g rather than Listening, The entertainment syndrome, giving into bias, Uncritical listening, Giving into distractions, fear of difficult material. Most of these are self-explainable, but some are not. The entertainment syndrome for example is a significant one. It includes the basic need for people to be entertained. If such a speaker does not entertain it is easy for us not to give him or her our attention (Curtis 1997). Giving into bias is the basic difference between you and the speaker such as your likes and dislikes. You could not agree or not share the same thought on the subject and just tune out. Other such reasons for ineffective listening are rather self-explainable such as the distractions or difficult material. This brings us to our next step of listening improvement. There are five steps to improving your listening, first is pay attention, secondly is understanding non-verbal communication, next is to comprehend messages, then analyze and evaluate your information, and finally improve your interpersonal skills. Paying attention is important mainly because it relates directly to the memory. The basis of this is paying attention long enough and well enough to be able to store the information you comprehend into long-term memory (Witkin 1993). Understanding non-verbal communication is accomplished by observing and studying it. Non-verbal communication is any communication expressed by body language rather than words, according to Knapp (Curtis1997). Comprehending the message is more of the listeners responsibility by sharing different meanings with the communicator. After understanding the meaning of the speaker, or communicator, than analyze and evaluate your information. Finally, improving you interpersonal communication will help with your communication skills that you use with people you work with every day. Interpersonal communication is the communication between you and a loved one, such as your spouse. Th...
