Introduction
Scholars believe that listening takes most of our time despite other activities. While listening we never think about the efforts we make, that is why people consider listening to be a passive process. Some of us always try to listen to another person attentively for him to understand every detail and remember as much information as possible. These people are completely involved into the process of communication and put a lot of effort for it, though they do not realize this fact. There exists such a type of activity as critical listening which can be viewed as an individual section of our communicative process. This kind of listening has its own characteristics and has been researched by many scholars.
Main text
Critical listening is a type of communication process that involves analysis and judgment of the remarks with the goal to get a complete understanding of the point. But such evaluation is considered to be an artificial obstacle on the way to good comprehension. The main goal of critical listening is not only to perceive the information but also to assess it to interpret the news that has just been heard. The people who are critical listeners always intend to ask probing questions; of course this type of communication activity requires a lot of skills. According to some investigations the following skills should be presented for the critical listening:
- Creating opinions and backing up all the pretensions;
- Differentiating views and facts that have been heard;
- Presenting broad ideas, challenging;
- Evaluating the main points that have been covered by the speaker;
- Following the flow of the speech and discovering the development of the ideas of the speaker.
- Making critical review of the speech.
In my personal life critical listening is a part of interpersonal communication and relationship; by saying it I mean that I am a critical listener with my romantic partner. I always try to analyze what was said and evaluate the meaning of the words. To my way of thinking it is really important in romantic relations because I should understand the deep sense of every word, as it helps me to feel the inner state of my partner. Of course sometimes it can lead to some obstacle in our ideal and calm relations, but I consider that critical listening should always be presented in my life because I cannot remain indifferent towards my partner’s flow of thoughts. I myself do not like critics very much but I understand their importance and always try to understand and pay attention to them.
There are a lot of cases when we meet critical listening in our life and even use it; I can even say that there are no places where we never face it. To illustrate it in more detail we can compare any family with the “field for debates” where all the members are the critical listeners. It is an open secret that we always try to evaluate the information presented by our close people and very often it results in conflicts and misunderstanding. One should remember some points not to get into a conflict situation during the process of communication: arguing is not always the way out of a difficult position and the main goal is to understand but not to prove your own point of view. In order to come to agreement one should try to paraphrase the received information; if the listener has negative attitude to the atmosphere or to the speaker, the communication will become more critical and can lead to unpleasant impressions. Communication is based only on the exchanging of the information, but if we consider interpersonal communication the results would be quite different. Interpersonal type of communication influences the listener and the speaker. (Petronio, Alberts) It stimulates emotions and feelings giving your brain additional material and background for reflection.
A great number of interpersonal communication researches showed that a lot of factors influence our process of communication such as:
- Physiological (gender, age, nationality and others);
- Psychological (sympathy, attitude, compatibility, trust and others).
One of the researches was carried out with the students to understand the process of the development of the interpersonal communication. It was held by one of the Research Centers and was directed on the results the students would provide. Their interpersonal communication took place over the internet with people of different nationalities and social positions. It showed that students were really involved in the process of communication but some physiological factors made obstacles for complete understanding. One can’t but agree that such problematic points can really create difficulties and lead to wrong comprehension.
Our moral make up drew a kind of image of the ideal group of interlocutors in our mind to fit the bill for the conversations and any other processes of communicative activities. That is why interpersonal communication gives successful results for close people communication. Very often this kind of communicative process we can consider in the romantic relations between two loving people (Knapp, Daly, 2002). Interpersonal communication means the impersonal perception of the inner state of the speaker and the reflection of your thoughts in his mind. This type of communication involves critical listening when it needs to be understood and reflected in your partner’s words. Critical thinking, as well as listening, is a part of interpersonal communicative process. For the critical listener it is important to be able not only to evaluate the information but also to perceive the critical treatment on the part of the speaker. One should never confuse such notions as “to listen to” and
”to hear” because they have different aims and will bring different results. Just simple hearing is of no significance and covers only informative function that is fulfilled for a short period of time. The ability to listen to and analyze everything is one of the main points of the critical listening. Any critical listener never focuses only on the process of hearing or interpreting but on the results of the communication.
Critical listening researches are carried out by everyone almost every day of our life. As an example one can take into consideration political debates which require critical listening and thorough thinking. Watching such debates on TV or visiting different meetings with the candidates to speak and promote their campaign we try to understand the message of the speaker making different complicated analyses and judging their flow of thoughts. At this moment we should make an important choice and choose the person to support during the elections; and we have nothing to do but evaluate the situation by comparing the information of all the candidates, summing everything up for us not to make a rough mistake. This example shows the importance of the critical listening in some situations.
Conclusion
To draw a conclusion we should understand the benefit of the made research and why it was carried out. Now we completely realize the direct connection between interpersonal communication and critical listening. It has become clear that in our interpersonal communication we face critical thinking and listening for better comprehension of the information. The knowledge of the important skills that should be developed by the critical listener clears up the future tasks for our inner development. One should remember the reasons for the possible interpersonal conflicts between the listener and the speaker; when the level of evaluation is too high and the critical listener’s negative attitude towards the speaker exasperate him the conflict can be inevitable. People should not forget about the efforts put in the process of listening, because it is not a passive state but an active action of your brain that helps you to develop new skills and abilities for interpersonal communication.
References
Petronio, S., Alberts, K. J., Hecht, L. M., Buley, J. Contemporary Perspective on Interpersonal Communication.(1993) Madison, Wisconsin: WCB Brown & Benchmark Publications.
Mark L., Knapp, and John A., Daly. Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, (2002). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 842 pages.