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According To Boundless. Com: The Four Major Problems Of Listening

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Problems encountered while listening According to Boundless.com (2015) there are four major problems that are encountered when listening. Low concentration, lack of prioritization, poor judgement, and focusing on style, not substance. There are also “Listening loopholes” (McGarvey, 1996) that we fall into. We need to realize when we are doing these things so that we can raise our understanding of what is being relayed to us. Low concentration This is damaging to listening effectively. Low concentration is caused by many different things. According to Boundless.com (2015), “various psychological or physical situations such as visual or auditory distractions, physical discomfort, inadequate volume, lack of interest in the subject material, stress, or personal bias”. No matter what the reason is for not listening, understanding what has been said is greatly decreased. Not only does the listener need to try to focus and concentrate on the speaker, but the speaker needs to understand their speech or directions and be able to have everyone understand …show more content…

We need to be able to pick up on what is important during conversations and speeches. One example is taking notes during a lecture. It is nearly impossible to write down every single word that the lecturer says, so we need to be able to pick up on what is important. Bacal (n.d.) states, “undertaking some other activity while another person is speaking is not effective listening” (Listen up!). He goes on to list examples such as checking the time, answering the phone, and even taking excessive notes as ineffective listening. While we try to listen to others, we need to remember that not everything is equally important. In the article Causes of poor listening (2015), we learn that the information we need to know is often delivered with irrelevant information. We as listeners need to learn to listen and judge what is important and relative to the task at

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