Week 8 Listening Exercise - Dr. Andrew Finn



Week 8 Listening Exercise

COMM 470 – Dr. Finn

WebCT Diary Entries for Week 8 ends on March 28 at 3:30 pm

There are two types of exercises this week.

Exercise A –

This week I’d like you to focus on body language. Body language is a set of cues that people use to assess your level of attention and engagement in a conversation. Eye contact, which we covered last week and is addressed again below, is a part of body language. During conversations this week attend to the following additional components of body language – in yourself and in others:

• Orientation of the Body. This refers to the degree to which one person’s shoulders, torso, and legs are turned toward the other interactant in dyadic communication (it gets more complicated with more than two people in a conversation). Since facing another person is perceived as empathetic, friendly, and likable, practice facing other people during a conversation. This includes your head, shoulders, torso, and legs.

• Body Position. Position refers to the position of your arms, hands, legs, and feet during conversation. Most people associate positive attributes with an open body position. This includes legs uncrossed (not even touching), hands uncrossed (not even touching), and elbows at least slightly away from the body. Likewise, most people associate negative attributes with a closed body position (arms folded, hands intertwined, clasped, or in the lap, legs crossed at the knees or ankles, legs closed tight together, and arms or elbows close against the body). Since most people perceive an open body position to be more friendly and likable, practice exhibiting an open position during a conversation.

• Leaning. Trunk lean is Wolvin and Coakley’s (1995) term for whether you lean your torso, or trunk, toward or away (or even sideways) from your communication partner. Leaning toward another interactant is typically taken as an expression of warmth, liking, and empathy (while leaning away conveys the opposite). So this week practice leaning towards the person with whom you are communicating, particularly if you are sitting down.

• Posture. In addition, we make choices about our body posture in every conversation. These include standing up straight or slouching, standing on one foot to relax the other, sitting up straight or slouching in a chair, and putting one or both feet up on a table, the rung of a chair, or under our hips. It also includes propping up our chin with our hand and arm, twisting or turning one part of our body but not the other, and other examples of postural relaxation too numerous to mention. In general, extreme postural tension (too stiff) or extreme postural relaxation (too informal) is perceived negatively. So this week, attend to your posture and aim for a moderate level of relaxation. This means sitting or standing up straight, both feet on the floor, and arms at your side – all without being too formal or stiff.

• Gestures. There are two primary types of gestures: hand movements and arm movements (though occasionally we gesture with our legs, heads, torsos, mouth, eyelids, nose, or fingers). In general, a moderate amount and volume of hand and arm gestures is preferred. If you don’t currently use many gestures at all, practice using them more often. If you currently gesture a great deal, reduce the number of gestures you use in conversation. In addition, practice varying your gestures more and reduce the use you make of any one gesture.

• Head movements. The most common head movements are nodding vertically or horizontally (taken as signs of agreement and disagreement, respectively). The most important consideration is that your head movements jibe with your verbalizations – don’t agree verbally and yet shake your head no (or vice versa). The second most important consideration for our purposes here is to express agreement – at least to say ‘I’m following you’ – while a person is speaking to you. Smiles and short verbal utterances such as uh-huh, yes, and mmm often accompany vertical head nods. Similarly, if the speaker expresses disapproval or disagreement with something, shaking your head ‘no’ is interpreted as agreement (with their negative assessment). This week, practice providing feedback to speakers by nodding (yes or no, as appropriate to your reaction), smiling or frowning, and otherwise using head movements to convey your reactions while a speaker is still talking.

Apply this advice in as many conversations as you can. This assignment can be done face-to-face (FTF), but not, of course, on the telephone.

You should also continue applying the lessons from the earlier Listening Exercises whenever possible or appropriate.

Bonus Suggestion

Ask two or three close friends to evaluate your use of body language. Review the material above for specifics, but one question you can ask is whether or not they’ve noticed that you do one thing a lot. This could be overusing a certain gesture, posture, position, or head movement.

Eye Contact& Turn-Taking

Continue attending to eye contact as well. Pay attention to how eye contact is used to regulate turn-taking in conversations:

• Notice precisely when (and how many times) you make eye contact as you listen

• Notice precisely when (and how many times) you make eye contact as you speak

• Notice precisely when (and how many times) a listener makes eye contact with you

• Notice precisely when (and how many times) a speaker makes eye contact with you

• Among other times, notice whether speakers make eye contact as they begin and as they finish their remarks.

Exercise B – Practice Sharing Something about Yourself

In the write-up for Listening Exercise 7, I provided a lot of information and ideas about sharing of one’s self. Here’s a bit of what I wrote last week:

As the final “S” in his “SUCCESS” model, Swets’ (1983) points out that sharing of oneself is much more than talking about oneself. Swets recommends sharing of oneself primarily because he believes that dialogue with others is a much surer path to understanding ourselves than simple introspection. I agree.

But there is another very good reason to share your inner thoughts and feeling with those closest to you. It signifies trust and acceptance and so people with return the favor and typically extend you a similar level of trust and acceptance. When the quality of the speaking improves, the quality of the listening improves.

I won’t repeat too much more of it here, except to say: continue to practice sharing of yourself over the next week.

Here’s the final paragraph from last’s weeks directions:

Still, I promise you that you will see some very interesting and positive results with people in your life if you make it a habit to share authentically about yourself, about how you are feeling, and about who you are as a person. People will listen to you differently after that and, most surprisingly, you will listen to them differently too.

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