Critical Listening Analysis

Listening is one of the most important forms of communication, with the multiple ways of doing it, and the everyday importance of it. Can you imagine not hearing things? The music you listen to, TV shows you watch, people you speak to, all of them dead silent event when they are playing. Now imagine you can hear, but only half of what normal people can. That’s what it’s like to hear things from my perspective. It is normal for me because I was born half deaf, so my hearing and my listening skills are different from most people. That does not mean I do not use the different types of listening though.
We listen and hear every day of our lives. The purposes of listening, however, are a different matter altogether. There are three main purposes
That doesn’t mean that it is always used for large decisions though, it is also used for small ones as well. Skills You Need says that “When the word ‘critical’ is used to describe listening, reading or thinking it does not necessarily mean that you are claiming that the information you are listening to is somehow faulty or flawed. Rather, critical listening means engaging in what you are listening to by asking yourself questions such as, ‘what is the speaker trying to say?’ or ‘what is the main argument being presented?’, ‘how does what I’m hearing differ from my beliefs, knowledge or opinion?’ (skillsyouneed.org). So, someone could just be listening to someone talk about a new flavor of doughnuts and try to decide if or not it is worth trying. It can be used for little mundane things. Then finally there is empathic listening. These are skills you need which explains this type of listening as “Empathic listening involves attempting to understand the feelings and emotions of the speaker – to put yourself into the speaker’s shoes and share their thoughts” (skillyouneed.org). So, when girls are talking to each other about something emotional that happened, or two guys or a romantic couple of some sort, they are being empathic. The other person is relating to the one speaking, giving them a sense of being understood and