More than any other single communication act, we listen. We listen to gain understanding (“comprehensive listening”), to evaluate and act on information (“critical listening”), to provide support (“empathic listening”), and to experience the sheer pleasure of receiving sound, as in listening to music (“appreciative listening”1) (see Table 4.1). Research suggests that college students in the United States spend more time listening (about 24 percent) than they do on any other communication activity, such as speaking (20 percent), using the Internet (13 percent), writing (9 percent), or reading (8 percent).2 Nor does the amount of time spent listening decline once we enter the workplace. Of the twenty communication behaviors most frequently observed in their places of work, participants in a 2013 study in the Journal of Business Communication overwhelmingly identified listening as the number one activity.3 Another study found that managers associate listening skills with leadership potential, promoting those who display them and hiring new entrants who possess them.4 Numerous studies show that competent listeners tend to be efficient and successful in both their personal and professional lives and tend to be better problem solvers and more engaged citizens.5
TABLE 4.1 Types of Listening
| Type of Listening | Function | Example |
| Comprehensive Listening | To gain understanding | Listening to a lecture; asking for instructions or directions |
| Critical Listening | To critically evaluate or make judgments about and act on information; to be a responsible receiver of information | Listening critically to explanations in an informative speech or arguments in a persuasive speech; identifying bias and false analogies, and making decisions about your own point of view |
| Empathic Listening | To provide support | Listening compassionately to a friend express grief over loss; sharing feelings with friends and family |
| Appreciative Listening | To experience pleasure and enjoyment | Listening to music or another art form |
As you can see, focusing on the art of listening will serve you well in many arenas other than public speaking. The public speaking classroom itself is the perfect place to hone your listening skills. Here you can practice active listening—listening that is focused and purposeful—as you attend to your classmates’ speeches. You will be able to observe what will and won’t work for your speech, and offer constructive criticism. You can watch for “listenable language”6 in others’ speeches and experiment with it in your own, preparing speeches for the ear rather than the eye—the listener rather than the reader (see Chapter 16, “Using Language to Style the Speech”).