Question 2

First off I learned some statistical information about how the average person only has a 25 per cent listening rate efficiency, of which I thought was very low considering we are only listening 1/4 of what we could be listening to. This suggests that people could learn and understand more if they even increased their listening efficiency by 25-50%. The first step I learned about is that when listening we need to find an area of interest rather than tuning the speaker out simply because we have made up our minds that the conversation is boring to us. Second, involves judging content rather than delivery and I can relate to this because I am guilty of tuning someone out because of the way they are delivering the message. The third concept I learned was about the overstimulation we can be guilty of when we immediately feel the desire to argue based on our convictions. We should refrain from doing this because we are being selfish rather than truly hearing the other persons point of view. Fourth is about listening for ideas rather than just for facts. When we concentrate on particular facts we may end up losing a lot of information in the process.The fifth step involves flexibility on what we are listening to, and the ability to make meaningful notes. The sixth concept I learned is listening is something we have to work on in order to improve communication for all parties involved. When we listen better, people speak better, and both aspects improve the communication process. Seventh, we must avoid distractions no matter how tempting they may be. Cell phones are a communication medium that people use in positive and negative ways during communication. When someone is talking to another person yet they are also flipping through their text messages or Facebook mobile edition, how much of that the conversation are they really listening to? The eighth concept is keeping your mind up to date with what you are listening rather than assuming it is too difficult to interpret and then giving up on it. To follow that the ninth concept involves keeping an open mind in regard to conversation, including the specific area of hearing certain words that may cause a change in listening due to the listener thinking too much into it. Lastly we must make the most out of the fact that our listening speed surpasses the rate of words per minute of a speaker. We should make the most of this by listening better rather than getting distracted or tuning speakers out because they are too slow for our listening process.