Week 6

This week we are learning about listening. We listened to Jackie read us a very good article. Half the class wrote down how many times they heard the word and and the other half listened to the whole article. At the end we had to write down what we remembered about the article. It was interesting that the people that had to count "and" didn't remeber what the article was about. A few people that did listen didn't remember a couple of things because they got stuck on particular parts of the article. We also did an actity where we paired up and one person talked about school and the other was listen. The group that was listening at first pretended that they weren't listening. For me this made it hard to communicate. I found myself getting lost in what I was trying to say and trying to add more information because I thought that what I was saying was not important. We also praticed on our interviewing skills. This is one area that I am still working on.

Part 2: Barriers to Listening

I think one of my barriers is message overload. With all the information that I am getting at school and home I find that I start not listening to half of what is being said. "To deal with the overload, we often screen the talk around us..."(Wood, 2010, p.151) I think this is how I deal with overload. Another barrier I have is noise. If it is really noise in a room or even my phone I don't pay attention as much as I should. The third barrier that I have is preoccupation. I do this alot. With all the multi tasking that needs to be done, I find that I am thinking about something totally different rather that listening to what I need to. I have to ask what was said because I didn't hear the message.

Wood, J. T.  Interpersonal communications: Everyday encounters (6^th ed.).  Boston, MA: Wardsworth.