENING: STAGES

• Sensing-The listener hears the sound with attention

• Decoding-The listener decodes or interprets the message

• Evaluating-The listener evaluates the message

• Response-The listener responds to the message

1. Sensing (hearing) what was said (pick up sound waves through ears)

2. Interpreting what was meant (make decisions…Example: scream - fun, fear, or anger?)

3. Examining the statement (how message relates to you)

4. Responding to it appropriately (decide how to respond- feedback)

1. The Receiving Stage

The first stage of the listening process is the receiving stage, which involves hearing
and attending.

Use Your Ears!: The first stage of the listening process is receiving.

Hearing is the physiological process of registering sound waves as they hit the eardrum.
As obvious as it may seem, in order to effectively gather information through listening,
we must first be able to physically hear what we’re listening to. The clearer the sound,
the easier the listening process becomes.

Paired with hearing, attending is the other half of the receiving stage in the listening
process. Attending is the process of accurately identifying and interpreting particular
sounds we hear as words. The sounds we hear have no meaning until we give them
their meaning in context. Listening is an active process that constructs meaning from
both verbal and nonverbal messages.

The Challenges of Reception

Listeners are often bombarded with a variety of auditory stimuli all at once, so they must
differentiate which of those stimuli are speech sounds and which are not. Effective
listening involves being able to focus in on speech sounds while disregarding other
noise. For instance, a train passenger that hears the captain’s voice over the
loudspeaker understands that the captain is speaking, then deciphers what the captain
is saying despite other voices in the cabin. Another example is trying to listen to a friend
tell a story while walking down a busy street. In order to best listen to what she’s saying,
the listener needs to ignore the ambient street sounds.

Attending also involves being able to discern human speech, also known as “speech
segmentation. “1 Identifying auditory stimuli as speech but not being able to break those
speech sounds down into sentences and words would be a failure of the listening
process. Discerning speech segmentation can be a more difficult activity when the
listener is faced with an unfamiliar language.

2. The Understanding Stage

Puzzled: After receiving information through listening, the next step is understanding what you heard.

The second stage in the listening process is the understanding stage. Understanding or
comprehension is “shared meaning between parties in a communication transaction”
and constitutes the first step in the listening process. This is the stage during which the
listener determines the context and meanings of the words he or she hears.
Determining the context and meaning of individual words, as well as assigning meaning
in language, is essential to understanding sentences. This, in turn, is essential to
understanding a speaker’s message.

Once the listeners understands the speaker’s main point, they can begin to sort out the
rest of the information they are hearing and decide where it belongs in their mental
outline. For example, a political candidate listens to her opponent’s arguments to
understand what policy decisions that opponent supports.

Before getting the big picture of a message, it can be difficult to focus on what the
speaker is saying. Think about walking into a lecture class halfway through. You may
immediately understand the words and sentences that you are hearing, but not
immediately understand what the lecturer is proving or whether what you’re hearing in
the moment is a main point, side note, or digression.

Understanding what we hear is a huge part of our everyday lives, particularly in terms of
gathering basic information. In the office, people listen to their superiors for instructions
about what they are to do. At school, students listen to teachers to learn new ideas. We
listen to political candidates give policy speeches in order to determine who will get our
vote. But without understanding what we hear, none of this everyday listening would
relay any practical information to us.
One tactic for better understanding a speaker’s meaning is to ask questions. Asking
questions allows the listener to fill in any holes he or she may have in the mental
reconstruction of the speaker’s message.

3. The Evaluating Stage

Focus: Once you understand what you hear, you can focus in on the relevant information.

This stage of the listening process is the one during which the listener assesses the
information they received, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Evaluating allows the
listener to form an opinion of what they heard and, if necessary, to begin developing a
response.

During the evaluating stage, the listener determines whether or not the information they
heard and understood from the speaker is well constructed or disorganized, biased or
unbiased, true or false, significant or insignificant. They also ascertain how and why the
speaker has come up with and conveyed the message that they delivered. This may
involve considerations of a speaker’s personal or professional motivations and goals.
For example, a listener may determine that a co-worker’s vehement condemnation of
another for jamming the copier is factually correct, but may also understand that the co-
worker’s child is sick and that may be putting them on edge. A voter who listens to and
understands the points made in a political candidate’s stump speech can decide
whether or not those points were convincing enough to earn their vote.

The evaluating stage occurs most effectively once the listener fully understands what
the speaker is trying to say. While we can, and sometimes do, form opinions of
information and ideas that we don’t fully understand—or even that we misunderstand—
doing so is not often ideal in the long run. Having a clear understanding of a speaker’s
message allows a listener to evaluate that message without getting bogged down in
ambiguities or spending unnecessary time and energy addressing points that may be
tangential or otherwise nonessential.
This stage of critical analysis is important for a listener in terms of how what they heard
will affect their own ideas, decisions, actions, and/or beliefs.

4. The Responding Stage

The responding stage is the stage of the listening process wherein the listener provides
verbal and/or nonverbal reactions based on short- or long-term memory. Following the
remembering stage, a listener can respond to what they hear either verbally or non-
verbally. Nonverbal signals can include gestures such as nodding, making eye contact,
tapping a pen, fidgeting, scratching or cocking their head, smiling, rolling their eyes,
grimacing, or any other body language. These kinds of responses can be displayed
purposefully or involuntarily. Responding verbally might involve asking a question,
requesting additional information, redirecting or changing the focus of a conversation,
cutting off a speaker, or repeating what a speaker has said back to her in order to verify
that the received message matches the intended message.

Nonverbal responses like nodding or eye contact allow the listener to communicate their
level of interest without interrupting the speaker, thereby preserving the speaker/listener
roles. When a listener responds verbally to what they hear and remember—for
example, with a question or a comment—the speaker/listener roles are reversed, at
least momentarily.

Responding adds action to the listening process, which would otherwise be an

outwardly passive process. Oftentimes, the speaker looks for verbal and nonverbal
responses from the listener to determine if and how their message is being understood
and/or considered. Based on the listener’s responses, the speaker can choose to either
adjust or continue with the delivery of her message. For example, if a listener’s brow is
furrowed and their arms are crossed, the speaker may determine that she needs to
lighten their tone to better communicate their point. If a listener is smiling and nodding
or asking questions, the speaker may feel that the listener is engaged and her message
is being communicated effectively.
The listener: By holding her hand up to her chin, this woman is giving a nonverbal signal that she is
concentrating on what the speaker (not pictured) is saying.

5. The Remembering Stage

Memory: Remembering what you hear is key to effective listening.

In the listening process, the remembering stage occurs as the listener categorizes and
retains the information she’s gathered from the speaker for future access. The result–
memory–allows the person to record information about people, objects and events for
later recall. This happens both during and after the speaker’s delivery.

Memory is essential throughout the listening process. We depend on our memory to fill
in the blanks when we’re listening and to let us place what we’re hearing at the moment
in the context of what we’ve heard before. If, for example, you forgot everything that you
heard immediately after you heard it, you would not be able to follow along with what a
speaker says, and conversations would be impossible. Moreover, a friend who
expresses fear about a dog she sees on the sidewalk ahead can help you recall that the
friend began the conversation with her childhood memory of being attacked by a dog.

Remembering previous information is critical to moving forward. Similarly, making

associations to past remembered information can help a listener understand what she is
currently hearing in a wider context. In listening to a lecture about the symptoms of
depression, for example, a listener might make a connection to the description of a
character in a novel that she read years before.

Using information immediately after receiving it enhances information retention and

lessens the forgetting curve, or the rate at which we no longer retain information in our
memory. Conversely, retention is lessened when we engage in mindless listening, and
little effort is made to understand a speaker’s message.
Because everyone has different memories, the speaker and the listener may attach
different meanings to the same statement. In this sense, establishing common ground in
terms of context is extremely important, both for listeners and speakers.

1. Receiving

Receiving is the intentional focus on hearing a speaker’s message, which happens when
we filter out other sources so that we can isolate the message and avoid the confusing
mixture of incoming stimuli. At this stage, we are still only hearing the message. Notice
in Figure 4.3 "Stages of Feedback" that this stage is represented by the ear because it is
the primary tool involved with this stage of the listening process.

One of the authors of this book recalls attending a political rally for a presidential
candidate at which about five thousand people were crowded into an outdoor
amphitheater. When the candidate finally started speaking, the cheering and yelling was
so loud that the candidate couldn’t be heard easily despite using a speaker system. In
this example, our coauthor had difficulty receiving the message because of the external
noise. This is only one example of the ways that hearing alone can require sincere effort,
but you must hear the message before you can continue the process of listening.

2. Understanding

In the understanding stage, we attempt to learn the meaning of the message, which is

not always easy. For one thing, if a speaker does not enunciate clearly, it may be difficult
to tell what the message was—did your friend say, “I think she’ll be late for class,” or “my
teacher delayed the class”? Notice in Figure 4.3 "Stages of Feedback" that stages two,
three, and four are represented by the brain because it is the primary tool involved with
these stages of the listening process.

Even when we have understood the words in a message, because of the differences in
our backgrounds and experience, we sometimes make the mistake of attaching our own
meanings to the words of others. For example, say you have made plans with your
friends to meet at a certain movie theater, but you arrive and nobody else shows up.
Eventually you find out that your friends are at a different theater all the way across
town where the same movie is playing. Everyone else understood that the meeting place
was the “west side” location, but you wrongly understood it as the “east side” location
and therefore missed out on part of the fun.

The consequences of ineffective listening in a classroom can be much worse. When your
professor advises students to get an “early start” on your speech, he or she probably
hopes that you will begin your research right away and move on to developing a thesis
statement and outlining the speech as soon as possible. However, students in your class
might misunderstand the instructor’s meaning in several ways. One student might
interpret the advice to mean that as long as she gets started, the rest of the assignment
will have time to develop itself. Another student might instead think that to start early is
to start on the Friday before the Monday due date instead of Sunday night.

So much of the way we understand others is influenced by our own perceptions and
experiences. Therefore, at the understanding stage of listening we should be on the
lookout for places where our perceptions might differ from those of the speaker.

3. Remembering

Remembering begins with listening; if you can’t remember something that was said, you
might not have been listening effectively. Wolvin and Coakley note that the most
common reason for not remembering a message after the fact is because it wasn’t really
learned in the first place.Wolvin, A., & Coakley, C. G. (1996). Listening (5th ed.). Boston,
MA: McGraw-Hill. However, even when you are listening attentively, some messages are
more difficult than others to understand and remember. Highly complex messages that
are filled with detail call for highly developed listening skills. Moreover, if something
distracts your attention even for a moment, you could miss out on information that
explains other new concepts you hear when you begin to listen fully again.
It’s also important to know that you can improve your memory of a message by
processing it meaningfully—that is, by applying it in ways that are meaningful to
you. Gluck, M. A., Mercado, E., & Myers, C. E. (2008). Learning and memory: From
brain to behavior. New York: Worth Publishers, pp. 172–173. Instead of simply
repeating a new acquaintance’s name over and over, for example, you might remember
it by associating it with something in your own life. “Emily,” you might say, “reminds me
of the Emily I knew in middle school,” or “Mr. Impiari’s name reminds me of the Impala
my father drives.”

Finally, if understanding has been inaccurate, recollection of the message will be

inaccurate too.

4. Evaluating

The fourth stage in the listening process is evaluating, or judging the value of the
message. We might be thinking, “This makes sense” or, conversely, “This is very odd.”
Because everyone embodies biases and perspectives learned from widely diverse sets of
life experiences, evaluations of the same message can vary widely from one listener to
another. Even the most open-minded listeners will have opinions of a speaker, and
those opinions will influence how the message is evaluated. People are more likely to
evaluate a message positively if the speaker speaks clearly, presents ideas logically, and
gives reasons to support the points made.

Unfortunately, personal opinions sometimes result in prejudiced evaluations. Imagine

you’re listening to a speech given by someone from another country and this person has
an accent that is hard to understand. You may have a hard time simply making out the
speaker’s message. Some people find a foreign accent to be interesting or even exotic,
while others find it annoying or even take it as a sign of ignorance. If a listener has a
strong bias against foreign accents, the listener may not even attempt to attend to the
message. If you mistrust a speaker because of an accent, you could be rejecting
important or personally enriching information. Good listeners have learned to refrain
from making these judgments and instead to focus on the speaker’s meanings.

5. Responding

Responding—sometimes referred to as feedback—is the fifth and final stage of the

listening process. It’s the stage at which you indicate your involvement. Almost anything
you do at this stage can be interpreted as feedback. For example, you are giving positive
feedback to your instructor if at the end of class you stay behind to finish a sentence in
your notes or approach the instructor to ask for clarification. The opposite kind of
feedback is given by students who gather their belongings and rush out the door as soon
as class is over. Notice in Figure 4.3 "Stages of Feedback" that this stage is represented
by the lips because we often give feedback in the form of verbal feedback; however, you
can just as easily respond nonverbally.

Formative Feedback

Not all response occurs at the end of the message. Formative feedback is a natural part
of the ongoing transaction between a speaker and a listener. As the speaker delivers the
message, a listener signals his or her involvement with focused attention, note-taking,
nodding, and other behaviors that indicate understanding or failure to understand the
message. These signals are important to the speaker, who is interested in whether the
message is clear and accepted or whether the content of the message is meeting the
resistance of preconceived ideas. Speakers can use this feedback to decide whether
additional examples, support materials, or explanation is needed.

Summative Feedback

Summative feedback is given at the end of the communication. When you attend a
political rally, a presentation given by a speaker you admire, or even a class, there are
verbal and nonverbal ways of indicating your appreciation for or your disagreement with
the messages or the speakers at the end of the message. Maybe you’ll stand up and
applaud a speaker you agreed with or just sit staring in silence after listening to a
speaker you didn’t like. In other cases, a speaker may be attempting to persuade you to
donate to a charity, so if the speaker passes a bucket and you make a donation, you are
providing feedback on the speaker’s effectiveness. At the same time, we do not always
listen most carefully to the messages of speakers we admire. Sometimes we simply enjoy
being in their presence, and our summative feedback is not about the message but about
our attitudes about the speaker. If your feedback is limited to something like, “I just love
your voice,” you might be indicating that you did not listen carefully to the content of the
message.

There is little doubt that by now, you are beginning to understand the complexity of
listening and the great potential for errors. By becoming aware of what is involved with
active listening and where difficulties might lie, you can prepare yourself both as a
listener and as a speaker to minimize listening errors with your own public speeches.