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Ielts listening practice test 10 with answers

Questions 1-3

Complete the sentences below.

Write ONE WORD ONLY for each answer.

The handout covers (1)………… general topic.

As well as students of history, there are students of (2)………… at the lecture.

The lecture’s own motivation for studying history is that she finds it (3)…………

Questions 4-10

How does the lecturer describe each kind of history ?

T    a traditional type of history 

M    a modern type of history

F    a type of history which looks to the future

Write the correct letter T , M or F next to questions 4-10

(4)   political history              …………

(5)   post-modern history    …………

(6)   feminist history              …………

(7)   social history                    …………

(8)   economic history          …………

(9)   military history              …………

(10)   ethnic history                …………

Questions 11-17

Complete the table below.

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer.

LANGUAGE SCHOOL ENROLLMENT FORM !

Name of Applicant:  (11)…………

Telephone number:  (12)…………

Language to be learned:  (13)…………

Location of class:  (14)…………

Time of class:  (15)…………

Name of class:  (16)…………

Date of commencement of class:  (17)…………

Questions 18-20

Listen to the directions and match the places in questions 18-20 to the letter A-H on the plan

(18)   Reception area, admissions      …………

(19)   Fees office                                        …………

(20)   Travel agency                                  …………

Questions 21-26

Choose the correct letter A , B or C.

(21)  What is the main topic of the assignment ?

 A    the historical development of television

 B    the development of new media

 C    the cultural future of television

(22)  according to Emile, which new technology will become the biggest competition for television ?

 A    iPod’s

 B    mobile phones

 C    video games

(23)  according to the tutor, the average length of a television become

 A    45 minutes.

 B    four to five minutes.

 C    ten minutes.

(24)  What part of the library is going to be closed for one week ?

 A    the Sociology section

 B    the Media Studies section

 C    the Journals section

(25)  Which body do they decide to complain to ?

 A    the Premises Committee

 B    the Students’ Union

 C    the Library

(26)  What will the re-pro-graphics office do ?

 A    send emails to your tutor

 B    send your dissertation to you

 C    send your dissertation to your tutor

Questions 27-30

Complete the information below.

Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

(27)   What does the tutor compare homemade videos with ?

………………..

(28)   What is the title Mrs Jones’s lecture ?

(29)   where is the lecture ?

(30)   When is the final date for the assignment ?

Questions 31-33

choose the correct letter A-C.

(31)  One of the aims of this lecture is

 A    to describe how art supports society.

 B    to define contemporary art.

 C    to define artistic experiences.

(32)  It is important for the students to 

 A    agree with the lecturer’s ideas.

 B    utilize their past experiences.

 C    revisit galleries to look at contemporary.

(33)  the students will ultimately have to

 A    write a critical analysis.

 B    write 2000 words.

 C    write an art-review.

Questions 34-40

Write NO MORE THAN ONE WORDS ANS/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

(34)   The French revolution began in ………… and marked the beginning of what is known as the modern era in art.

(35)   Contemporary art is best viewed as any works of art from the period beginning ………… until today.

(36)   One of the disadvantages of official art is its ………… nature.

(37)   Art is subsidized by governments or wealthy individuals like ………… famous people.

(38)………… art, also known as amateur art, is now becoming more widely acceptable.

(39)   What do graffiti artists damage public ? …………

(40)   What can contemporary art influence feelings ? …………

ANSWERS (Ielts listening practice test 10)

• Vijay Paresh
• Elementary one
• 10th August
• Culture and Society
• The university Theatre
• Businessmen

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IELTS Listening Test 18

Part 1: Questions 1-8 Complete the table below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

People interested in sharing the flat

(1)                   (2) (3)                 (4) (5)                 (6) (7)                  (8)

Questions 9 and 10 Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/ OR A NUMBER for each answer.

Leo’s phone number (mobile) (9)  Leo would like to move in on (10)

Part 2: Questions 11-14 Choose the correct letter A, B or C.

11. Refreshments will be served A at the front counter B in the lobby C at the back of the hall

12. Nick Noble advertised A on the radio B on a billboard C in the newspaper

13. The original number of founding members was about A 12 B 20 C 200

14. The club provides activities primarily for reasonable fit A males up to 75 B females with young children C males and females of any age

Questions 15-20 Complete the table below. Write NO MORE THAN ONE WORD AND/ OR A NUMBER for each answer.

(15)                      (16)    (17)                      (18)    (19)                      (20)

Part 3: Questions 21-26 Choose the correct letter A, B or C.

21. What is the main topic of assignment? A the historical development of television B the development of new media C the cultural future of television

22. According to Emilie which new technology will become the biggest competition for television? A iPods B mobile phones C video games

23. According to the tutor the average length of a television become A 45 minutes B 4 to 5 minutes C 10 minutes

24. What part of the library is going to be closed for one week? A the sociology section B the media studies section C the journals section

25. Which body do they decide to complain to? A Premises committee B Students’ Union C the library

26. What will the reprographics office do? A send emails to your tutor B send your dissertation to you C send your dissertation to your tutor

Questions 27-30 Answer the questions below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/ OR A NUMBER for each answer.

27. What does the tutor compare homemade videos with? 28. What is the title of Mrs Jone’s lecture? 29. Where is the lecture? 30. When is the final date for the assignment?

Part 4: Questions 31-37 Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

31. Samuel Wells  before Scholastic House opened in 1903. 32. There were  original students. 33. Scholastic House became  in 1963. 34. One of these students became a prominent 35. Scholastic House experienced difficulties during 36. The college has a tradition of learning and 37. Since 1972, controversial  have been discussed.

Questions 38-40 Choose the correct letter A, B or C.

38. The college discusses controversial issues because it A informs the debate B reduces tension C encourages argument

39. The principal believes that A science is less advanced than medicine B philosophy is more useful than science C science is ahead of philosophy

40. The principal urges the students to A accept what they are told B ask questions at all times C think only about their studies

1. sports 2. energetic 3. big room 4. spencer 5. hardworking 6. engineer 7. competitive, stressed 8. bicycle 9. 07776872433 10. 28 september 11. B 12. A 13. A 14. C 15. tramping 16. walks 17. organiser 18. variable 19. mystery 20. chairman 21. C 22. C 23. B 24. B 25. A 26. C 27. a podcast 28. culture and society 29. university theatre 30. 4 July 31. died (in 1900) 32. 10 33. co-educational 34. teacher 35. the great war 36. tolerance 37. topics/ issues 38. A 39. C 40. B

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IELTS Listening

The IELTS listening test is divided into four sections and the sections get increasingly difficult. You only hear each section one time.

The time for the test is 40 minutes . The listening takes 30 minutes, but you then have 10 minutes to transfer your answers to an answer sheet.

Listening Resources

• Listening Practice Tests
• Listening Lessons & Strategies

TEST OVERVIEW

The first two sections of the test are concerned with social needs.

The final two sections are concerned with situations related more closely to educational or training contexts.

All the IELTS listening topics are of general interest and it makes no difference what subjects you are planning to study or what work you intend to do.

A range of English accents and dialects are used in the recordings which reflects the international usage of IELTS

In the first section there is a conversation between two speakers. For example - a conversation about travel arrangements, booking accommodation, or decisions on a night out.

The second section is a monologue (a speech by one person). It will be set in an everyday social context. For example - a speech about student services on a University campus or arrangements for meals during a conference.

Section three is a conversation between up to four people. For example - a conversation between a tutor and a student about an assignment or between three students planning a research project.

The final part is another monologue. It is a lecture or talk of general academic interest such as a university lecture.

Question Types

The following types of question may appear on the test:

• multiple choice  
• short-answer questions  
• sentence completion  
• notes/summary/diagram/flow chart/table completion  
• labelling a diagram which has numbered parts  
• classification  

You will be provided with instructions on the test paper on how to answer the questions, and they are clear and easy to follow. You will be given examples of any unfamiliar question types.

During the IELTS listening test, you are given time to read the questions and enter and then check your answers. You enter your answers on the question paper as you listen and when the tape ends ten minutes are allowed for you to transfer your answers to an Answer Sheet.

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Academic Listening Strategies

University lectures (the focus of this handout) can be challenging because of their fast pace, variety across disciplines, dynamic nature with student discussions, and diverse lecturer styles. Your lecturer may blend words together, use words you are not sure how to spell, use “uh” in the middle of sentences, or abruptly restart sentences.

Understanding lectures can be easier if you know what to expect and know what to listen for. Below are common characteristics for lectures and strategies for improving listening comprehension.

Classroom styles

Different classroom styles present information in different ways. Some classrooms assume students know nothing and introduce information whereas other classrooms assume students come prepared and discuss information. Lecturer speaking styles also affect how information may be presented. The table below represents endpoints of two spectra; your classroom and lecturer may have qualities from both columns.

Knowing whether the information or the delivery of information is challenging will help you determine which listening strategies to try.

Listening strategies

Two processes are involved in listening. Top-down listening uses background knowledge and contextualizes words to aid comprehension. Bottom-up listening uses sounds, words, and other small units to create meaning. These processes are complementary; listening for only the big picture but not the details is as ineffective as trying to understand every single word your lecturer says.

Top-down listening strategies

Before lecture, review and predict lecture topics.

• Review assigned material
• Consider how new information will relate to previous lectures

During lecture, identify the organization pattern (i.e., problem/solution, literature review, etc.).

• Note the number of main topics being covered and how they are related
• Listen for phrases that introduce, summarize, or shift topics

After lecture, continue to engage with the topic.

• Review your notes for any information that is incomplete
• Go to friends or go to office hours with questions about information you missed

Bottom-up listening strategies

Focus on stressed words.

• Listen for longer, louder words (usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs). These words carry the most important information.

Pay attention to repeated terms and pauses.

• Take these as cues for possible key points in the lecture

Keep going.

• Avoid trying to understand every word. In spoken language, not all words are important nor are they always grammatical.

Sample UNC lectures

• AIDS course
• Information in Life Series

Works consulted

Salehzadeh, J. (2006). Academic listening strategies: a guide to understanding lectures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

5.1 Understanding How and Why We Listen

Learning objectives.

• Describe the stages of the listening process.
• Discuss the four main types of listening.
• Compare and contrast the four main listening styles.

Listening is the learned process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. We begin to engage with the listening process long before we engage in any recognizable verbal or nonverbal communication. It is only after listening for months as infants that we begin to consciously practice our own forms of expression. In this section we will learn more about each stage of the listening process, the main types of listening, and the main listening styles.

The Listening Process

Listening is a process and as such doesn’t have a defined start and finish. Like the communication process, listening has cognitive, behavioral, and relational elements and doesn’t unfold in a linear, step-by-step fashion. Models of processes are informative in that they help us visualize specific components, but keep in mind that they do not capture the speed, overlapping nature, or overall complexity of the actual process in action. The stages of the listening process are receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding.

Before we can engage other steps in the listening process, we must take in stimuli through our senses. In any given communication encounter, it is likely that we will return to the receiving stage many times as we process incoming feedback and new messages. This part of the listening process is more physiological than other parts, which include cognitive and relational elements. We primarily take in information needed for listening through auditory and visual channels. Although we don’t often think about visual cues as a part of listening, they influence how we interpret messages. For example, seeing a person’s face when we hear their voice allows us to take in nonverbal cues from facial expressions and eye contact. The fact that these visual cues are missing in e-mail, text, and phone interactions presents some difficulties for reading contextual clues into meaning received through only auditory channels.

The first stage of the listening process is receiving stimuli through auditory and visual channels.

Britt Reints – LISTEN – CC BY 2.0.

Our chapter on perception discusses some of the ways in which incoming stimuli are filtered. These perceptual filters also play a role in listening. Some stimuli never make it in, some are filtered into subconsciousness, and others are filtered into various levels of consciousness based on their salience. Recall that salience is the degree to which something attracts our attention in a particular context and that we tend to find salient things that are visually or audibly stimulating and things that meet our needs or interests. Think about how it’s much easier to listen to a lecture on a subject that you find very interesting.

It is important to consider noise as a factor that influences how we receive messages. Some noise interferes primarily with hearing, which is the physical process of receiving stimuli through internal and external components of the ears and eyes, and some interferes with listening, which is the cognitive process of processing the stimuli taken in during hearing. While hearing leads to listening, they are not the same thing. Environmental noise such as other people talking, the sounds of traffic, and music interfere with the physiological aspects of hearing. Psychological noise like stress and anger interfere primarily with the cognitive processes of listening. We can enhance our ability to receive, and in turn listen, by trying to minimize noise.

Interpreting

During the interpreting stage of listening, we combine the visual and auditory information we receive and try to make meaning out of that information using schemata. The interpreting stage engages cognitive and relational processing as we take in informational, contextual, and relational cues and try to connect them in meaningful ways to previous experiences. It is through the interpreting stage that we may begin to understand the stimuli we have received. When we understand something, we are able to attach meaning by connecting information to previous experiences. Through the process of comparing new information with old information, we may also update or revise particular schemata if we find the new information relevant and credible. If we have difficulty interpreting information, meaning we don’t have previous experience or information in our existing schemata to make sense of it, then it is difficult to transfer the information into our long-term memory for later recall. In situations where understanding the information we receive isn’t important or isn’t a goal, this stage may be fairly short or even skipped. After all, we can move something to our long-term memory by repetition and then later recall it without ever having understood it. I remember earning perfect scores on exams in my anatomy class in college because I was able to memorize and recall, for example, all the organs in the digestive system. In fact, I might still be able to do that now over a decade later. But neither then nor now could I tell you the significance or function of most of those organs, meaning I didn’t really get to a level of understanding but simply stored the information for later recall.

Our ability to recall information is dependent on some of the physiological limits of how memory works. Overall, our memories are known to be fallible. We forget about half of what we hear immediately after hearing it, recall 35 percent after eight hours, and recall 20 percent after a day (Hargie, 2011). Our memory consists of multiple “storage units,” including sensory storage, short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory (Hargie, 2011).

Our sensory storage is very large in terms of capacity but limited in terms of length of storage. We can hold large amounts of unsorted visual information but only for about a tenth of a second. By comparison, we can hold large amounts of unsorted auditory information for longer—up to four seconds. This initial memory storage unit doesn’t provide much use for our study of communication, as these large but quickly expiring chunks of sensory data are primarily used in reactionary and instinctual ways.

As stimuli are organized and interpreted, they make their way to short-term memory where they either expire and are forgotten or are transferred to long-term memory. Short-term memory is a mental storage capability that can retain stimuli for twenty seconds to one minute. Long-term memory is a mental storage capability to which stimuli in short-term memory can be transferred if they are connected to existing schema and in which information can be stored indefinitely (Hargie, 2011). Working memory is a temporarily accessed memory storage space that is activated during times of high cognitive demand. When using working memory, we can temporarily store information and process and use it at the same time. This is different from our typical memory function in that information usually has to make it to long-term memory before we can call it back up to apply to a current situation. People with good working memories are able to keep recent information in mind and process it and apply it to other incoming information. This can be very useful during high-stress situations. A person in control of a command center like the White House Situation Room should have a good working memory in order to take in, organize, evaluate, and then immediately use new information instead of having to wait for that information to make it to long-term memory and then be retrieved and used.

Although recall is an important part of the listening process, there isn’t a direct correlation between being good at recalling information and being a good listener. Some people have excellent memories and recall abilities and can tell you a very accurate story from many years earlier during a situation in which they should actually be listening and not showing off their recall abilities. Recall is an important part of the listening process because it is most often used to assess listening abilities and effectiveness. Many quizzes and tests in school are based on recall and are often used to assess how well students comprehended information presented in class, which is seen as an indication of how well they listened. When recall is our only goal, we excel at it. Experiments have found that people can memorize and later recall a set of faces and names with near 100 percent recall when sitting in a quiet lab and asked to do so. But throw in external noise, more visual stimuli, and multiple contextual influences, and we can’t remember the name of the person we were just introduced to one minute earlier. Even in interpersonal encounters, we rely on recall to test whether or not someone was listening. Imagine that Azam is talking to his friend Belle, who is sitting across from him in a restaurant booth. Azam, annoyed that Belle keeps checking her phone, stops and asks, “Are you listening?” Belle inevitably replies, “Yes,” since we rarely fess up to our poor listening habits, and Azam replies, “Well, what did I just say?”

When we evaluate something, we make judgments about its credibility, completeness, and worth. In terms of credibility, we try to determine the degree to which we believe a speaker’s statements are correct and/or true. In terms of completeness, we try to “read between the lines” and evaluate the message in relation to what we know about the topic or situation being discussed. We evaluate the worth of a message by making a value judgment about whether we think the message or idea is good/bad, right/wrong, or desirable/undesirable. All these aspects of evaluating require critical thinking skills, which we aren’t born with but must develop over time through our own personal and intellectual development.

Studying communication is a great way to build your critical thinking skills, because you learn much more about the taken-for-granted aspects of how communication works, which gives you tools to analyze and critique messages, senders, and contexts. Critical thinking and listening skills also help you take a more proactive role in the communication process rather than being a passive receiver of messages that may not be credible, complete, or worthwhile. One danger within the evaluation stage of listening is to focus your evaluative lenses more on the speaker than the message. This can quickly become a barrier to effective listening if we begin to prejudge a speaker based on his or her identity or characteristics rather than on the content of his or her message. We will learn more about how to avoid slipping into a person-centered rather than message-centered evaluative stance later in the chapter.

Responding entails sending verbal and nonverbal messages that indicate attentiveness and understanding or a lack thereof. From our earlier discussion of the communication model, you may be able to connect this part of the listening process to feedback. Later, we will learn more specifics about how to encode and decode the verbal and nonverbal cues sent during the responding stage, but we all know from experience some signs that indicate whether a person is paying attention and understanding a message or not.

We send verbal and nonverbal feedback while another person is talking and after they are done. Back-channel cues are the verbal and nonverbal signals we send while someone is talking and can consist of verbal cues like “uh-huh,” “oh,” and “right,” and/or nonverbal cues like direct eye contact, head nods, and leaning forward. Back-channel cues are generally a form of positive feedback that indicates others are actively listening. People also send cues intentionally and unintentionally that indicate they aren’t listening. If another person is looking away, fidgeting, texting, or turned away, we will likely interpret those responses negatively.

Listeners respond to speakers nonverbally during a message using back-channel cues and verbally after a message using paraphrasing and clarifying questions.

Duane Storey – Listening – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Paraphrasing is a responding behavior that can also show that you understand what was communicated. When you paraphrase information, you rephrase the message into your own words. For example, you might say the following to start off a paraphrased response: “What I heard you say was…” or “It seems like you’re saying…” You can also ask clarifying questions to get more information. It is often a good idea to pair a paraphrase with a question to keep a conversation flowing. For example, you might pose the following paraphrase and question pair: “It seems like you believe you were treated unfairly. Is that right?” Or you might ask a standalone question like “What did your boss do that made you think he was ‘playing favorites?’” Make sure to paraphrase and/or ask questions once a person’s turn is over, because interrupting can also be interpreted as a sign of not listening. Paraphrasing is also a good tool to use in computer-mediated communication, especially since miscommunication can occur due to a lack of nonverbal and other contextual cues.

The Importance of Listening

Understanding how listening works provides the foundation we need to explore why we listen, including various types and styles of listening. In general, listening helps us achieve all the communication goals (physical, instrumental, relational, and identity) that we learned about in Chapter 1 “Introduction to Communication Studies” . Listening is also important in academic, professional, and personal contexts.

In terms of academics, poor listening skills were shown to contribute significantly to failure in a person’s first year of college (Zabava & Wolvin, 1993). In general, students with high scores for listening ability have greater academic achievement. Interpersonal communication skills including listening are also highly sought after by potential employers, consistently ranking in the top ten in national surveys (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2010).

Poor listening skills, lack of conciseness, and inability to give constructive feedback have been identified as potential communication challenges in professional contexts. Even though listening education is lacking in our society, research has shown that introductory communication courses provide important skills necessary for functioning in entry-level jobs, including listening, writing, motivating/persuading, interpersonal skills, informational interviewing, and small-group problem solving (DiSalvo, 1980). Training and improvements in listening will continue to pay off, as employers desire employees with good communication skills, and employees who have good listening skills are more likely to get promoted.

Listening also has implications for our personal lives and relationships. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of listening to make someone else feel better and to open our perceptual field to new sources of information. Empathetic listening can help us expand our self and social awareness by learning from other people’s experiences and by helping us take on different perspectives. Emotional support in the form of empathetic listening and validation during times of conflict can help relational partners manage common stressors of relationships that may otherwise lead a partnership to deteriorate (Milardo & Helms-Erikson, 2000). The following list reviews some of the main functions of listening that are relevant in multiple contexts.

The main purposes of listening are (Hargie, 2011)

• to focus on messages sent by other people or noises coming from our surroundings;
• to better our understanding of other people’s communication;
• to critically evaluate other people’s messages;
• to monitor nonverbal signals;
• to indicate that we are interested or paying attention;
• to empathize with others and show we care for them (relational maintenance); and
• to engage in negotiation, dialogue, or other exchanges that result in shared understanding of or agreement on an issue.

Listening Types

Listening serves many purposes, and different situations require different types of listening. The type of listening we engage in affects our communication and how others respond to us. For example, when we listen to empathize with others, our communication will likely be supportive and open, which will then lead the other person to feel “heard” and supported and hopefully view the interaction positively (Bodie & Villaume, 2003). The main types of listening we will discuss are discriminative, informational, critical, and empathetic (Watson, Barker, & Weaver III, 1995).

Discriminative Listening

Discriminative listening is a focused and usually instrumental type of listening that is primarily physiological and occurs mostly at the receiving stage of the listening process. Here we engage in listening to scan and monitor our surroundings in order to isolate particular auditory or visual stimuli. For example, we may focus our listening on a dark part of the yard while walking the dog at night to determine if the noise we just heard presents us with any danger. Or we may look for a particular nonverbal cue to let us know our conversational partner received our message (Hargie, 2011). In the absence of a hearing impairment, we have an innate and physiological ability to engage in discriminative listening. Although this is the most basic form of listening, it provides the foundation on which more intentional listening skills are built. This type of listening can be refined and honed. Think of how musicians, singers, and mechanics exercise specialized discriminative listening to isolate specific aural stimuli and how actors, detectives, and sculptors discriminate visual cues that allow them to analyze, make meaning from, or recreate nuanced behavior (Wolvin & Coakley, 1993).

Informational Listening

Informational listening entails listening with the goal of comprehending and retaining information. This type of listening is not evaluative and is common in teaching and learning contexts ranging from a student listening to an informative speech to an out-of-towner listening to directions to the nearest gas station. We also use informational listening when we listen to news reports, voice mail, and briefings at work. Since retention and recall are important components of informational listening, good concentration and memory skills are key. These also happen to be skills that many college students struggle with, at least in the first years of college, but will be expected to have mastered once they get into professional contexts. In many professional contexts, informational listening is important, especially when receiving instructions. I caution my students that they will be expected to process verbal instructions more frequently in their profession than they are in college. Most college professors provide detailed instructions and handouts with assignments so students can review them as needed, but many supervisors and managers will expect you to take the initiative to remember or record vital information. Additionally, many bosses are not as open to questions or requests to repeat themselves as professors are.

Critical Listening

Critical listening entails listening with the goal of analyzing or evaluating a message based on information presented verbally and information that can be inferred from context. A critical listener evaluates a message and accepts it, rejects it, or decides to withhold judgment and seek more information. As constant consumers of messages, we need to be able to assess the credibility of speakers and their messages and identify various persuasive appeals and faulty logic (known as fallacies), which you can learn more about in Chapter 11 “Informative and Persuasive Speaking” . Critical listening is important during persuasive exchanges, but I recommend always employing some degree of critical listening, because you may find yourself in a persuasive interaction that you thought was informative. As is noted in Chapter 4 “Nonverbal Communication” , people often disguise inferences as facts. Critical-listening skills are useful when listening to a persuasive speech in this class and when processing any of the persuasive media messages we receive daily. You can see judges employ critical listening, with varying degrees of competence, on talent competition shows like Rupaul’s Drag Race , America’s Got Talent , and The Voice . While the exchanges between judge and contestant on these shows is expected to be subjective and critical, critical listening is also important when listening to speakers that have stated or implied objectivity, such as parents, teachers, political leaders, doctors, and religious leaders. We will learn more about how to improve your critical thinking skills later in this chapter.

Empathetic Listening

We support others through empathetic listening by trying to “feel with” them.

Stewart Black – Comfort – CC BY 2.0.

Empathetic listening is the most challenging form of listening and occurs when we try to understand or experience what a speaker is thinking or feeling. Empathetic listening is distinct from sympathetic listening. While the word empathy means to “feel into” or “feel with” another person, sympathy means to “feel for” someone. Sympathy is generally more self-oriented and distant than empathy (Bruneau, 1993). Empathetic listening is other oriented and should be genuine. Because of our own centrality in our perceptual world, empathetic listening can be difficult. It’s often much easier for us to tell our own story or to give advice than it is to really listen to and empathize with someone else. We should keep in mind that sometimes others just need to be heard and our feedback isn’t actually desired.

Empathetic listening is key for dialogue and helps maintain interpersonal relationships. In order to reach dialogue, people must have a degree of open-mindedness and a commitment to civility that allows them to be empathetic while still allowing them to believe in and advocate for their own position. An excellent example of critical and empathetic listening in action is the international Truth and Reconciliation movement. The most well-known example of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) occurred in South Africa as a way to address the various conflicts that occurred during apartheid (Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, 2012). The first TRC in the United States occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina, as a means of processing the events and aftermath of November 3, 1979, when members of the Ku Klux Klan shot and killed five members of the Communist Worker’s Party during a daytime confrontation witnessed by news crews and many bystanders. The goal of such commissions is to allow people to tell their stories, share their perspectives in an open environment, and be listened to. The Greensboro TRC states its purpose as such: [1]

The truth and reconciliation process seeks to heal relations between opposing sides by uncovering all pertinent facts, distinguishing truth from lies, and allowing for acknowledgement, appropriate public mourning, forgiveness and healing…The focus often is on giving victims, witnesses and even perpetrators a chance to publicly tell their stories without fear of prosecution.

Listening Styles

Just as there are different types of listening, there are also different styles of listening. People may be categorized as one or more of the following listeners: people-oriented, action-oriented, content-oriented, and time-oriented listeners. Research finds that 40 percent of people have more than one preferred listening style, and that they choose a style based on the listening situation (Bodie & Villaume, 2003). Other research finds that people often still revert back to a single preferred style in times of emotional or cognitive stress, even if they know a different style of listening would be better (Worthington, 2003). Following a brief overview of each listening style, we will explore some of their applications, strengths, and weaknesses.

• People-oriented listeners are concerned about the needs and feelings of others and may get distracted from a specific task or the content of a message in order to address feelings.
• Action-oriented listeners prefer well-organized, precise, and accurate information. They can become frustrated with they perceive communication to be unorganized or inconsistent, or a speaker to be “long-winded.”
• Content-oriented listeners are analytic and enjoy processing complex messages. They like in-depth information and like to learn about multiple sides of a topic or hear multiple perspectives on an issue. Their thoroughness can be difficult to manage if there are time constraints.
• Time-oriented listeners are concerned with completing tasks and achieving goals. They do not like information perceived as irrelevant and like to stick to a timeline. They may cut people off and make quick decisions (taking short cuts or cutting corners) when they think they have enough information.

People-Oriented Listeners

People-oriented listeners are concerned about the emotional states of others and listen with the purpose of offering support in interpersonal relationships. People-oriented listeners can be characterized as “supporters” who are caring and understanding. These listeners are sought out because they are known as people who will “lend an ear.” They may or may not be valued for the advice they give, but all people often want is a good listener. This type of listening may be especially valuable in interpersonal communication involving emotional exchanges, as a person-oriented listener can create a space where people can make themselves vulnerable without fear of being cut off or judged. People-oriented listeners are likely skilled empathetic listeners and may find success in supportive fields like counseling, social work, or nursing. Interestingly, such fields are typically feminized, in that people often associate the characteristics of people-oriented listeners with roles filled by women. We will learn more about how gender and listening intersect in Section 5 “Listening and Gender” .

Action-Oriented Listeners

Action-oriented listeners focus on what action needs to take place in regards to a received message and try to formulate an organized way to initiate that action. These listeners are frustrated by disorganization, because it detracts from the possibility of actually doing something. Action-oriented listeners can be thought of as “builders”—like an engineer, a construction site foreperson, or a skilled project manager. This style of listening can be very effective when a task needs to be completed under time, budgetary, or other logistical constraints. One research study found that people prefer an action-oriented style of listening in instructional contexts (Imhof, 2004). In other situations, such as interpersonal communication, action-oriented listeners may not actually be very interested in listening, instead taking a “What do you want me to do?” approach. A friend and colleague of mine who exhibits some qualities of an action-oriented listener once told me about an encounter she had with a close friend who had a stillborn baby. My friend said she immediately went into “action mode.” Although it was difficult for her to connect with her friend at an emotional/empathetic level, she was able to use her action-oriented approach to help out in other ways as she helped make funeral arrangements, coordinated with other family and friends, and handled the details that accompanied this tragic emotional experience. As you can see from this example, the action-oriented listening style often contrasts with the people-oriented listening style.

Content-Oriented Listeners

Content-oriented listeners like to listen to complex information and evaluate the content of a message, often from multiple perspectives, before drawing conclusions. These listeners can be thought of as “learners,” and they also ask questions to solicit more information to fill out their understanding of an issue. Content-oriented listeners often enjoy high perceived credibility because of their thorough, balanced, and objective approach to engaging with information. Content-oriented listeners are likely skilled informational and critical listeners and may find success in academic careers in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. Ideally, judges and politicians would also possess these characteristics.

Time-Oriented Listeners

Time-oriented listeners are more concerned about time limits and timelines than they are with the content or senders of a message. These listeners can be thought of as “executives,” and they tend to actually verbalize the time constraints under which they are operating.

Time-oriented listeners listen on a schedule, often giving people limits on their availability by saying, for example, “I only have about five minutes.”

JD Lasica – Business call – CC BY-NC 2.0.

For example, a time-oriented supervisor may say the following to an employee who has just entered his office and asked to talk: “Sure, I can talk, but I only have about five minutes.” These listeners may also exhibit nonverbal cues that indicate time and/or attention shortages, such as looking at a clock, avoiding eye contact, or nonverbally trying to close down an interaction. Time-oriented listeners are also more likely to interrupt others, which may make them seem insensitive to emotional/personal needs. People often get action-oriented and time-oriented listeners confused. Action-oriented listeners would be happy to get to a conclusion or decision quickly if they perceive that they are acting on well-organized and accurate information. They would, however, not mind taking longer to reach a conclusion when dealing with a complex topic, and they would delay making a decision if the information presented to them didn’t meet their standards of organization. Unlike time-oriented listeners, action-oriented listeners are not as likely to cut people off (especially if people are presenting relevant information) and are not as likely to take short cuts.

Key Takeaways

• Getting integrated: Listening is a learned process and skill that we can improve on with concerted effort. Improving our listening skills can benefit us in academic, professional, personal, and civic contexts.
• Listening is the process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. In the receiving stage, we select and attend to various stimuli based on salience. We then interpret auditory and visual stimuli in order to make meaning out of them based on our existing schemata. Short-term and long-term memory store stimuli until they are discarded or processed for later recall. We then evaluate the credibility, completeness, and worth of a message before responding with verbal and nonverbal signals.
• Discriminative listening is the most basic form of listening, and we use it to distinguish between and focus on specific sounds. We use informational listening to try to comprehend and retain information. Through critical listening, we analyze and evaluate messages at various levels. We use empathetic listening to try to understand or experience what a speaker is feeling.
• People-oriented listeners are concerned with others’ needs and feelings, which may distract from a task or the content of a message. Action-oriented listeners prefer listening to well-organized and precise information and are more concerned about solving an issue than they are about supporting the speaker. Content-oriented listeners enjoy processing complicated information and are typically viewed as credible because they view an issue from multiple perspectives before making a decision. Although content-oriented listeners may not be very effective in situations with time constraints, time-oriented listeners are fixated on time limits and listen in limited segments regardless of the complexity of the information or the emotions involved, which can make them appear cold and distant to some.
• The recalling stage of the listening process is a place where many people experience difficulties. What techniques do you use or could you use to improve your recall of certain information such as people’s names, key concepts from your classes, or instructions or directions given verbally?
• Getting integrated: Identify how critical listening might be useful for you in each of the following contexts: academic, professional, personal, and civic.
• Listening scholars have noted that empathetic listening is the most difficult type of listening. Do you agree? Why or why not?
• Which style of listening best describes you and why? Which style do you have the most difficulty with or like the least and why?

Bodie, G. D. and William A. Villaume, “Aspects of Receiving Information: The Relationships between Listening Preferences, Communication Apprehension, Receiver Apprehension, and Communicator Style,” International Journal of Listening 17, no. 1 (2003): 48.

Bruneau, T., “Empathy and Listening,” in Perspectives on Listening , eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 188.

Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, Truth and Reconciliation Commission website, accessed July 13, 2012, http://www.justice.gov.za/trc .

DiSalvo, V. S. “A Summary of Current Research Identifying Communication Skills in Various Organizational Contexts,” Communication Education 29 (1980), 283–90.

Hargie, O., Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 189–99.

Imhof, M., “Who Are We as We Listen? Individual Listening Profiles in Varying Contexts,” International Journal of Listening 18, no. 1 (2004): 39.

Milardo, R. M. and Heather Helms-Erikson, “Network Overlap and Third-Party Influence in Close Relationships,” in Close Relationships: A Sourcebook , eds. Clyde Hendrick and Susan S. Hendrick (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 37.

National Association of Colleges and Employers, Job Outlook 2011 (2010): 25.

Watson, K. W., Larry L. Barker, and James B. Weaver III, “The Listening Styles Profile (LS-16): Development and Validation of an Instrument to Assess Four Listening Styles,” International Journal of Listening 9 (1995): 1–13.

Wolvin, A. D. and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley, “A Listening Taxonomy,” in Perspectives on Listening , eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 18–19.

Worthington, D. L., “Exploring the Relationship between Listening Style Preference and Personality,” International Journal of Listening 17, no. 1 (2003): 82.

Zabava, W. S. and Andrew D. Wolvin, “The Differential Impact of a Basic Communication Course on Perceived Communication Competencies in Class, Work, and Social Contexts,” Communication Education 42 (1993): 215–17.

• “About,” Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission website, accessed July 13, 2012, http://www.greensborotrc.org/truth_reconciliation.php . ↵

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

The 7 TOEFL Listening Question Types (with sample questions)

The TOEFL Listening section contains seven different question types. In this post, you’ll learn what each type is and be given an example question and explanation. Just click each question type below to jump down to a detailed description. For more information, click here for a complete guide to TOEFL Listening !

The 7 TOEFL Listening Question Types

• Detail (understanding specific pieces of factual information)
• Main Idea (identifying the primary purpose of a conversation or lecture)
• Inference (recognizing implied information)
• Organization (recognizing the relationship between different pieces of information; almost exclusively used for lectures)
• Attitude (inferring the speaker’s attitude or opinion)
• Function (understanding the reason a specific thing is said)
• Categorizing (organizing ideas from the audio into categories based on their similarities and differences)

The kinds of questions that the TOEFL Listening section asks are somewhat similar to those in the Reading section (to review those, check out The TOEFL Reading Section ).

Example TOEFL Listening Questions and Answers

For an in-depth look at each question type, with an example question and an answer explanation for each type, click to expand each of the tabs below.

Detail questions are roughly equivalent to the factual questions from the TOEFL Reading section. They deal with specific facts from the Listening section, but they are not usually as specific as detail questions in the Reading section. Because you don’t have the option of listening to the recording a second time, you will depend on the information that you wrote in your notes. For this reason, detail questions in the Listening section rarely deal with very specific information like numbers or names. Instead, they focus on those facts that you would recognize as important as you listened to the recording.

Detail questions are usually in harmony with the main idea of the recording. Before you mark a final answer, revisit the main idea of the recording and make sure that your answer choice makes sense considering the main idea.

As you choose your answer choice, be careful not to fall into the trap that false friends may set for you. False friends are answer choices that use key words from the passage in a way that appears to be correct, but isn’t. They may directly contradict the information in the passage, or they may simply not make sense.

Let’s check out an example of a false friend using a question from this sample audio conversation from Magoosh TOEFL . Click that link to hear the conversation, and then check out this question:

• What problem does the student have?

(A) He received another student’s tuition statements. (B) He received a notice that his payment was late. (C) He forgot to pay tuition during a holiday week. (D) He has been barred from attending classes.

Answer and Explanation

In this question, (A) is a false friend, based on a real statement from the audio clip where the student says “I’ve received two separate statements about my tuition payments in the last week, and they seem to…it looks like they kinda CONTRADICT each other.” This indicates that the student did get an extra tuition statement, and that the extra statement seems wrong in some way. Both of these ideas would be consistent with receiving another student’s tuition statement, as indicated in A. But if you listen to the greater context in the audio track, the student actually got an additional, seemingly wrong statement for entirely different reasons!

Every listening sample will begin in the same way: with a main idea question. These questions ask you to identify the main point of the lecture or conversation. They usually take one of the following forms:

• Why does the professor ask to see the student?
• What is the main idea of the lecture?
• What subject is the professor mainly discussing?

When you see this kind of question, remember that you should only be concerned with the main idea of the passage. Supporting ideas, examples, and counter-examples will not be correct answers. Just because an answer choice is true doesn’t mean that it’s the correct answer. It must be the most important of all the correct answer choices.

But there’s one important exception to make: if the question asks for the main purpose of a conversation (like in the first example given above), that might only be talked about in the beginning of the conversation. That’s because sometimes conversations change topic, and therefore what was originally the purpose of the conversation changes slightly. So, for example, a student might go to an administrative office to ask about where they can park their car on campus, but then the conversation might change to the application process for receiving a parking permit. Now, the purpose of that conversation is for the student to find a place to park their car on campus, although a lot of the dialogue is about an application process.

In either case—in main idea or main purpose questions—the answer will often be in the very beginning of the recording, although the wording in the answer choice will be slightly different from that in the sample. For example, the wording in the question may be more abstract or general than the wording in the lecture.

For a common example of a main idea TOEFL Listening question, see the first question in Rachel Kapelke-Dale’s free TOEFL practice set , right here on the blog.

Inference questions will usually look very similar to one of these examples:

• What can be inferred from the Professor’s discussion of X?
• What will the student probably do next?
• What is implied when the speaker says this? (replay a short segment)

Sometimes, the question will replay a sentence from the recording for you; other times, you will need to rely on your notes and memory to answer the question. Unfortunately, your notes may not always be much help, since you can’t take notes on information that isn’t there. So when you’re answering inference questions, keep these pointers in mind.

• Never pick an answer that contradicts a main idea from the passage.
• As you’re listening, pay attention to the speaker’s tone.
• The correct answer will probably use some key words not found in the recording.
• The implication is very similar to what’s directly said. You do not need to make a large logical jump.

That last point is the most important one. Even though we call these questions “inference” questions, they’re very, very similar to detail questions. The information is in the recording—never draw from your own thoughts or experiences if they’re not also spoken about in the recording.

For an example of an inference question and the audio clip associated with it, let’s again revisit this example conversation audio clip, taken from Magoosh TOEFL . Then, take a look at the associated inference question below:

What can be inferred about the student?

(A) He wants to stop getting notices from the college. (B) His primary concern is being allowed to attend classes. (C) He wants to leave the tuition office quickly. (D) He is worried about accidentally paying tuition twice.

Can you see what the correct answer is? You can check your work by looking at the text and video explanation for this question . (And again, these example questions come from Magoosh TOEFL.)

Organization

Organization questions occur almost exclusively in lectures and are of three basic types. The first type will deal with the overall organization of the lecture; the second will ask you about the relationship between two (or more) parts of the lecture; and the third is similar to a function question, but deals with a whole sentence.

If you learn to notice how the information is organized automatically as you listen, then answering overall organization questions will be a breeze. When the overall organization is in question, these are some of the most likely ways that the lecture may have been organized.

• Likelihood – This type of organization is most often used when the lecture deals with different theories or possibilities. The speaker will begin with the least likely and proceed to the most likely (more rarely, s/he may begin with the most likely and move toward the least likely).
• Complexity – The speaker may list the ideas in the lecture from simplest to most complex in order to make the more difficult information more accessible.
• Chronology – Lectures in history are often (but not always) organized chronologically—that is, beginning with the first event that occurred and moving up to the one that occurred most recently.
• Comparison – This scheme of organization groups all the similarities among the items being discussed, then groups all the differences (or the other way around). The professor’s thesis statement, or statement of the main idea of the lecture, will likely give you a clue when a comparative organization is going to be used.
• General to specific – Very often, a lecture will start out with the professor talking about a general concept, and then they will start talking about some more specific details about how that idea works and examples of it in real life.
• Cause and effect – Don’t expect this to be so simple as “A happens, then B happens.” Instead, you might hear about some phenomenon, and then the professor will talk about the three main causes for that phenomenon. Or, conversely, you might hear about one phenomenon and then three different effects it has.

The second kind of organization question is the one that deals with the relationships between various parts of the lecture. For example, the test may ask you, “How does the professor explain his theory about the causes of the war?” To answer this question, you would need to look back at your notes and find the information that is relevant to that question. These questions are about the smaller relationships, rather than the overall structure.

Finally, we have the function-type organization questions. These will ask you about whole sentences that provide a clue to how the professor is structuring the lecture. For example, the professor will sometimes go off topic, give a personal example to clarify the information, or give information that is redundant. Often, s/he will announce this by saying something like “You don’t need to write this down” or “Let me show you what I mean.” To answer the third type of organization question correctly, you need to pay attention to these cues. In particular, pay attention to any time the professor appears to be digressing (going off topic), as you may be asked about the digression later.

Click here to listen to a lecture from a psychology class.

Now, click here to view an organization question associated with the lecture.

And click here to check your answer and view the text and video answer explanations .

Attitude questions, like function questions, often deal with information that’s given not just by what the speaker says, but also by how they say it. They will ask you about the speaker’s attitude—that is, what information the speaker’s intonation and word choice give you about the speaker’s feelings and relationship toward the subject s/he’s discussing. Attitude questions may also ask you about feelings that are directly stated or strongly implied, as in the following example.

In this conversation, a professor and a student are discussing the student’s difficulties in his class, and what the student should do to succeed in the professor’s class. ( NOTE: This question comes from Magoosh TOEFL . If you like what you see, consider subscribing, or check out our free trial to see more. 🙂 )

AUDIO OF THE RELEVANT PART OF THE CONVERSATION

Transcript of the audio.

Professor: Yeah, and I actually did mention that in class. You know, you really should have checked with your classmates before coming to me.

Student: Well, I’ve always studied alone before.

Professor: I don’t think students should be studying solo in any class. It’s always better to study with a partner—or, a group. It can really help avoid confusion.

Student: Yeah, I’ve really had trouble keeping up in class so far. I think I’ll join a class study group in the library tonight.

Professor: Yeah, please do. Your classmates can probably help you more than I could. You know, when it comes to organizing notes, getting together a good study strategy, eh—that sort of thing.

What is the professor’s attitude toward study groups?

(A) Professors should make an effort to organize their students into study groups. (B) They are a very important resource for exam preparation. (C) Students should create groups at the start of the semester, before exams begin. (D) Students in groups can divide the work of reviewing so that it is faster.

The trick in this question is to keep the context of the conversation in mind. The student is visiting the professor because she is having a hard time in the class, and asks the professor for advice on how to succeed. The professor then mentions study groups, and suggests that the student can benefit from studying in a group instead of by herself. So we know that the professor must think that study groups are an important resource for success, and therefore also for exam preparation. So answer choice (B) is the right answer.

As you practice, you will find that some attitude questions deal with more simple attitudes, as approval or disapproval. Others, however, may deal with more complex relationships like degree of certainty, irony, excitement, and confusion. The best way to practice attitude questions is to listen to as much natural speech as you can and pay attention to how intonation and vocal quality change with the speakers’ moods.

Function questions test your understanding of pragmatics, or the implied meaning that we get from context. They often will ask about a very particular part of the passage, even just a single word. The question will replay a segment of the recording that contains the topic of the question, and then will replay just the topic. There will be no transcriptions provided for any part of these questions—all the information will be provided through listening.

Function questions do not deal with the meaning of the words the speaker says, but rather with the information that is implied by how the speaker says them. Let’s take a look at a (partial) list of the general rhetorical functions you may need to be able to identify.

Sarcasm/irony

Irony occurs when the speaker says the opposite of what s/he means. You can generally tell when something is meant ironically because the literal meaning of the sentence wouldn’t make sense in context. Sarcasm is a particular kind of irony that is most likely to occur in a conversation. Usually when speakers are being sarcastic, they will use exaggerated intonation to show this. For example, you may hear someone say “That’s just GREAT,” meaning that whatever they’re talking about is terrible.

Redirection

A speaker may use redirection to change the topic or the direction of a conversation. Professors may use it in lectures to introduce a new point or to get back on track after getting off topic. Common redirect words include “OK,” “so,” and “alright.”

Correction/clarification

Sometimes, professors in lecture will make a mistake and then have to correct themselves. Any correction is a likely topic for a function question. A clarification is when the speaker did not make a mistake, but still wants to add more information to make sure the listener understands. The phrases used to introduce corrections and clarifications are sometimes similar, so watch out for these ones, and use context and intonation to help you decide what the speaker means. Sentences that contain corrections and clarifications often begin with phrases like “What I meant was…,” “I mean”, “That is,” and “Or rather.”

Implied/indirect questions and requests

An implied or indirect question is when the speaker either asks a question, expecting the listener to answer a slightly different question, or makes a statement, expecting the listener to understand that he is actually asking a question and expects an answer. For example, imagine someone saying “I wonder if you could open the window.” The speaker knows you can open the window, and s/he isn’t actually asking if you can open the window. Instead, he’s asking if you are willing to. Another example would be a student who tells his professor, “You’re probably too busy to meet with me, aren’t you?” The student is actually requesting that the professor meet with him/her.

Rhetorical questions

Now, answer this question:

What does the professor mean when she says this?

(A) Traumatic experiences feel like they take a long time to reach completion. (B) Traumatic experiences can haunt the memory and never leave a person’s mind. (C) Traumatic experiences sometimes occur in repetitious patterns in people’s lives. (D) Traumatic experiences can seem more debilitating than they really are.

Categorizing

Categorizing questions ask you to sort key items from the lecture according to certain criteria. Some of the answers will usually be stated, whereas others will be implied, and the categories will usually differ from the most obvious ones mentioned in the lecture. Let’s take a look at an example.

First, you will listen to part of a lecture from a university classroom. When you’re ready, listen to this five-minute lecture .

The categorizing question for this lecture is in the form of a chart. Here are the instructions:

The professor describes various features of EMDR compared to other forms of therapy. For each of the following, indicate whether it is a feature of EMDR or of another form of therapy.

For each item, check the appropriate box.

By looking at this chart by itself, you may assume that the lecture is about both EDMR and other kinds of therapy. However, the lecture focuses mainly on EDMR. The best approach to this question is to determine which statements are true about EDMR. Since you can only check one box for each statement, the ones that are not true for EDMR must be true for other therapies.

There are a few different types of categorization charts you might see on the TOEFL. The categorization chart above is one. Beside that, you might see charts that ask you to do any of the following:

• Indicate whether the given statements are true or not (similar to the chart above, but with “yes” and “on” in each heading instead of topics)
• Put events in order from first to last
• Connect a few key terms to their definitions

These questions have slightly different appearances, but you do basically the same thing. To answer these questions correctly, it helps to have a bit of strategy. Read the chart twice: once to see all of the information, and a second time to fill in the answers. When you are going through and filling in the answers, start with the ones you’re most confident in. Save the stuff you’re unsure of for last. Doing that makes it easier to stay focused on one piece of information at a time and helps to build a bit of confidence.

Kate has 6 years of experience in teaching foreign language. She graduated from Sewanee in 2012, where she studied and taught German, and recently returned from a year spent teaching English in a northern Russian university. Follow Kate on Google+ !

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6 responses to “The 7 TOEFL Listening Question Types (with sample questions)”

The first hyperlink does not work.

In Specfic Detail Qs: “A more difficult question may ask you to draw from several parts of the passage at once to determine the correct answer.” Passage? You mean the excerpt? Aren’t we supposed to find the information from the audio part?

You’re right! I fixed both of those. The link now works, and the post should have said “parts of the recording .” Thanks!

hello, Is this an updated section for 2020?

Hi Ahmed, this post was updated on December 10, 2020.

Mistakes in the article also, mismatched links!

Hi Valeriy,

Would you mind being more specific about what issues you found in the article? I did not find any issues with the links, although you may need to be logged into your Magoosh account for some of them to work. Also, if you found mistakes, please let us know so that we can address them.

Thank you! 🙂

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TOEFL iBT ®  Test

The premier test of academic English communication

Learn more by selecting any step in your TOEFL iBT ®  journey.

TOEFL iBT Listening Section

The TOEFL iBT Listening section is designed to measure your ability to understand conversations and lectures in English. It includes listening for:

• basic comprehension
• understanding the speaker's attitude and degree of certainty
• connecting information

Listening questions

You’ll hear lectures and conversations in this section. Both use language you would hear on a university campus.

• 3 lectures, 3-5 minutes each, some with classroom discussion; 6 questions per lecture
• 2 conversations, 3 minutes each; 5 questions per conversation

You can take notes on any audio item throughout the test to help you answer questions.

Test time : It should take about 36 minutes to complete the Listening section.

Listening videos

Watch these videos to learn about the types of questions in the Listening section, plus helpful tips.

Gist-Content and Gist-Purpose

Identify the main point or purpose of the conversation or lecture.

View Transcript

Identify specific facts from the conversation or lecture.

Understand why a speaker said something.

Recognize how a speaker feels about something.

Organization

Understand why the lecture is structured the way it is.

Connecting Content

Predict an outcome, draw a conclusion or understand a cause-and-effect relationship.

Recognize information that is implied but not directly stated.

The Listening section includes native-speaker English accents from North America, the U.K., New Zealand or Australia to better reflect the variety of accents you might encounter while studying abroad. For example, listen to this talk about the  greenhouse effect (MP3) . The lecturer is from the U.K.

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What Is Active Listening and How Can You Improve This Key Skill?

Learn active listening techniques that will help you become a better communicator. 

Active listening is a key communication skill that involves absorbing the information someone shares with you, and reflecting back—through questions and your body language—that you heard them. Active listening is considered a valuable workplace skill because it can often lead to clearer communication and build more effective relationships with your colleagues, manager, and clients.

As with any skill, you can improve active listening with practice and by approaching conversations with greater intentionality. In this article, we'll go over what it means to actively listen and review seven ways you can improve your listening abilities.  

What is active listening?

Oftentimes, we don't retain what we hear. In fact, the average listener only remembers 25 percent of a talk or lecture two months later, according to testing from Harvard Business Review [ 1 ]. Active listening requires much deeper attention and empathy, which ideally leads to a greater understanding. It is the practice of paying full attention to what someone is saying in order to demonstrate unconditional acceptance and unbiased reflection, according to researcher Harry Weger [ 2 ].

Carl Rogers originally developed the methodology, sometimes known as “reflective listening,” for psychologists in the 1950s [ 3 ]. It has since been used in fields such as business and education. When we practice active listening, two outcomes typically happen: You retain important information and the person speaking to you feels understood.

Benefits of active listening

The practice of being more conscious while listening can benefit your career. In your day-to-day conversations with colleagues, in networking, in sustaining genuine connections as a manager, listening makes people feel heard. Empathy, the basis of active listening, is crucial in building meaningful relationships. Active listening can even help you manage your emotions, retain data and information better, and resolve conflict.

Demand for social and emotional skills, including active listening, is projected to grow by more than 20 percent across all industries between 2016 and 2030, according to McKinsey [ 4 ]. Further, research suggests that good interpersonal skills are a strong predictor of workplace success overall, due to the link between team effectiveness, empathy, and inclusivity [ 5 ].

Learn more: 22 Ways to Improve Your Communication Skills in the Workplace

To get a better sense of active listening, watch this video from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School:

7 active listening techniques

If you're interested in improving your active listening skill, the techniques listed below may be useful. They are derived from the notion that active listening is a practice that can always be improved.

1. Focus on the intent and purpose of the conversation.

Active listening begins with an intent to be conscious and receptive to the other person—including the intent and purpose of the conversation—in order to truly understand and empathize with them. Incorporating mindfulness into active listening means that the speaker has your full attention.

Being mindful generally means being respectful and aware of the present moment. No daydreaming, no interrupting, and no thinking about what you're going to say in response. Instead, take in the content and purpose of their words and body language. That way, you and the speaker build an authentic connection.

2. Pay attention to body language.

Much of communication relies on the nonverbal. In fact, in face-to-face conversation, communication is 55 percent nonverbal, 38 percent vocal, and 7 percent words, according to researcher Albert Mehrabian [ 6 ].

Body language refers to the conscious and unconscious gestures and movements that express or convey information. It can include facial expressions, posture, hand gestures, eye contact or movement, and touch. When listening to others, consider what your body language says. Nodding your head, making eye contact, or smiling (if appropriate) are excellent cues to show that you're paying attention.  

3. Give encouraging verbal cues.

Verbal cues are responses a listener may express to show they understand what's being shared. This includes what Wharton professor Maurice Schweitzer considers “minimal encouragers,” such as replying “yes, I see” or “mmhmm” or “I understand.” These are often used alongside gestures and expressions, such as smiling or nodding.

In turn, the speaker might give verbal cues when they want the listener to pay extra attention, like speaking more slowly or loudly to emphasize certain points, stressing certain words, using a different tone of voice, or pausing. In that silence, they might expect a response from their listener.

Neurodivergence: Listening with the ears

Neurodiversity is "a concept where neurological differences are to be recognized and respected as any other human variation. These differences can include those labeled as Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Dyscalculia, Autistic Spectrum, Tourette Syndrome, and others [ 7 ] ."

While many of us might consider eye contact and body language to be hallmarks of good communication, neurodivergent individuals may communicate in different ways than we are used to. This could manifest in less eye contact and more limited body language, as well as more blunt and unfiltered use of language. 

When in conversation with neurodivergent individuals, practice content-oriented actions like paraphrasing, summarizing, and asking questions to help the other person feel heard. 

4. Clarify and paraphrase information.

Sometimes, it is not enough to nod and maintain eye contact in a conversation. In the workplace, you might have doubts about whether your mind grasped the full picture. Clarifying and paraphrasing the information back to the speaker can help both of you fill in any gaps in understanding.

In formal situations, with a supervisor or a professor: Paraphrasing information can help you ensure that you have completely and accurately understood what the other person is trying to communicate.

Supervisor: “I just wrapped up a meeting with the executive staff, and your budget proposal has been conditionally approved for next quarter.”

Direct report: “So we can begin hiring for the new roles as long as we meet our quarterly goal? Is that correct?”

Supervisor: “Yes, exactly.”

5. Ask questions.

Asking questions can eliminate confusion. You may think you have processed most of what they said, but you still have questions. By asking clarifying questions, you ensure you have heard the correct information.

As an active listener, you can also demonstrate interest by asking questions. Asking an open-ended question can encourage the speaker to elaborate on an important or interesting idea. It also shows that you have been listening attentively up to that point, and you want to know more. This can nurture a bond between the speaker and listener.

6. Refrain from judgment.

When practicing active listening, it is important to remain open, neutral, and nonjudgmental. What’s so wonderful about taking the steps to become a better listener is that you can engage with new ideas, perspectives, and opportunities that you may never have accessed previously. Withholding judgment, avoiding criticism, and approaching each conversation with an open mind can open many doors.

7. Summarize, share, and reflect.

Toward the end of your interaction, make sure you end on a high note. Share a quick summary or a few notes about what the speaker said. If prompted, give your thoughts and opinions in a way that demonstrates you have digested the information. In informal settings, sharing thoughts and feelings may lead to deeper and meaningful conversations.

After the interaction, reflect on what you learned. Whether it was a lecture, interview, or a conversation with an old friend, you may have strong feelings or ideas that need to be processed or written down. You may want to share your reflections with your teacher, colleague, or friend. Feel free to reach out to them and engage with them after the initial interaction.

Build job-ready communication skills at your own pace with the Achieving Personal and Professional Success Specialization from the University of Pennsylvania, or practice the fundamentals of conflict resolution and intercultural communication with the Conflict Management Specialization from the University of California Irvine.

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Article sources

Harvard Business Review. “ Listening to People .  https://hbr.org/1957/09/listening-to-people." Accessed May 18, 2023.

International Journal of Listening. " Active Listening in Peer Interviews: The Influence of Message Paraphrasing on Perceptions of Listening Skill , https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10904010903466311." Accessed May 18, 2023.

American Psychological Association. “ Behind the Mirror , https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/hum-42-354.pdf." Accessed May 18, 2023.

McKinsey & Company. “ Skill Shift Automation and the Future of the Workforce , https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/public%20and%20social%20sector/our%20insights/skill%20shift%20automation%20and%20the%20future%20of%20the%20workforce/mgi-skill-shift-automation-and-future-of-the-workforce-may-2018.pdf.” Accessed May 18, 2023.

Science. “ Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups , https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1193147." Accessed May 18, 2023.

The University of Texas Permian Basin. “ How Much of Communication Is Nonverbal? , https://online.utpb.edu/about-us/articles/communication/how-much-of-communication-is-nonverbal/.” Accessed May 18, 2023.

National Symposium on Neurodiversity at Syracuse University. “ What Is Neurodiversity? , https://neurodiversitysymposium.wordpress.com/what-is-neurodiversity/.” Accessed May 18, 2023.

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Understanding the TOEFL Listening Section

• by ApplyBoard Learning Team
• July 28, 2021

The TOEFL iBT is an evaluation of academic English skills that is accepted at institutions around the world. This focus on academic English means the TOEFL exam can help students stand out to prospective schools.

To score well on the TOEFL exam , students need to know what to expect on test day. For the listening section, students should know how to interpret and summarize academic conversations. Students studying abroad have these types of conversations often, so TOEFL helps prepare them for their studies.

TOEFL Listening Section

Students will need to complete the listening section if they take the TOEFL iBT in-person or TOEFL iBT Home Edition . The listening section is the second part of the TOEFL test. It takes between 41 and 57 minutes to complete.

In this part of the test, your student will listen to three or four academic lectures and two or three short conversations. Each lecture is around five minutes long and each conversation is around three minutes long. After each lecture and conversation, your student will answer five or six questions.

If the listening section on your student’s test includes four lectures and three conversations, some of the questions will be unscored . Your student won’t know which questions are unscored, so encourage them to answer every question to the best of their abilities.

Curious what a good TOEFL score looks like? Click here to learn more about how the TOEFL iBT exam is scored.

Each lecture is around five minutes long. This equates to between 500 and 700 words. Most of the speaking is done by a professor, but occasionally they include comments from students.

The topic discussed in the lecture will be aligned with first-year university classes. This means test-takers don’t need any special background knowledge to understand the lecture. The lecture might cover any topics from the arts, social sciences, life sciences, and physical sciences. The most frequent subjects in the practice tests published by ETS, the creators of the TOEFL, are:

• Environmental science
• Art history
• European history

This is not a complete list of possible topics. Your student may get a lecture about a different subject, so they should be prepared for any topic.

The lectures themselves are fairly specific. For example, the lecture may be an environmental science professor discussing how building houses reduces the habitats of a certain bird species.

Help your students prepare and save more with official TOEFL prep vouchers for discounts on the Official Guide to the TOEFL iBT Test, Official TOEFL iBT Practice Tests, and Graded Online Practice Tests. Need more info? Learn how to redeem TOEFL prep vouchers in 4 easy steps.

Conversations

There are two types of conversations on the TOEFL exam:

• Office hours discussions between a student and a professor
• Service encounters between a student and a person working at a campus facility

An “office hours” conversation could feature a student talking to a professor about joining a research group on campus. A “service encounter” conversation could be a meeting between a student looking for a job and a person working at an employment office.

The Questions

Each lecture is followed by six questions, and each conversation is followed by five questions. There are eight different types of questions in the listening section. All but one are multiple choice. Multiple choice questions can include four or five answer choices, and your student may be required to pick more than one correct answer.

TIP : It’s important to help your student understand the types of questions that appear on the test and how they are structured. This will make the TOEFL more predictable and help maximize your student’s success.

Gist-Content Questions

These questions test understanding of the main idea of the lecture or conversation. Example gist-content questions:

• What problem does the man have?
• What is the talk mainly about?
• What aspect of X does the lecturer mainly discuss?

TIP : The best way to solve these questions is to look for answer choices that summarize the entirety of the lecture or conversation. Encourage your student to eliminate any choices that are very specific or that refer to supporting details or examples.

Gist-Purpose Questions

These questions test understanding of the purpose of the conversation or lecture. They might look like this:

• Why does the woman visit the professor?
• Why does the professor mention X?

Your student can master these questions by taking notes . For example, they may note why the professor mentioned certain supporting examples in the lectures.

TIP : During an office hours conversation, remind your student to pay careful attention to what is said at the very beginning. Sometimes the student is visiting the professor for a reason unrelated to the main topic of the rest of their conversation.

Interested in more tips to help your students succeed in their TOEFL Exam? Discover tips to give your students extra confidence for their exam day with this TOEFL practice advice: 6 TOEFL Reading Time Management Tips for Test Day 5 Tips to Increase TOEFL Independent Writing Scores 5 Ways to Improve Practice for TOEFL Speaking

Detail Questions

These questions test your student’s ability to recall specific details and facts from the lectures and conversations. Generally, these details are used to support the main idea of the listening content. Some example questions:

• According to the professor, what are two problems associated with X? (Choose two answers)
• According to the professor, why did X occur?

TIP : Similar to gist-purpose questions, the best way to prepare for these questions is to take careful notes. Your student should note examples and arguments that are used to support the speaker’s main point. A key tip you can give to your student is carefully read each answer choice. Choices that include words they heard in the conversation or lecture are deliberately used to create attractive but incorrect choices.

Function Questions

For these questions, your student will listen to a short excerpt from the lecture or conversation. They will then be asked something like:

• Why does the professor say this? (followed by an excerpt replay)
• What does the professor mean when he says this? (followed by an excerpt replay)

TIP : These are quite similar to purpose questions. Advise your student to look for answer choices that support the main idea. They should avoid choices that present new information not found in the replay.

Attitude Questions

These questions require your student to understand the attitude of a speaker. They test your student’s ability to determine how the speaker feels about a subject. They also evaluate how certain the speaker is about specific details and whether they are attempting to use irony . They often look like this:

• Why is the woman surprised by the man’s request?
• How does the professor feel about X?

TIP : To answer these questions well, your student needs to pay careful attention to the speaker’s tone of voice. Does the speaker ever sound confused? Do they ever sound excited? Encourage your student to avoid answers that use words like “never” or “always.” These are extremes that are often used to create incorrect answer choices.

Learn more about each TOEFL section in greater detail or find out which TOEFL test is the right choice for your students.

Organization Questions

These questions test your student’s ability to grasp connections between ideas and examples. For the lectures, students will also need to understand why details are presented in a certain order or sequence. This question type generally appears following lectures rather than conversations. Questions of this type resemble these examples:

• The professor mentions the example of X. What point does he use this example to illustrate?
• How does the professor organize the details related to X?

TIP : Answering these questions requires fairly detailed notes. When your student sees one of these questions, they should look at their notes for clues about the overall organization of the lecture. They should try to determine if the details in the lecture are presented in chronological order or some other intentional sequence. If they are not sure why a specific example was mentioned in the lecture, they should check to see if the reason was given at a later point.

Inference Questions

This question type requires your student to make conclusions based on facts and details they heard. The correct answer choices are not explicitly mentioned in the lecture or conversation. But, the answers are logical and correct based on details that were mentioned. These questions usually look like this:

• What can be inferred about X?
• What does the man imply about X?
• What was the student likely doing before the conversation?
• What will the man probably do next?

TIP : When selecting an answer, your student should look for choices that use vocabulary not heard in the lecture or conversation. Encourage them to also eliminate answer choices that don’t make sense based on their overall understanding of the lecture or conversation.

Connecting Content Questions

These are the only questions in the listening section that are not multiple choice. They ask the test-taker to place a list of items into specific categories. Or, they sometimes ask the student to organize a list of items into a specific order.

For example, following a lecture about the body types of animals, your student may be required to sort the animals mentioned into vertebrate or invertebrate categories. If the lecture was about technological changes in the early motion picture industry, your student may be required to organize changes mentioned in the lecture from earliest to latest.

TIP : You can help your student master this type of question by teaching them to take organized notes . Remind them to use techniques like charts and arrows to ensure that the order of their notes matches the order used by the speaker.

Ready to save up to 30% on TOEFL, PTE, and GRE exams and simplify the application process for your students? Purchase test vouchers now .

Maximizing Student Success

The listening section is important to prepare for because it focuses on academic topics. For this reason, it’s important that students are exposed to relevant content on a regular basis. A few good examples of podcasts that can help prepare your students for this section:

• 60 Second Science Podcast from Scientific American
• Shortwave Podcast from National Public Radio
• Great Moments in Science Podcast from ABC

Each podcast is just a few minutes long. Remind your student to take notes as they listen to them. See if they can determine the main ideas of each episode, and why certain supporting details and examples are given.

Want to learn more about other TOEFL sections? Check out the links below: Understanding the TOEFL Listening Section Understanding the TOEFL Speaking Section

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15 Critical Listening

Learning objectives.

• Understand the differences between listening and hearing.
• Explain the benefits of listening.
• Understand the types of noise that can affect a listener’s ability to attend to a message.
• Define and explain critical listening and its importance in the public speaking context.
• Understand ways to improve your ability to critically listen to speeches.

Zach Graves – The Importance of Listening – CC BY-SA 2.0.

“Are you listening to me?” Often this question is asked because the speaker thinks the listener is nodding off or daydreaming. We sometimes think that listening means we only have to sit back, stay barely awake, and let a speaker’s words wash over us. While many Americans look upon being active as something to admire, to engage in, and to excel at, listening is thought of as a “passive” activity. More recently, O, the Oprah Magazine featured a cover article with the title, “How to Talk So People Really Listen: Four Ways to Make Yourself Heard.” This title leads us to expect a list of ways to leave the listening to others and insist that they do so, but the article contains a surprise ending. The final piece of advice is this: “You can’t go wrong by showing interest in what other people say and making them feel important. In other words, the better you listen, the more you’ll be listened to” (Jarvis, 2009).

You may have heard the adage, “We have two ears but only one mouth.” This saying reminds us that listening can be twice as important as talking. As a student, you most likely spend many hours in a classroom doing a significant amount of focused listening. Sometimes it is difficult to apply those efforts to communication in other areas of your life. As a result, your listening skills may not be all they could be. In this chapter, we will examine listening versus hearing, listening styles, listening difficulties, listening stages, and listening critically.

Listening vs. Hearing

Kimba Howard – megaphone – CC BY 2.0.

Listening or Hearing

Hearing is an accidental and automatic brain response to sound that requires no effort. We are surrounded by sounds most of the time. For example, we are accustomed to the sounds of airplanes, lawn mowers, furnace blowers, the rattling of pots and pans, and so on. We hear those incidental sounds and, unless we have a reason to do otherwise, we train ourselves to ignore them. We learn to filter out sounds that mean little to us, just as we choose to hear our ringing cell phones and other sounds that are more important to us.

Listening, on the other hand, is purposeful and focused rather than accidental. As a result, it requires motivation and effort. Listening , at its best, is active, focused, and concentrated attention for the purpose of understanding the meanings expressed by a speaker. We are not always the best listeners. Later in this chapter, we will examine some of the reasons why and some strategies for becoming more active critical listeners.

Hearing is an accidental and automatic brain response to sound that requires no effort.

Listening is active, focused, and concentrated attention for the purpose of understanding the meanings expressed by a speaker.

Benefits of Listening

Try not to take listening for granted. Before the invention of writing, people conveyed virtually all knowledge through some combination of showing and telling. Elders recited tribal histories to attentive audiences. Listeners received religious teachings enthusiastically. Myths, legends, folktales, and stories for entertainment only survived because audiences were eager to listen. Nowadays, however, you can gain information and entertainment through reading and electronic recordings rather than through real-time listening. If you become distracted and let your attention wander, you can go back and replay a recording. Despite that fact, you can still gain at least four compelling benefits by becoming more active and competent at real-time listening.

You Become a Better Student

When you focus on the material presented in a classroom, you will be able to identify the words used in a lecture and the way they were emphasized. Listening instead of hearing will help you understand the more complex meanings of the words said in a lecture. You will take better notes, and you will more accurately remember the instructor’s claims, information, and conclusions. Many times, instructors give verbal cues about what information is important, specific expectations about assignments, and even what material is likely to be on an exam, so careful listening can be beneficial.

You Become a Better Friend

When you give your best attention to people expressing thoughts and experiences that are important to them, those individuals are likely to see you as someone who cares about their well-being. This fact is especially true when you give your attention only and refrain from interjecting opinions, judgments, and advice.

People Will Perceive You as Intelligent and Perceptive

When you listen well to others, you reveal yourself as being curious and interested in people and events. Also, your ability to understand the meanings of what you hear will make you a more knowledgeable and thoughtful person.

Good Listening Can Help Your Public Speaking

When you listen well to others, you start to pick up more on the stylistic components related to how people form arguments and present information. As a result, you can analyze what you think works and doesn’t work in others’ speeches, which can help you transform your speeches in the process. For example, paying attention to how others cite sources orally during their speeches may give you ideas about how to more effectively cite sources in your presentation.

Listening Styles

John Benson – Listening Styles – CC BY 2.0.

If listening were easy, and if all people went about it in the same way, the task for a public speaker would be much easier. Even Aristotle, as long ago as 325 BC, recognized that listeners in his audience were varied in listening style . He differentiated them as follows:

Rhetoric falls into three divisions, determined by the three classes of listeners to speeches. For of the three elements in speech-making—speaker, subject, and person addressed—it is the last one, the hearer, that determines the speech’s end and object. The hearer must be either a judge, with a decision to make about things past or future, or an observer. A member of the assembly decides about future events, a juryman about past events: while those who merely decide on the orator’s skill are observers (Aristotle, c. 350 BCE).

Thus, Aristotle classified listeners into those who would be using the speech to make decisions about past events, those who would make decisions affecting the future, and those who would evaluate the speaker’s skills. This is all the more remarkable when we consider that Aristotle’s audiences were composed exclusively of male citizens of one city-state, all prosperous property owners.

Our audiences today are likely to be much more heterogeneous. Think about the classroom audience that will listen to your speeches in this course. Your classmates come from many religious and ethnic backgrounds. Some of them may speak English as a second language. Some might be survivors of war-torn parts of the world such as Bosnia, Darfur, or northwest China. Being mindful of such differences will help you prepare a speech in which you minimize the potential for misunderstanding.

Listening style is the way an audience member listens to the speech.

Part of the potential for misunderstanding is the difference in listening styles. In an article in the International Journal of Listening , Watson, Barker, and Weaver (Watson, et al., 1995) identified four listening styles: people, action, content, and time.

The people-oriented listener is interested in the speaker. People-oriented listeners listen to the message in order to learn how the speaker thinks and how they feel about their message. For instance, when people-oriented listeners listen to an interview with a famous rap artist, they are likely to be more curious about the artist as an individual than about music, even though the people-oriented listener might also appreciate the artist’s work. If you are a people-oriented listener, you might have certain questions you hope will be answered, such as: Does the artist feel successful? What’s it like to be famous? What kind of educational background does he or she have? In the same way, if we’re listening to a doctor who responded to the earthquake crisis in Haiti, we might be more interested in the doctor as a person than in the state of affairs for Haitians. Why did he or she go to Haiti? How did he or she get away from his or her normal practice and patients? How many lives did he or she save? We might be less interested in the equally important and urgent needs for food, shelter, and sanitation following the earthquake.

The people-oriented listener is likely to be more attentive to the speaker than to the message. If you tend to be such a listener, understand that the message is about what is important to the speaker.

Action-oriented listeners are primarily interested in finding out what the speaker wants. Does the speaker want votes, donations, volunteers, or something else? It’s sometimes difficult for an action-oriented speaker to listen through the descriptions, evidence, and explanations with which a speaker builds his or her case.

Action-oriented listening is sometimes called task-oriented listening. In it, the listener seeks a clear message about what needs to be done and might have less patience for listening to the reasons behind the task. This can be especially true if the reasons are complicated. For example, when you’re a passenger on an airplane waiting to push back from the gate, a flight attendant delivers a brief speech called the preflight safety briefing. The flight attendant does not read the findings of a safety study or the regulations about seat belts. The flight attendant doesn’t explain that the content of his or her speech is actually mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. Instead, the attendant says only to buckle up so we can leave. An action-oriented listener finds “buckling up” a more compelling message than a message about the underlying reasons.

Content-oriented listeners are interested in the message itself, whether it makes sense, what it means, and whether it’s accurate. When you give a speech, many members of your classroom audience will be content-oriented listeners who will be interested in learning from you. You, therefore, have an obligation to represent the truth in the fullest way you can. You can emphasize an idea, but if you exaggerate, you could lose credibility in the minds of your content-oriented audience. You can advocate ideas that are important to you, but if you omit important limitations, you are withholding part of the truth and could leave your audience with an inaccurate view.

Imagine you’re delivering a speech on the plight of orphans in Africa. If you just talk about the fact that there are over forty-five million orphans in Africa but don’t explain why you’ll sound like an infomercial. In such an instance, your audience’s response is likely to be less enthusiastic than you might want. Instead, content-oriented listeners want to listen to well-developed information with solid explanations.

People who are  time-oriented listeners   prefer a message that gets to the point quickly. Time-oriented listeners can become impatient with slow delivery or lengthy explanations. This kind of listener may be receptive for only a brief amount of time and may become rude or even hostile if the speaker expects a longer focus of attention. Time-oriented listeners convey their impatience through eye rolling, shifting about in their seats, checking their cell phones, and other inappropriate behaviors. If you’ve been asked to speak to a group of middle-school students, you need to realize that their attention spans are simply not as long as those of college students. This is an important reason speeches to young audiences must be shorter or broken up by more variety than speeches to adults.

In your professional future, some of your audience members will have real-time constraints, not merely perceived ones. Imagine that you’ve been asked to deliver a speech on a new project to the board of directors of a local corporation. Chances are the people on the board of directors are all pressed for time. If your speech is long and filled with overly detailed information, time-oriented listeners will simply start to tune you out as you’re speaking. Obviously, if time-oriented listeners start tuning you out, they will not be listening to your message. This is not the same thing as being a time-oriented listener who might be less interested in the message content than in its length.

Types of Listeners

The people-oriented listener is interested in the speaker.

The action-oriented listener is primarily interested in finding out what the speaker wants.

The content-oriented listener  is interested in the message itself, whether it makes sense, what it means, and whether it’s accurate.

The time-oriented listener prefers a message that gets to the point quickly.

Why Listening Is Difficult

Ian T. McFarland – Listen – CC BY-SA 2.0.

At times, everyone has difficulty staying completely focused during a lengthy presentation. We can sometimes have difficulty listening to even relatively brief messages. Some of the factors that interfere with good listening might exist beyond our control, but others are manageable. It’s helpful to be aware of these factors so that they interfere as little as possible with understanding the message.

Noise is one of the biggest factors to interfere with listening. Noise can be defined as anything that interferes with your ability to attend to and understand a message. There are many kinds of noise, but we will focus on only the four you are most likely to encounter in public speaking situations: physical noise, psychological noise, physiological noise, and semantic noise.

Physical Noise

Physical noise   consists of various sounds in an environment that interfere with a source’s ability to hear. Construction noises right outside a window, planes flying directly overhead, or loud music in the next room can make it difficult to hear the message being presented by a speaker even if a microphone is being used. It is sometimes possible to manage the context to reduce the noise. Closing a window might be helpful. Asking the people in the next room to turn their music down might be possible. Changing to a new location is more difficult, as it involves finding a new location and having everyone get there.

Psychological Noise

Psychological noise consists of distractions to a speaker’s message caused by a receiver’s internal thoughts. For example, if you are preoccupied with personal problems, it is difficult to give your full attention to understanding the meanings of a message. The presence of another person to whom you feel attracted, or perhaps a person you dislike intensely, can also be psychosocial noise that draws your attention away from the message.

Physiological Noise

Physiological noise consists of distractions to a speaker’s message caused by a listener’s own body. Maybe you’re listening to a speech in class around noon and you haven’t eaten anything. Your stomach may be growling and your desk is starting to look tasty. Maybe the room is cold and you’re thinking more about how to keep warm than about what the speaker is saying. In either case, your body can distract you from attending to the information being presented.

Semantic Noise

Semantic noise occurs when a receiver experiences confusion over the meaning of a source’s word choice. While you are attempting to understand a particular word or phrase, the speaker continues to present the message. While you are struggling with a word interpretation, you are distracted from listening to the rest of the message. One of the authors was listening to a speaker who mentioned using a sweeper to clean carpeting. The author was confused, as she did not see how a broom would be effective in cleaning carpeting. Later, the author found out that the speaker was using the word “sweeper” to refer to a vacuum cleaner; however, in the meantime, her listening was hurt by her inability to understand what the speaker meant. Another example of semantic noise is the euphemism. Euphemism is diplomatic language used for delivering unpleasant information. For instance, if someone is said to be “flexible with the truth,” it might take us a moment to understand that the speaker means this person sometimes lies.

  Noise can be defined as anything that interferes with your ability to attend to and understand a message.

Physical noise consists of various sounds in an environment that interfere with a source’s ability to hear.

Psychological noise consists of distractions to a speaker’s message caused by a receiver’s internal thoughts.

Physiological noise consists of distractions to a speaker’s message caused by a listener’s own body.

Semantic noise occurs when a receiver experiences confusion over the meaning of a source’s word choice.

Examples of Noise

Many distractions are not the fault of the listener or the speaker. However, when you are the speaker, being aware of these sources of noise , or distractions that keep a person from listening, can help you reduce some of the noise that interferes with your audience’s ability to understand you.

Attention Span

A person can only maintain focused attention for a finite length of time. In his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business , New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education professor Neil Postman argued that modern audiences have lost the ability to sustain attention to a message (Postman, 1985). More recently, researchers have engaged in an ongoing debate over whether Internet use is detrimental to attention span (Carr, 2010). Whether or not these concerns are well founded, you have probably noticed that even when your attention is “glued” to something in which you are deeply interested, every now and then you pause to do something else, such as getting a drink of water, stretching, or looking out the window.

The limits of the human attention span can interfere with listening, but listeners and speakers can use strategies to prevent this interference. As many classroom instructors know, listeners will readily renew their attention when the presentation includes frequent breaks in pacing (Middendorf & Kalish, 1996). For example, a fifty- to seventy-five-minute class session might include some lecture material alternated with questions for class discussion, video clips, handouts, and demonstrations. Instructors who are adept at holding listeners’ attention also move about the front of the room, writing on the board, drawing diagrams, and intermittently using slide transparencies or PowerPoint slides.

If you have instructors who do a good job of keeping your attention, they are positive role models showing strategies you can use to accommodate the limitations of your audience’s attention span.

Receiver Biases

Good listening involves keeping an open mind and withholding judgment until the speaker has completed the message. Conversely, biased listening is characterized by jumping to conclusions; the biased listener believes, “I don’t need to listen because I already know what I think.” Reciever bias can refer to two things: biases with reference to the speaker and preconceived ideas and opinions about the topic or message. Both can be considered noise. Everyone has biases, but good listeners have learned to hold them in check while listening.

The first type of bias listeners can have is related to the speaker. Often a speaker stands up and an audience member simply doesn’t like the speaker, so the audience member may not listen to the speaker’s message. Maybe you have a classmate who just gets under your skin for some reason, or maybe you question a classmate’s competence on a given topic. When we have preconceived notions about a speaker, those biases can interfere with our ability to listen accurately and competently to the speaker’s message.

The second type of bias listeners can have is related to the topic or content of the speech. Maybe the speech topic is one you’ve heard a thousand times, so you just tune out the speech. Or maybe the speaker is presenting a topic or position you fundamentally disagree with. When listeners have strong preexisting opinions about a topic, such as the death penalty, religious issues, affirmative action, abortion, or global warming, their biases may make it difficult for them to even consider new information about the topic, especially if the new information is inconsistent with what they already believe to be true. As listeners, we have difficulty identifying our biases, especially when they seem to make sense. However, it is worth recognizing that our lives would be very difficult if no one ever considered new points of view or new information. We live in a world where everyone can benefit from clear thinking and open-minded listening.

Listening or Receiver Apprehension

Listening or receiver apprehension is the fear that you might be unable to understand the message or process the information correctly or be able to adapt your thinking to include the new information coherently (Wheeless, 1975). In some situations, you might worry that the information presented will be “over your head”—too complex, technical, or advanced for you to understand adequately.

Many students will actually avoid registering for courses in which they feel certain they will do poorly. In other cases, students will choose to take a challenging course only if it’s a requirement. This avoidance might be understandable but is not a good strategy for success. To become educated people, students should take a few courses that can shed light on areas where their knowledge is limited.

As a speaker, you can reduce listener apprehension by defining terms clearly and using simple visual aids to hold the audience’s attention. You don’t want to underestimate or overestimate your audience’s knowledge on a subject, so good audience analysis is always important. If you know your audience doesn’t have special knowledge on a given topic, you should start by defining important terms. Research has shown us that when listeners do not feel they understand a speaker’s message, their apprehension about receiving the message escalates. Imagine that you are listening to a speech about chemistry and the speaker begins talking about “colligative properties.” You may start questioning whether you’re even in the right place. When this happens, apprehension clearly interferes with a listener’s ability to accurately and competently understand a speaker’s message. As a speaker, you can lessen the listener’s apprehension by explaining that colligative properties focus on how much is dissolved in a solution, not on what is dissolved in a solution. You could also give an example that they might readily understand, such as saying that it doesn’t matter what kind of salt you use in the winter to melt ice on your driveway, what is important is how much salt you use.

Sources of noise , or distractions that keep a person from listening, include attention span, receiver bias, and listening or receiver apprehension.

Stages of Listening

Figure 3: Stages of Feedback

As you read earlier, there are many factors that can interfere with listening, so you need to be able to manage a number of mental tasks at the same time in order to be a successful listener. Author Joseph DeVito has divided the listening process into five stages: receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding (DeVito, 2000).

Receiving is the intentional focus on hearing a speaker’s message, which happens when we filter out other sources so that we can isolate the message and avoid the confusing mixture of incoming stimuli. At this stage, we are still only hearing the message. Notice in Figure 3: Stages of Feedback that this stage is represented by the ear because it is the primary tool involved with this stage of the listening process.

One of the authors of this book recalls attending a political rally for a presidential candidate at which about five thousand people were crowded into an outdoor amphitheater. When the candidate finally started speaking, the cheering and yelling was so loud that the candidate couldn’t be heard easily despite using a speaker system. In this example, our coauthor had difficulty receiving the message because of the external noise. This is only one example of the ways that hearing alone can require sincere effort, but you must hear the message before you can continue the process of listening.

Understanding

In the understanding stage, we attempt to learn the meaning of the message, which is not always easy. For one thing, if a speaker does not enunciate clearly, it may be difficult to tell what the message was—did your friend say, “I think she’ll be late for class,” or “my teacher delayed the class”? Notice in Figure 3:  Stages of Feedback that stages two, three, and four are represented by the brain because it is the primary tool involved with these stages of the listening process.

Even when we have understood the words in a message, because of the differences in our backgrounds and experience, we sometimes make the mistake of attaching our own meanings to the words of others. For example, say you have made plans with your friends to meet at a certain movie theater, but you arrive and nobody else shows up. Eventually, you find out that your friends are at a different theater all the way across town where the same movie is playing. Everyone else understood that the meeting place was the “west side” location, but you wrongly understood it as the “east side” location and therefore missed out on part of the fun.

The consequences of ineffective listening in a classroom can be much worse. When your professor advises students to get an “early start” on your speech, he or she probably hopes that you will begin your research right away and move on to developing a thesis statement and outlining the speech as soon as possible. However, students in your class might misunderstand the instructor’s meaning in several ways. One student might interpret the advice to mean that as long as she gets started, the rest of the assignment will have time to develop itself. Another student might instead think that to start early is to start on the Friday before the Monday due date instead of Sunday night.

So much of the way we understand others is influenced by our own perceptions and experiences. Therefore, at the understanding stage of listening, we should be on the lookout for places where our perceptions might differ from those of the speaker.

Remembering

Remembering begins with listening; if you can’t remember something that was said, you might not have been listening effectively. Wolvin and Coakley note that the most common reason for not remembering a message after the fact is because it wasn’t really learned in the first place (Wolvin & Coakley, 1996). However, even when you are listening attentively, some messages are more difficult than others to understand and remember. Highly complex messages that are filled with detail call for highly developed listening skills. Moreover, if something distracts your attention even for a moment, you could miss out on information that explains other new concepts you hear when you begin to listen fully again.

It’s also important to know that you can improve your memory of a message by processing it meaningfully—that is, by applying it in ways that are meaningful to you (Gluck, et al., 2008). Instead of simply repeating a new acquaintance’s name over and over, for example, you might remember it by associating it with something in your own life. “Emily,” you might say, “reminds me of the Emily I knew in middle school,” or “Mr. Impiari’s name reminds me of the Impala my father drives.”

Finally, if understanding has been inaccurate, recollection of the message will be inaccurate too.

The fourth stage in the listening process is evaluating or judging the value of the message. We might be thinking, “This makes sense” or, conversely, “This is very odd.” Because everyone embodies biases and perspectives learned from widely diverse sets of life experiences, evaluations of the same message can vary widely from one listener to another. Even the most open-minded listeners will have opinions of a speaker, and those opinions will influence how the message is evaluated. People are more likely to evaluate a message positively if the speaker speaks clearly, presents ideas logically, and gives reasons to support the points made.

Unfortunately, personal opinions sometimes result in prejudiced evaluations. Imagine you’re listening to a speech given by someone from another country and this person has an accent that is hard to understand. You may have a hard time simply making out the speaker’s message. Some people find a foreign accent to be interesting or even exotic, while others find it annoying or even take it as a sign of ignorance. If a listener has a strong bias against foreign accents, the listener may not even attempt to attend to the message. If you mistrust a speaker because of an accent, you could be rejecting important or personally enriching information. Good listeners have learned to refrain from making these judgments and instead to focus on the speaker’s meanings.

Responding ,  sometimes referred to as feedback, is the fifth and final stage of the listening process. It’s the stage at which you indicate your involvement. Almost anything you do at this stage can be interpreted as feedback. For example, you are giving positive feedback to your instructor if at the end of class you stay behind to finish a sentence in your notes or approach the instructor to ask for clarification. The opposite kind of feedback is given by students who gather their belongings and rush out the door as soon as class is over. Notice in Figure 3: Stages of Feedback that this stage is represented by the lips because we often give feedback in the form of verbal feedback; however, you can just as easily respond nonverbally.  

Stages of Feedback

Receiving is the stage where you intentionally focus on hearing a speaker’s message. This focus happens when you filter out other sources so that you can isolate the message and avoid the confusing mixture of incoming stimuli.

Understanding is the stage where we attempt to learn the meaning of the message.

Remembering is the stage that begins with listening. If you can’t remember something that was said, you might not have been listening effectively.

Evaluating is the stage where we judge the value of the message.

Responding is the stage where you give the speaker feedback.

Formative Feedback

Not all response occurs at the end of the message. Formative feedback is a natural part of the ongoing transaction between a speaker and a listener. As the speaker delivers the message, a listener signals their involvement with focused attention, note-taking, nodding, and other behaviors that indicate understanding or failure to understand the message. These signals are important to the speaker, who is interested in whether the message is clear and accepted or whether the content of the message is meeting the resistance of preconceived ideas. Speakers can use this feedback to decide whether additional examples, support materials, or explanation is needed.

Summative Feedback

Summative feedback is given at the end of the communication. When you attend a political rally, a presentation given by a speaker you admire, or even a class, there are verbal and nonverbal ways of indicating your appreciation for or your disagreement with the messages or the speakers at the end of the message. Maybe you’ll stand up and applaud a speaker you agreed with or just sit staring in silence after listening to a speaker you didn’t like. In other cases, a speaker may be attempting to persuade you to donate to a charity, so if the speaker passes a bucket and you make a donation, you are providing feedback on the speaker’s effectiveness. At the same time, we do not always listen most carefully to the messages of speakers we admire. Sometimes we simply enjoy being in their presence, and our summative feedback is not about the message but about our attitudes about the speaker. If your feedback is limited to something like, “I just love your voice,” you might be indicating that you did not listen carefully to the content of the message.

There is little doubt that by now, you are beginning to understand the complexity of listening and the great potential for errors. By becoming aware of what is involved with active listening and where difficulties might lie, you can prepare yourself both as a listener and as a speaker to minimize listening errors with your own public speeches.

Formative feedback is a natural part of the ongoing transaction between a speaker and a listener during the speech (note taking, nodding, smiling, etc.).

Summative feedback is given at the end of the communication (asking questions, peer reviewing, etc).

Listening Critically

Kizzzbeth – Good Listener – CC BY-SA 2.0.

As a student, you are exposed to many kinds of messages. You receive messages conveying academic information, institutional rules, instructions, and warnings; you also receive messages through political discourse, advertisements, gossip, jokes, song lyrics, text messages, invitations, web links, and all other manners of communication. You know it’s not all the same, but it isn’t always clear how to separate the truth from the messages that are misleading or even blatantly false. Nor is it always clear which messages are intended to help the listener and which ones are merely self-serving for the speaker. Part of being a good listener is to learn when to use caution in evaluating the messages we hear.

Critical listening , in a public speaking context, means using careful, systematic thinking and reasoning to see whether a message makes sense in light of factual evidence. Critical listening can be learned with practice but is not necessarily easy to do. Some people never learn this skill; instead, they take every message at face value even when those messages are in conflict with their knowledge. Problems occur when messages are repeated to others who have not yet developed the skills to discern the difference between a valid message and a mistaken one. Critical listening can be particularly difficult when the message is complex. Unfortunately, some speakers may make their messages intentionally complex to avoid critical scrutiny. For example, a city treasurer giving a budget presentation might use very large words and technical jargon, which make it difficult for listeners to understand the proposed budget and ask probing questions.

Critical listening, in a public speaking context, means using careful, systematic thinking and reasoning to see whether a message makes sense in light of factual evidence.

Six Ways to Improve Your Critical Listening

Critical listening is first and foremost a skill that can be learned and improved. In this section, we are going to explore six different techniques you can use to become a more critical listener.

Recognizing the Difference between Facts and Opinions

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is credited with saying, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts” (Wikiquote). Part of critical listening is learning to separate opinions from facts, and this works two ways: critical listeners are aware of whether a speaker is delivering a factual message or a message based on opinion, and they are also aware of the interplay between their own opinions and facts as they listen to messages.

In American politics, the issue of health care reform is heavily laden with both opinions and facts, and it is extremely difficult to sort some of them out. A clash of fact versus opinion happened on September 9, 2010, during President Obama’s nationally televised speech to a joint session of Congress outlining his health care reform plan. In this speech, President Obama responded to several rumors about the plan, including the claim “that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false—the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” At this point, one congressman yelled out, “You lie!” Clearly, this congressman did not have a very high opinion of either the health care reform plan or the president. However, when the nonpartisan watch group Factcheck.org examined the language of the proposed bill, they found that it had a section titled “No Federal Payment for Undocumented Aliens” (Factcheck.org, 2009).

Often when people have a negative opinion about a topic, they are unwilling to accept facts. Instead, they question all aspects of the speech and have a negative predisposition toward both the speech and the speaker.

This is not to say that speakers should not express their opinions. Many of the greatest speeches in history include personal opinions. Consider, for example, Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he expressed his personal wish for the future of American society. Critical listeners may agree or disagree with a speaker’s opinions, but the point is that they know when a message they are hearing is based on opinion and when it is factual.

Uncovering Assumptions

If something is factual , supporting evidence exists. However, we still need to be careful about what evidence does and does not mean. Assumptions are gaps in a logical sequence that listeners passively fill with their own ideas and opinions and may or may not be accurate. When listening to a public speech, you may find yourself being asked to assume something is a fact when in reality many people question that fact. For example, suppose you’re listening to a speech on weight loss. The speaker talks about how people who are overweight are simply not motivated or lack the self-discipline to lose weight. The speaker has built the speech on the assumption that motivation and self-discipline are the only reasons why people can’t lose weight. You may think to yourself, what about genetics? By listening critically, you will be more likely to notice unwarranted assumptions in a speech, which may prompt you to question the speaker if questions are taken or to do further research to examine the validity of the speaker’s assumptions. If, however, you sit passively by and let the speaker’s assumptions go unchallenged, you may find yourself persuaded by information that is not factual.

Factual means supporting evidence exists.

Assumptions are gaps in a logical sequence that listeners passively fill with their own ideas and opinions and may or may not be accurate.

When you listen critically to a speech, you might hear information that appears unsupported by evidence. You shouldn’t accept that information unconditionally. You would accept it under the condition that the speaker offers credible evidence that directly supports it.

Facts vs. Assumptions

Be Open to New Ideas

Sometimes people are so fully invested in their perceptions of the world that they are unable to listen receptively to messages that make sense and would be of great benefit to them. Human progress has been possible, sometimes against great odds, because of the mental curiosity and discernment of a few people. In the late 1700s when the technique of vaccination to prevent smallpox was introduced, it was opposed by both medical professionals and everyday citizens who staged public protests (Edward Jenner Museum). More than two centuries later, vaccinations against smallpox, diphtheria, polio, and other infectious diseases have saved countless lives, yet popular opposition continues.

In the world of public speaking, we must be open to new ideas. Let’s face it, people have a tendency to filter out information they disagree with and to filter in information that supports what they already believe. Nicolaus Copernicus was a sixteenth-century astronomer who dared to publish a treatise explaining that the earth revolves around the sun, which was a violation of Catholic doctrine. Copernicus’s astronomical findings were labeled heretical and his treatise banned because a group of people at the time were not open to new ideas. In May of 2010, almost five hundred years after his death, the Roman Catholic Church admitted its error and reburied his remains with the full rites of Catholic burial (Owen, 2010).

While the Copernicus case is a fairly dramatic reversal, listeners should always be open to new ideas. We are not suggesting that you have to agree with every idea that you are faced with in life; rather, we are suggesting that you at least listen to the message and then evaluate the message.

Relate New Ideas to Old Ones

As both a speaker and a listener, one of the most important things you can do to understand a message is to relate new ideas to previously held ideas. Imagine you’re giving a speech about biological systems and you need to use the term “homeostasis,” which refers to the ability of an organism to maintain stability by making constant adjustments. To help your audience understand homeostasis, you could show how homeostasis is similar to adjustments made by the thermostats that keep our homes at a more or less even temperature. If you set your thermostat for seventy degrees and it gets hotter, the central cooling will kick in and cool your house down. If your house gets below seventy degrees, your heater will kick in and heat your house up. Notice that in both cases your thermostat is making constant adjustments to stay at seventy degrees. Explaining that the body’s homeostasis works in a similar way will make it more relevant to your listeners and will likely help them both understand and remember the idea because it links to something they have already experienced.

If you can make effective comparisons while you are listening, it can deepen your understanding of the message. If you can provide those comparisons for your listeners, you make it easier for them to give consideration to your ideas.

Note-taking is a skill that improves with practice. You already know that it’s nearly impossible to write down everything a speaker says. In fact, in your attempt to record everything, you might fall behind and wish you had divided your attention differently between writing and listening.

Careful, selective note-taking is important because we want an accurate record that reflects the meanings of the message. However much you might concentrate on the notes, you could inadvertently leave out an important word, such as not , and undermine the reliability of your otherwise carefully written notes. Instead, if you give the same care and attention to listening, you are less likely to make that kind of a mistake.

It’s important to find a balance between listening well and taking good notes. Many people struggle with this balance for a long time. For example, if you try to write down only key phrases instead of full sentences, you might find that you can’t remember how two ideas were related. In that case, too few notes were taken. At the opposite end, extensive note-taking can result in a loss of emphasis on the most important ideas.

To increase your critical listening skills, continue developing your ability to identify the central issues in messages so that you can take accurate notes that represent the meanings intended by the speaker.

Listening Ethically

Ben Smith – String telephone – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Ethical listening rests heavily on honest intentions. We should extend to other speakers the same respect we want to receive when it’s our turn to speak. We should be facing the speaker with our eyes open. We should not be checking our cell phones. We should avoid any behavior that belittles the speaker or the message.

Scholars Stephanie Coopman and James Lull emphasize the creation of a climate of caring and mutual understanding, observing that “respecting others’ perspectives is one hallmark of the effective listener” (Coopman & Lull, 2008). Respect, or unconditional positive regard for others, means that you treat others with consideration and decency whether you agree with them or not. Professors Sprague, Stuart, and Bodary (Sprague, et al., 2010). also urge us to treat the speaker with respect even when we disagree, don’t understand the message, or find the speech boring.

Doug Lippman (1998) (Lippman, 1998), a storytelling coach, wrote powerfully and sensitively about listening in his book:

Like so many of us, I used to take listening for granted, glossing over this step as I rushed into the more active, visible ways of being helpful. Now, I am convinced that listening is the single most important element of any helping relationship. Listening has great power. It draws thoughts and feelings out of people as nothing else can. When someone listens to you well, you become aware of feelings you may not have realized that you felt. You have ideas you may have never thought before. You become more eloquent, more insightful.… As a helpful listener, I do not interrupt you. I do not give advice. I do not do something else while listening to you. I do not convey distraction through nervous mannerisms. I do not finish your sentences for you. In spite of all my attempts to understand you, I do not assume I know what you mean. I do not convey disapproval, impatience, or condescension. If I am confused, I show a desire for clarification, not dislike for your obtuseness. I do not act vindicated when you misspeak or correct yourself. I do not sit impassively, withholding participation. Instead, I project affection, approval, interest, and enthusiasm. I am your partner in communication. I am eager for your imminent success, fascinated by your struggles, forgiving of your mistakes, always expecting the best. I am your delighted listener (Lippman, 1998).

This excerpt expresses the decency with which people should treat each other. It doesn’t mean we must accept everything we hear, but ethically, we should refrain from trivializing each other’s concerns. We have all had the painful experience of being ignored or misunderstood. This is how we know that one of the greatest gifts one human can give to another is listening.

Ethical listening is a concept that rests heavily on honest intentions. It is when we extend to other speakers the same respect we want to receive when it’s our turn to speak.

Aristotle. (c. 350 BCE). Rhetoric (W. Rhys Roberts, Trans.). Book I, Part 3, para. 1. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.1.i.html .

Carr, N. (2010, May 24). The Web shatters focus, rewires brains.  Wired Magazine . Retrieved from  http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_nicholas_carr/all/1 .

Coopman, S. J., & Lull, J. (2008).  Public speaking: The evolving art . Cengage Learning, p. 60.

DeVito, J. A. (2000).  The elements of public speaking  (7th ed.). New York, NY: Longman.

Edward Jenner Museum. (n.d.). Vaccination. Retrieved from  http://www.jennermuseum.com/Jenner/vaccination.html

Factcheck.org, a Project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. (2009, September 10). Obama’s health care speech. Retrieved from  http://www.factcheck.org/2009/09/obamas-health-care-speech

Gluck, M. A., Mercado, E., & Myers, C. E. (2008).  Learning and memory: From brain to behavior . New York: Worth Publishers, pp. 172–173.

Jarvis, T. (2009, November). How to talk so people really listen: Four ways to make yourself heard. O, the Oprah Magazine . Retrieved from http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Communication-Skills-How-to-Make-Yourself-Heard

Lippman, D. (1998).  The storytelling coach: How to listen, praise, and bring out people’s best . Little Rock, AR: August House.

Middendorf, J., & Kalish, A. (1996). The “change-up” in lectures.  The National Teaching and Learning Forum ,  5 (2).

Owen, R. (2010, May 23). Catholic church reburies “heretic” Nicolaus Copernicus with honour.  Times Online . Retrieved from  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7134341.ece

Postman, N. (1985).  Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business . New York: Viking Press.

Sprague, J., Stuart, D., & Bodary, D. (2010).  The speaker’s handbook  (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage.

Watson, K. W., Barker, L. L., & Weaver, J. B., III. (1995). The listening styles profile (LSP-16): Development and validation of an instrument to assess four listening styles.  International Journal of Listening ,  9 , 1–13.

Wheeless, L. R. (1975). An investigation of receiver apprehension and social context dimensions of communication apprehension. Speech Teacher , 24 , 261–268.

Wikiquote. (n.d.). Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Retrieved from  http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Patrick_Moynihan

Wolvin, A., & Coakley, C. G. (1996). Listening (5th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.

Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2017 by Josh Miller; Marnie Lawler-Mcdonough; Megan Orcholski; Kristin Woodward; Lisa Roth; and Emily Mueller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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LESSON PLANNING A LESSON PLAN ON LISTENING SKILLS Topic: Listening skills especially Global Listening

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wijaya mahardika

Dương Nguyễn

A new series of English textbooks for students have been used in schools in Viet Nam for some years and there has been a lot of feedback from teachers who have used them. One of the problems they face is that they are not satisfied with their teaching of listening. Although they have been trying to find ways to make their listening activities more effective, the results they obtain are not as good as what they want. Some conclusions have been made to explain the situation. Many teachers stated that the new textbooks which contain a large amount of knowledge, hinder the students' learning. Others stated that they have many weak students who lack vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and have poor pronunciation, reduce classroom learning potential learning environment. Sometimes the problem originates from the teachers themselves. Many teachers think that if they teach in a class with many weak students, they can't spend a lot of time teaching listening. They do not use all of activities they had designed when writing lesson plans because if they do, the weak students can't keep up. II. What the teachers know about teaching listening. All qualified English language teachers know that a listening activity consists of three stages and each stage has its own purpose. There are many different activities to use in each stage. The most important listening skills they should train the students to gain are listening for gist and listening for specific information. They help the students to focus on the information required to finish the listening tasks. What the teacher's do (as mentioned) only work well in the class where there are many good students. Many teachers have the opportunity to attend the workshops on teaching listening. They are trained to use lots of techniques for each stage of the listening. They tried them out at the workshop in the presence of their peers. They received feedback from fellow teachers and useful tips from the trainers. After the workshops, the teachers went back to their schools with the eagerness to apply what they had learnt into their own language classes. Some classes were successful while other's still had problems. There were no improvements from the weak students when they listened to the tape or did the activities instructed by the teacher. This shows that no matter how effective the listening activity itself can be, teachers and students are still facing obstacles in the classroom. III. What we should do to help develop listening skills in English language students. A. Issues relating to the language learners After finding out that our teachers used the listening techniques they were trained in the workshop, but not successfully in every language class, we looked into other issues relating to language learning which have been discovered so far.

Jenny Kalipozi

Elva Yohana

lesson plan pada pembelajaran listening yang lengkap dan terstruktur

prima ariesta

manel benkhlifa

Sense Publishers

Parviz Maftoon , Maryam Azarnoosh

Listening as a receptive skill is considered the oral skill which is the primary ability developed in first language acquisition. However, until recently listening was ignored in the second language context. Nunan (1999) states that listening is the Cinderella skill in the second language context because it is overlooked by its elder sister, speaking. Moreover, Nunan (2002) adds that EFL students spend a lot of class time for listening, but it is the most unnoticed of the four skills in EFL contexts. Traditionally, speaking was emphasized more than listening. However, with the emergence of Comprehension Approach and Natural Approach more attention was paid to listening. These approaches put their emphasis on oral perception than production; in this way, listening acquired its deserved significance. Krashen (1985) stresses the importance of comprehensible input before language production. This view bolds the role of listening in second and foreign language situations. Nord (1980) claims that some people believe language learning is not just learning to speak, but it is learning to build a mental map of meaning. Cognitive maps are, in fact, built through listening but not speaking. Like listening practice, developing listening materials has been marginally dealt with in instructional materials. Until recently, little attention was paid to develop appropriate listening materials. Most listening materials were based on audio files used for developing oral production. To open new horizons to develop listening materials in this technology era, this chapter tries to introduce different listening activities and technologies used for the development of listening materials.

Guangwei Hu

Less than two decades ago, Alderson and Bachman (2001, p. x) observed: " The assessment of listening abilities is one of the least understood, least developed and yet one of the most important areas of language testing and assessment. " The same was also true of research on listening in general and second language (L2) listening in particular. Because of this lack of understanding, listening was considered the Cinderella skill in L2 learning for many years (Nunan, 2002). Unlike the other three skills of speaking, writing, and reading, listening was not given a prominent place in the L2 curriculum. In recent years, however, research has provided sufficient empirical evidence that demonstrates the important role of auditory input in language acquisition. Research has also shown that systematic listening instruction can help improve students' ability to comprehend spoken language, which in turn can help enhance the acquisition process. The growing body of theoretical and empirical research on L2 listening has elevated the status of the language skill in and out of the classroom. Listening is now a key feature in most language programmes, where it is offered as a stand-alone course or integrated with a speaking course. Because of its central role in the L2 curriculum, listening is customarily included in high-stakes language tests and examinations (for example, university admission tests, standardized international tests such as TOEFL and IELTS). This collection provides a comprehensive overview of L2 listening and is divided up into four sections according to the predominant focus of each entry. The first section, Theorizing Listening, examines the theoretical construct of L2 listening and includes entries that discuss the linguistic, cognitive, affective, and social factors that influence L2 comprehension. Entries in this section also deal with the nature of L2 listening processes, different types of listening, macro-and micro-listening skills, the roles of metacognition and working memory in listening, and knowledge sources needed for successful comprehension. The second section, Researching Listening, provides a synthesis of findings from L2 listening research in varied learning contexts and on different aspects of

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Active Listening: Definition, Skills, & Benefits

Sara Viezzer

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc in Applied Neuropsychology

Sara Viezzer is a graduate of psychological studies at the University of Bristol and Padova. She has worked as an Assistant Psychologist in the NHS for the past two years in neuroscience and health psychology. Sara is presently pursuing a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

Active listening is more than ‘hearing’ someone’s words. It means fully attuning to the feelings and views of the speaker, demonstrating unbiased acceptance and validation of their experience (Nelson-Jones, 2014). 

When we practice active listening, we pay attention to what is being communicated both verbally and nonverbally, focussing on the content of the message but also on the interpretation of the emotions conveyed through it and the body language.

In addition, we make an effort to show our understanding of the message, acknowledging the speaker’s internal frame and reflecting back on their emotions (Miller and Rollnick, 2012). 

Components of Active Listening

The concept has its roots in the formulation of psychologists Rogers and Farson (1987), who describe active listening as an important tool to foster positive change, in both dyadic and client-helper interactions and in group contexts. 

According to their perspective, there are three main components of successful active listening:

• Listen for total meaning 

When someone is communicating a message, there are two different layers to pay attention to the content and the feeling or attitude that underlies the content. By attuning to both these aspects, it is possible to fully engage in what a person is saying and accurately understand the meaning of the message. 

• Respond to feelings 

After listening, it is essential to respond to the feeling component of the message at the appropriate time. In this way, the speaker feels believed and supported, and an empathetic relationship is established. 

• Note all cues 

Nonverbal cues include the person’s facial expressions, eye contact, body posture, and voice tone. Paying attention to these signals can help gain a better understanding of the speaker’s emotional state and level of comfort. 

Overall, by putting in place these principles, it is possible to create a climate of respect and acceptance that provides a sense of psychological security to the speaker.

This, in turn, makes people more aware of the experiences that have been shared in the conversation and open to reflecting on alternative perspectives that can prompt a personal positive change. 

Ultimately, active listening helps build deeper and stronger relationships between the listener and the speaker (Rogers and Farson, 1987).

How to Improve Active Listening Skills

Since active listening requires a set of skills that goes beyond typical social skills used in everyday interactions, it is important to increase awareness of which behaviors can improve the quality of our listening experience, serving the values of empathy , genuineness, and unconditional positive regard (Westland, 2015). 

Paraphrasing

Restating what a person has said in our own words gives us the opportunity to understand whether we captured their point of view accurately. It also conveys interest in the content of the conversation and prevents potential miscommunications (Garland, 1981). 

For example, what we might say is, “I understand that this X situation has caused Y,” followed by, “Is that correct?”. 

In this way, we encourage the speaker to keep talking and further elaborate on their thoughts.

Receiving active listening paraphrases also creates a greater sense of closeness with the listener and can increase perceptions of social attractiveness, meaning that the target person is more likely to be considered a pleasant member of one’s social circle (Weger, Castle, and Emmett, 2010).

Open-ended questions

Asking closed, “yes or no” questions can block access to the speaker’s internal frame of reference, reducing the amount of information shared and preventing the conversation from flowing.

Instead, open-ended questions do not contain predetermined answers and are, therefore, a more powerful tool for obtaining expansive responses. 

In practice, we can replace the question “Do you think this was the wrong decision?” with “What do you think about this decision?” and “How do you think you could have responded differently?”.

In general, questions starting with “What?”, “How?” and “Why” are less biased and more likely to generate a full answer.

Verbalizing emotions

Although similar to paraphrasing, verbalizing emotions refers less to the content and more to perceiving the feelings expressed by the speaker and reflecting them back (Miller and Rollnick, 2013).

It involves listening for words and phrases manifesting emotional states ranging from fear , lack of self-confidence, and boredom to cheerfulness and excitement. 

For example, if a person says, sighing, “Tomorrow I have got an early shift at work,” we can verbalize their emotions by saying, “You don’t seem to be looking forward to it.” In this way, we encourage the other person to open up and evaluate their own feelings.

Verbal affirmations

Showing short, positive expressions of interest demonstrates our engagement in the conversation, motivating the person to keep talking without interruptions (Nelson-Jones, 2014). 

Some affirmations that can act as small incentives are “I understand,” “I see,” and “That makes sense,” often accompanied by expressions of encouragement such as smiling and nodding. 

Verbal affirmations are particularly effective when used in response to content the speaker wants us to pay particular attention to and can increase the other person’s perceptions of being believed and supported. 

Asking for clarification helps to gain a better understanding of concepts that are too vague or unclear. It delivers the positive intent of wanting to learn more rather than making assumptions that are based on our own interpretative structures. 

Clarifying questions can also prompt further reflection and redefinition of ideas that have been shared, helping people to see things from an alternative angle. Some examples of clarifying questions are “What do you mean by this?”, “Can you give me an example?”.

Encouraging

Encouraging the speaker to provide further details on the topic of the conversation demonstrates our willingness to listen and dig deeper (Weger, Castle, and Emmett, 2010).

It facilitates greater openness from the speaker, fostering feelings of safety and acceptance. 

During the narration of a story, we can, for example, ask, “What happened next?” or “How did this make you feel?”.  We may also try to use a different intonation to express our interest or offer verbal prompts to elicit further reflection.  

Non-verbal affirmations

Using positive body language also shows that we are present and willing to follow the conversation (McNaughton et al., 2008). Gently nodding our head, making eye contact, and smiling are simple, supportive cues that help the speaker feel listened to and comfortable. 

Maintaining a still position can also communicate total concentration and focus, and it is, therefore, important to avoid behaviors that manifest our distractibility, such as glancing at our watch, multitasking, or daydreaming.

Awareness of our facial expressions also ensures that we are not conveying any negative or judgemental response.

Waiting to disclose opinions

Patiently waiting to disclose our opinion allows the other person’s train of thought to continue without interruptions.

In addition, it minimizes the risk of the so-called “myside bias,” which is the tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms our opinions (Stanovich, West, and Toplak, 2013). 

If we feel the urge to immediately share our thoughts, we are delivering the message that the speaker’s ideas are less important than ours, and we demonstrate boredom and impatience.

By temporarily suspending our responses, we provide more space for reflection to the speaker, and we can gain a complete picture of their point of view.

What are Some Barriers to Active Listening?

Holding judgments.

When practicing active listening, self-monitoring our thoughts can help us refrain from making judgments. Responses containing labeling or criticism can increase the other person’s defensiveness, making the free expression of thoughts more difficult (Robertson, 2005). 

To maintain an open and non-judgemental attitude, we might consider that other people’s ideas are influenced by a variety of contextual factors, including culture , educational background, religious beliefs, and the support system around them (Nelson-Jones, 2014).

With this in mind, it is easier to create a climate of acceptance and use other people’s perspectives as opportunities to enrich our own.

Suggesting solutions

It can sometimes be tempting to suggest solutions to someone who expresses a problem or concern. Although it might seem supportive, it is worth asking ourselves if the person is truly soliciting our advice or if they are just looking for a space to be listened to. 

Jumping to solutions might indicate our discomfort about what the speaker is saying, and it can create an imbalance in power dynamics, discouraging them from coming up with their own solutions (Weiste and Peräkylä, 2014).

Alternatively, we can offer empathetic responses, such as “I understand this is causing frustration,” or reflect the speaker’s emotions.

Interrupting

Interruptions convey the message that we are not interested in what the other person has to say or that we do not have enough time to listen to them. They can also indicate an attempt to dominate the conversation by imposing their own opinion, which might leave the speaker less motivated to disclose deeper and more meaningful content. 

Waiting for natural breaks in the conversation or pausing for a few seconds before speaking are some strategies that can help maintain positive interactions with others (Lunenburg, 2010).

If we find ourselves interrupting, we might also allow the other person to continue speaking by saying, “Sorry for interrupting. Please go on.” 

Diverting the conversation

Changing the subject of the conversation shows that we are rejecting what the speaker is saying and is an indicator of unassertive communication (Weiste and Peräkylä, 2014). If we feel uncomfortable talking about a specific topic, it is more respectful to tell the other person directly and offer an alternative time to discuss. 

Diverting the conversation towards ourselves is also a major listening barrier.

Making statements such as “I had a similar situation when…” or “This is nothing compared to when I…”  will deliver the message that our experience is more relevant, introducing unhelpful comparisons with the speaker.

What are the Benefits of Active Listening?

Practicing active listening can have a positive impact in many areas of life, including personal relationships, social interactions, and work collaborations.

Building trust

When a person feels listened to, it is easier to create a relationship based on trust and loyalty. Especially when someone is dealing with hardships and problems, active listening allows us to showcase compassion, making the other person more comfortable sharing their vulnerabilities (Doell, 2003). 

In the workplace, building trust between team members helps establish healthier working relationships, boosting levels of engagement and sharing of information that is crucial for group development (Roger and Farson, 1957). 

Resolving conflicts

Sometimes, we become so entrenched in our own beliefs that it is difficult to see other people’s perspectives. Active listening gives the opportunity to understand alternative viewpoints and identify possible areas of agreement to move forward toward a resolution (Phillips, 1999).

When neither party is listening, the conversation becomes formulaic, and there is a greater risk of misunderstanding. 

Broadening knowledge

Maintaining a good level of interest in the topic of the conversation can promote understanding and learning of a variety of subjects. In personal interactions, this approach helps incorporate new knowledge and opinions into our perspective, empowering our ability to see things with greater awareness.

In the workplace, it allows us to have a more in-depth approach when trying to assimilate more details about a topic or when planning a strategy for organizational improvement.

Anticipating problems

When we make an effort to understand the speaker’s message correctly, we are in a better position to identify problems that are not immediately evident on the surface and devise a strategy to address them promptly (Phillips, 1999).

This can also limit the chance of errors occurring in the workplace, as we make sure we are not missing important information.

Promoting collaboration and empathy

Using validating words and feedback when listening to others’ experiences allows us to adopt a more empathetic attitude, resulting in greater emotional support and strengthening the quality of our relationships.

It also helps create a positive environment at work by encouraging open communication between colleagues and improving teams’ collaboration skills (Jonsdottir and Kristinsson, 2020).

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between active and passive listening.

While in active listening, the listener pays complete attention to the content of the conversation and responds accordingly, in passive listening, there is no reaction or comment to the information that has been shared. 

A passive listener simply consumes the message without showing interest in the content and neglects the details that allow a full understanding of the speaker’s intention, including nonverbal cues and hidden meanings.

An indication of passive listening is the person not being able to fully absorb the content of the message and recall it in the future.  

How can active listening help to avoid miscommunication?

Miscommunication typically occurs when there is a mismatch between our understanding and the real meaning of the message, increasing the risk of problems and conflicts.

One of the most effective active listening skills that can help avoid miscommunication is restating what the person has said, as it will clarify whether the information has been understood properly, as well as asking relevant follow-up questions. 

In addition, fully engaging in the conversation and avoiding distractions will allow most of our attentional resources to be directed toward the speaker, noticing the nuances of their opinions more accurately.

How can active listening improve a relationship?

Listening is an emotional skill that enables us to be sensitive to what others are saying, prioritizing their expression of thoughts and feelings over ours.

Through active listening, we deliver the message that we want to be there for that person, providing a safe space where they will not be judged, disbelieved, or criticized. 

When we show understanding and the ability to remember information that is relevant to the other person, we can create stronger bonds and healthier relationships based on trust and empathy (Bodie et al., 2015).

Bodie, G. D., Vickery, A. J., Cannava, K., & Jones, S. M. (2015). The role of “active listening” in informal helping conversations: Impact on perceptions of listener helpfulness, sensitivity, and supportiveness and discloser emotional improvement.  Western Journal of Communication ,  79 (2), 151-173.

Doell, F (2003). “Partners’ listening styles and relationship satisfaction: listening to understand vs. listening to respond.” Graduate thesis. The University of Toronto Psychology Dept.

Garland, D. R. (1981). Training married couples in listening skills: Effects on behavior, perceptual accuracy and marital adjustment.  Family Relations , 297-306.

Jonsdottir, I. J., & Kristinsson, K. (2020). Supervisors’ active-empathetic listening as an important antecedent of work engagement.  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ,  17 (21), 7976.

Lunenburg, F. C. (2010). Communication: The process, barriers, and improving effectiveness.  Schooling ,  1 (1), 1-10.

McNaughton, D., Hamlin, D., McCarthy, J., Head-Reeves, D., & Schreiner, M. (2008). Learning to listen: Teaching an active listening strategy to preservice education professionals.  Topics in Early Childhood Special Education ,  27 (4), 223-231.

Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013).  Motivational interviewing: Helping people change . Guilford press.

Nelson-Jones, R. (2014). Nelson-Jones’ theory and practice of counselling and psychotherapy. Nelson-Jones’ Theory and Practice of Counselling and Psychotherapy , 1-528.

Phillips, B. (1999). Reformulating dispute narratives through active listening.  Mediation Quarterly ,  17 (2), 161-180.

Robertson, K. (2005). Active listening: More than just paying attention.  Australian Family Physician ,  34 (12), 1053–1055.

Rogers, C. R., & Farson, R. E. (1957). Active listening.  Chicago, IL .

Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Toplak, M. E. (2013). Myside bias, rational thinking, and intelligence.  Current Directions in Psychological Science ,  22 (4), 259-264.

Weger Jr, H., Castle, G. R., & Emmett, M. C. (2010). Active listening in peer interviews: The influence of message paraphrasing on perceptions of listening skill.  The Intl. Journal of Listening ,  24 (1), 34-49.

Weiste, E., & Peräkylä, A. (2014). Prosody and empathic communication in psychotherapy interaction.  Psychotherapy Research ,  24 (6), 687-701.Westland, G. (2015).  Verbal and non-verbal communication in psychotherapy . WW Norton & Company.

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GOP plots revenge as Trump conviction hits Congress | The Excerpt

On Tuesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Republican lawmakers are  plotting revenge  after former President Donald Trump's hush money conviction. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise breaks down  Dr. Anthony Fauci's testimony  on Capitol Hill over the COVID-19 pandemic response. The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals blocked  Fearless Fund  from awarding grants to businesses owned by Black women. A  San Francisco program  gives homeless alcoholics booze. USA TODAY National Correspondent Deborah Barfield Berry talks about her  experience as an election poll worker . You may get another chance to see the  northern lights .

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.  This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Podcasts:  True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Tuesday, June 4th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

Today, GOP lawmakers are looking for revenge after Trump's conviction. Plus, Dr. Fauci was grilled on Capitol Hill and one of our reporters relays her experience as a poll worker.

Republican lawmakers are seeking revenge for the historic conviction of former President Donald Trump in his hush money case, which some are calling a miscarriage of justice and a political maneuver. In the Senate, a group of conservative lawmakers are pledging to stop all democratic priorities and block Biden administration nominees from approval. And in the GOP-led House, lawmakers plan to interrogate the Manhattan prosecutors that sought the conviction strip federal funding from the state of New York and to fund the efforts of special counsel Jack Smith, who's overseeing Trump's classified documents case. Their efforts may not be successful. The House's pushes will face a dead end in the democratically controlled Senate, but it shows the party's continued loyalty to Trump and the political opportunity they see to rally support for his reelection bid. On the campaign trail, they're using the conviction to their advantage. The GOP's donor platform, WinRed, was overwhelmed with traffic following the ruling. And both the Senate and House GOP campaign arms have reported a surge in fundraising. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

Dr. Anthony Fauci faced questions yesterday during a hearing from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability over the COVID-19 pandemic response. Things got heated at times, including when representative Marjorie Taylor Greene referred to Fauci as Mister instead of Dr. Fauci and said he deserves to be in prison. For his part, Fauci talked of threats to his family, faced questions on China and others. I spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent Elizabeth Weise to learn more. Beth, thanks for hopping on.

Elizabeth Weise:

Always happy to be here.

Why was this hearing held?

Well, it depends on who you ask. So this was the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, which has been looking into a variety of issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic for the last 15 months. The Republicans on the committee have tended to focus more on mistakes that were made and specifically what many of them feel were impositions on the rights of Americans. The Democrats on the committee have tended to support the CDC and the NIH and Dr. Anthony Fauci. And it was Dr. Fauci who testified for more than three hours.

So Beth, I want to walk through a few of the hearing's main focus points. Let's start with what Dr. Fauci said about threats that he and his family have faced in recent years.

Fauci especially has been the recipient, not just him, but his wife and his three daughters have been the recipient of multiple threats that have come in via email, regular mail, texts. There have been at least two people who were arrested for making credible death threats for him, which during his testimony he said, "That means someone who was clearly on their way to kill me." So these are not just people letting off steam.

One of the interesting things he said about that was, "If you are in medicine, it is not the road to fame or fortune. Public health workers and especially public health doctors do not make a lot of money, but they do it for the greater good." And he said, "We are losing some of the best talent we've got because young people who might have gone into public health aren't doing it because they're just reluctant to put themselves in their families through what they've seen public health officials like Dr. Fauci and like many state public health officials go through during and after Covid."

So one focus, Beth, was China. What did lawmakers bring up when it comes to China and the Covid pandemic?

Covid started in China around Wuhan. Nobody knows for certain how it started. There are those who believe that it was created in a lab probably at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And then there are those who believe that it naturally occurred out amongst animals and then moved into humans. One of the focuses here was, and this has long been known, that the NIH gave the Wuhan Institute of Virology $120,000 grant because they were looking into viruses and some of the representatives were saying, "Didn't that money go to create Covid?" What Fauci testified is that the money that the NIH provided was for much more general work on viruses and that the virus that that grant from the NIH was working on was phylogenetically so different from the Covid 2 virus that eventually evolved that they can't have evolved from one another.

Of course, Dr. Fauci was at the center of lots of decision making around guidelines around Covid-19 in the U.S especially in 2020 when concerns about the virus were at their peak. Beth, how did the committee approach this during yesterday's hearing?

Yeah, that was very contentious and we heard multiple, multiple representatives questioning Dr. Fauci about this during the hearing. The question is the 6-foot social distancing guidelines that were put in place early on in the pandemic. And what the committee was saying was, "You, Dr. Fauci, have said that that distance just appeared and it wasn't scientifically vetted." And they were saying, "So you just made it up and destroyed schools and destroyed a lot of America with this 6-foot requirement when there was nothing behind it."

And what Dr. Fauci said is he said, "First off," he said, "I didn't come up with it. It wasn't the NIH. It was the CDC." That's their purview, not his. But the other thing he said is when he said that in the testimony in January, he wasn't saying that social distancing had no science behind it. He was saying that 6-feet, nobody had time during Covid to go out and do a test of it should it be 3-feet or 6-feet or 9-feet? What is the best distance? We were going off of what we knew. And at the time, what scientists knew was viruses that are spread via droplets, 6-feet is a good distance for social distancing to protect people from not getting infected.

Later on, it emerged that the Covid virus could also aerosolize. And so the question was, was 6-feet the right call later on? But their focus in this hearing was you said there was no science. And he said this a lot. He's like, "That's not what I said. Let me clarify." And then he kind of sounded like a professor lecturing people.

All right. Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with you USA TODAY. Thank you, Beth.

In a closely watched civil rights case, a panel on the Eleventh Circuit U.S Court of Appeals has blocked Fearless Fund from awarding $20,000 grants to businesses owned by Black women while the case is litigated. The panel cited with conservative activist Edward Bloom that the grant program is likely discriminatory. The Appeals Court disagreed with a federal judge who ruled in September that the lawsuit was unlikely to win on First Amendment grounds. And the defeat for the Atlanta firm working to boost scarce venture capital funding for Black women could have major implications for race-based initiatives in the private sector. The Fearless Fund case is part of a growing pushback from conservative activists like Bloom who set his sights on the private sector after last year's landmark affirmative action victory over race conscious college admissions.

A program in San Francisco gives homeless alcoholics booze. Under the city's Managed Alcohol Program, up to 20 homeless people with severe alcohol use disorder are housed in a former hotel and given predetermined doses of liquor at specific intervals. The drinks dispensed by nurses as a form of medication are meant to prevent the clients from becoming overly intoxicated while avoiding the worst effects of withdrawal, which may lead to seizures and can be fatal for those physically dependent on alcohol. The issue also goes well beyond San Francisco. The CDC says about 178,000 Americans die every year of excessive alcohol use. Supporters argue a program like San Francisco's reduces harm among a vulnerable population. Critics say it enables addiction at taxpayers expense.

Poll workers help make elections happen. I spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent Deborah Barfield Berry about her experience as a poll worker and what goes into the critical role. Deborah, thanks for making the time.

Deborah Barfield Berry:

Thank you for having me.

So Deborah, you worked a stint as a poll worker. I'm just curious, what made you decide to do this?

Well tell, I've been writing stories for years about poll workers, voting issues, election issues, et cetera. And along the way, a commissioner at the federal election assistance commissioner had mentioned fairly recently, his name is Tom Hicks, that, "One day maybe you should write a first person piece about what it's like to be a poll worker." I thought, "Okay, that sounds interesting." But of course we could go on with other stories. But then this opportunity came up in the last few months to say, "Well, maybe we should take a look at what it's like to be a poll worker." And DC election officials welcomed me in.

Well, it was a great piece. So before even working as a poll worker, Deborah, you learned about some of the ways that technicians verify the accuracy of voting machines. I'm curious, what's this process like?

We went to the operations center in DC. There were rows and rows and rows of the electronic voting machines and technicians who stood at each machine, spent 30 minutes, sometimes even longer depending on the ballot that's going to be used for that particular machine, and went through it step by step. They went through testing both the accessibility issue, things like the audios for people who have hearing challenges and/or visual challenges. And they checked all of this, checked that the ballots were coming up correctly, all this stuff. And then once they were finished, then they kind of sealed the machine. They put it away and wait until it's delivered to a polling center is when they take the tape off and open it up to the public.

So you then moved to training.

What was this like and what did you learn?

It was four hours straight in the classroom. They were maybe a dozen of us or so who are participating. Based on what your assignment is, you're assigned to a different class. I was assigned to be a ballot clerk, which meant for the most part that I helped voters who come in go through the process, whether it is to use the electronic voting machine or to write it out, whichever way, if they have special challenges to their ballot or they just want to do it the simple old-fashioned way. So that was our task. We spent four hours in the class watching videos about cybersecurity, videos about making sure that the access to the polls and polling sites and equipment were accessible to people with special needs and/or disabilities.

We also learned what you're allowed to say or you are not allowed to say, how can you help voters, what are you not allowed to do. Number one, don't stand behind them. Give them room, give them space, give them privacy. And then we also did some simulations. We teamed with some of our classmates and walked through how we would help a voter. That was a real great hands-on learning experience because it's one thing to sit in a classroom and learn ABC, and D. It's another to have to actually have to do it. And that was really, really helpful before we left.

And then to top it off, Taylor, at the end of the four hours, we were given a quiz. And luckily, I aced it, but it had me a little bit nervous to remember how to make sure I passed my quiz, but I did.

In terms of the actual shift, what did this work consist of and what stood out to you?

For the most part, most of us were assigned a location. It's a six-hour shift. Once you're in it, you're in it. I have been to do one morning and one evening. I did two shifts, by the way. They're two different sites. And it started off checking in, finding your place, your particular table, because there are several different positions. Find your spot, get yourself set up, get to know your teammate. And my case, because I have not as a veteran as some of my other colleagues, they actually gave me a little refresher course because I didn't remember everything about the last test. So we did that, and then you wait for voters to come in.

And as they come in, you help them out, steers them after they voted, tell them where to go to turn in their ballot. You greet them. And it was long six hours because they weren't as many coming through, especially for the early voting period. But it was kind of cool because the ones who did come through, the voters, they clearly wanted to be there and they were excited about voting. And that made the time feel more valuable because you got to see folks who really wanted to be there. You got to meet poll workers who really wanted to help, and that made it a pretty invaluable experience.

And Deborah, as you mentioned, you've covered poll workers before. What's your biggest takeaway here after going through this experience?

I've talked to many over the years and about different things, everything from recruitment of poll workers, talking to some young ones about why they do it, why they don't. But it was very different to be in the room and see how it works. And then the time and the commitment they put into doing the work, that I have a whole new appreciation for what they do because these elections won't run smoothly without workers in the field, workers on the frontline.

All right. Deborah Barfield Berry is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you, Deborah.

If you missed last month's thrilling Northern Lights display, you may get another chance. Last month's showing of the Aurora seen as far south as Florida was highly unusual, but experts say the next several years could see even bigger displays as the sun enters the height of its typical 11-year sunspot cycle. Forecasters with the Federal Space Weather Prediction Center gave stargazers in parts of the Midwest hope for a show in the sky on Friday night into Saturday morning, but then widespread sightings didn't happen. Now they're looking at the possibility of another event over the next week, including possibly this weekend. You can stay with usatoday.com for the latest Aurora forecasts.

Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.

Opinion What were Justice Alito, his wife — and The Post — thinking?

Readers on the justice, his wife, her flag and our paper’s coverage.

Regarding the May 30 news article “ Alito says he will not recuse in Jan. 6 cases ”:

Reading Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s reasoning for refusing to recuse himself from Jan. 6 , 2021, cases leaves me sad that this is the present state of the Supreme Court, a bench formerly occupied by legends such as John Marshall and William J. Brennan Jr. I am willing to concede that Justice Alito believes he can be impartial. The context he refuses to acknowledge is how his decisions will be perceived.

Regardless of how he decides any Jan. 6 cases, his judgment will be greeted with doubt. After all, how can one separate oneself from the convictions one has expressed in public, or that one’s family members appear to have expressed? Justice Alito’s rejection of basic concern for the court’s reputation will forever be a stain on both the institution and his own legacy. I am hopeful that a future Congress will establish some oversight of justices who refuse to recuse in obvious conflict-of-interest situations.

John Hilton , Lemoyne, Pa.

The flying of these particular flags on Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s properties, together with his response to the many inquiries about his judgment, unfortunately demonstrate that he possesses a personal characteristic that all too often induces public officials to abuse the authority they’ve been given, to the detriment of the public they are to serve.

The characteristic is arrogance. And Justice Alito’s arrogance has been consistently on display over the past few weeks in his claim that he and his wife have the right to express their opinions outside of the court whenever and wherever they wish; in his rejection of the obligation incumbent on all public officials to avoid activities that the public might reasonably perceive as presenting a conflict between the official’s personal interests and the interests of the public whom the official is sworn to protect; and in his all-too-apparent lack of concern for the reputational impact these flags have upon the institution of which he is a member.

Justice Alito’s basic response to the inquiries he has received regarding these flag-flying incidents has, in essence, been “nothing more to discuss.” I, and many other Americans, disagree.

Philip Sunderland , Alexandria

The path forward

Jennifer Rubin’s May 26 online column, “ What more need Alito do before Durbin gets off the stick? ,” was dead right about how destructive the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. is, and why Justice Alito should recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases. But her criticism of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) missed the mark.

I share Mr. Durbin’s doubts that a hearing will address the heart of the issue: the Supreme Court’s embrace of a right-wing activist agenda.

Justice Alito’s conduct is, in my view, shocking. His “blame my wife” defense of the controversial flags outside his homes, and his Alaska fishing trip with Leonard Leo, both flout the requirement that all judges must maintain the appearance of impartiality.

Since Justice Roberts’s 2005 appointment and Justice Alito’s confirmation in 2006, and with the help of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former president Donald Trump , the Supreme Court has taken aim at our democracy. The disastrous Citizens United decision flooded our campaigns with dark money. In a shameful reversal, Dobbs stripped citizens of a constitutional right.

Yet all Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee adamantly opposed the ethics bill introduced by Mr. Durbin and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), claiming it would be “judicial interference.” It’s very doubtful they will cooperate to address the flags displayed outside Justice Alito’s homes.

The good news: What Mr. Durbin has been able to accomplish, despite a one-vote majority, is to confirm more than 200 well-qualified federal judges with balanced views and a shared dedication to the Constitution. As Ms. Rubin suggests, the direction of the Supreme Court must be an issue for voters. Judiciary Committee Democrats will continue to do our part to try to hold the court accountable. We hope the same is true of our Republican colleagues.

As we work, one person has the responsibility and authority to act immediately to effect the change we need: the regrettably timid chief justice. He could enforce a stronger code of conduct today.

Peter Welch, Burlington, Vt.

The writer, a Democrat, represents Vermont in the U.S. Senate, is a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Different strokes

While attending a local community meeting the other night, I was struck by the fact that our county surrogate, whose job is to handle probate cases, adoptions and the like, displays more concern for public perception of her fairness and impartiality than does Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Permitting a flag claimed by the “Stop the Steal” fringe movement to fly over his home and a banner that has become associated with that cause and that of increasing religious influence on government shows a complete disdain for the ethical standards to which all U.S. judges beneath the level of the Supreme Court must hold themselves. His actions show contempt not simply for his neighbors but for the traditions of the American judicial system — and thus for the American people’s expectation that the system itself treat them fairly.

Steven Lestition , Lawrenceville, N.J.

In the early 1990s, I was on a Pentagon assignment that required me to make public appearances around the country, speaking to veterans’ groups and various civic organizations. Frequently, these groups presented me with a small memento such as an embroidered baseball cap, a logo T-shirt or a pen-and-pencil set.

When I returned to the Pentagon, I was required to turn in these gifts to the Defense Department’s Office of the General Counsel and fill out a form describing who gave me the gift and what I did for them. A few weeks later, I would receive a package through Pentagon interoffice mail with a letter from the general counsel telling me that, in their judgment, no laws had been violated by my accepting the gift, and I could keep it.

Now, we find that Supreme Court justices accept with impunity all-expenses-paid fishing trips, sweetheart loans to buy luxury recreational vehicles and multi-thousand-dollar honoraria for making speeches.

Why was I — an unimportant Army colonel — required to abide by ethical laws far more stringent than any such rules covering Supreme Court justices?

Joseph A. Schlatter , Heathsville, Va.

What’s love got to do with it?

I’m pretty sure that if I asked my spouse to “please take that flag down because it might cause difficulties for me, and it might call into question the impartiality of the Supreme Court and thereby harm one of our country’s most important institutions,” my spouse would take it down.

Sue J. Henry , McLean

I generally agree with Ruth Marcus’s opinions, but I found myself nodding even more than usual upon reading her May 30 op-ed, “ For the Alitos, logic flies upside down .”

Upon graduation from law school some decades ago, I served as a law clerk to a federal judge who was married. The judge’s wife was a quite independent and intelligent woman. Indeed, years after my clerkship, I discovered that they voted in different parties. That fact notwithstanding, never in a million years would the judge’s wife have done anything similar to what Martha-Ann Alito did. Why? For precisely the reasons Ms. Marcus cites: “[Justice Samuel A.] Alito recognized instantly that the upside-down flag presented a problem.” Methinks Justice Alito doth protest too much.

Marc Chafetz , Washington

Do those critical of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s flags have wives? If so, do they get to tell them what they can and cannot do?

Tom Hafer , Arlington

I find it curious that Republicans are defending Supreme Court Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas by saying they shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of their spouses.

At the same time Republicans are attacking President Biden as being responsible for the actions of his son Hunter. Have they no sense of irony?

Larry McClemons , Annandale

God: “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”

Adam: “It was the woman …”

Congratulations to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., whose dedication to originalism has led him to employ the oldest defense known to mankind.

Philip Billings , Concord, N.H.

Civics lessons

Of all the newspapers in the country, The Washington Post, the District of Columbia’s newspaper, should have written a serious article about Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s unpatriotic disrespect of the flag. In doing so, The Post could have explained to readers the history, meaning and significance of the flag, and thus how dishonorable was the Alitos’ act. As a child living on various military bases where my father was stationed, I watched as the flag was taken down at sundown every day and carefully — even religiously — folded. If we were driving, we were to stop the car so that my father could stand at salute. And when driving without him, we still stopped and were silent.

Of course, those not in the military are not always schooled in the importance and meaning of the flag or how it must be honored at all times. That’s why most Americans need a tutorial to understand just how deeply unpatriotic Justice Alito’s act was. (America certainly punished Colin Kaepernick for a far less disrespectful act — and he had no obligation to the rest of us, as does Justice Alito.) Most schools no longer teach civics and government, and when they do, it’s as an elective. I am very disappointed that the nation’s newspaper missed this opportunity to teach all Americans to show their loyalty to American ideals by honoring the flag.

Nancy Luque , Washington

About letters to the editor

The Post welcomes letters to the editor on any subject, especially those that expand upon the ideas raised by published pieces and those that raise valuable questions about The Post’s practices and choices. Letters should run no more than 400 words, be submitted only to the Post and must be published under your real name. Submit a letter .

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Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87 gives new MIT graduates a special assignment

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Biotechnology leader Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87 urged the MIT Class of 2024 to “accept impossible missions” for the betterment of the world, in a rousing keynote speech at the OneMIT Commencement ceremony this afternoon.

Afeyan is chair and co-founder of the biotechnology firm Moderna, whose groundbreaking Covid-19 vaccine has been distributed to billions of people in over 70 countries. In his remarks, Afeyan briefly discussed Moderna’s rapid development of the vaccine but focused the majority of his thoughts on this year’s graduating class — while using the “Mission: Impossible” television show and movies, a childhood favorite of his, as a motif.

“What I do want to talk about is what it takes to accept your own impossible missions and why you, as graduates of MIT, are uniquely prepared to do so,” Afeyan said. “Uniquely prepared — and also obligated. At a time when the world is beset by crises, your mission is nothing less than to salvage what seems lost, reverse what seems inevitable, and save the planet. And just like the agents in the movies, you need to accept the mission — even if it seems impossible.”

Afeyan spoke before an audience of thousands on MIT’s Killian Court, where graduates gathered in attendance along with family, friends, and MIT community members, during an afternoon of brightening weather that followed morning rain.

“Welcome long odds,” Afeyan told the graduates. “Embrace uncertainty, and lead with imagination.”

Afeyan’s speech was followed by an address from MIT President Sally Kornbluth, who described the Institute’s graduating class as a “natural wonder,” in a portion of her remarks directed to family and friends.

“You know how delightful and inspiring and thoughtful they are,” Kornbluth said of this year’s graduates. “It has been our privilege to teach them, and to learn together with them. And we share with you the highest hopes for what they will do next.”

The OneMIT Commencement ceremony is an Institute-wide event serving as a focal point for three days of graduation activities, from May 29 through May 31.

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MIT’s Class of 2024 encompasses 3,666 students, earning a total of 1,386 undergraduate and 2,715 graduate degrees. (Some students are receiving more than one degree at a time.) Undergraduate and graduate students also have separate ceremonies, organized by academic units, in which their names are read as they walk across a stage.

Afeyan is a founder and the CEO of Flagship Pioneering, a venture firm started in 2000 that has developed more than 100 companies in the biotechnology industry, which combined have more than 60 drugs in clinical development.

A member of the MIT Corporation who earned his PhD from the Institute in biochemical engineering, Afeyan also served as a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management for 16 years. He is currently on the advisory board of the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning and has been a featured speaker at events such as MIT Solve. Afeyan is the co-founder of the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, among other philanthropic efforts.

“You already have a head start, quite a significant one,” Afeyan told MIT’s graduates. “You graduate today from MIT, and that says volumes about your knowledge, talent, vision, passion, and perseverance — all essential attributes of the elite 21st-century agent.” He then drew laughs by quipping, “Oh, and I forgot to mention our relaxed, uncompetitive nature, outstanding social skills, and the overall coolness that characterizes us MIT grads.”

Afeyan also heralded the Institute itself, citing it as a place crucial to the development of the “telephone, digital circuits, radar, email, internet, the Human Genome Project, controlled drug delivery, magnetic confinement fusion energy, artificial intelligence and all it is enabling — these and many more breakthroughs emerged from the work of extraordinary change agents tied to MIT.”

Long before Afeyan himself came to MIT, he grew up in an immigrant Armenian family in Beirut. After civil war came to Lebanon in 1975, he spent long hours in the family apartment watching “Mission: Impossible” re-runs on television.

As Afeyan noted, the special agents in the show always received a message beginning, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it … ” He added: “No matter how long the odds, or how great the risk, the agents always took the assignment. In the 50 years since, I have been consistently drawn to impossible missions, and today I hope to convince each and every one of you that you should be too.”

To accomplish difficult tasks, Afeyan said, people often do three things: imagine, innovate, and immigrate, with the latter defined broadly, not just as a physical relocation but an intellectual exploration.

“Imagination, to my mind, is the foundational building block of breakthrough science,” Afeyan said. “At its best, scientific research is a profoundly creative endeavor.”

Breakthroughs also deploy innovation, which Afeyan defined as “imagination in action.” To make innovative leaps, he added, requires a kind of “paranoid optimism. This means toggling back and forth between extreme optimism and deep-seated doubt,” in a way that “often starts with an act of faith.”

Beyond that, Afeyan said, “you will also need the courage of your convictions. Make no mistake, you leave MIT as special agents in demand. As you consider your many options, I urge you to think hard about what legacy you want to leave, and to do this periodically throughout your life. … You are far more than a technologist. You are a moral actor. The choice to maximize solely for profits and power will in the end leave you hollow. To forget this is to fail the world — and ultimately to fail yourself.”

Finally, Afeyan noted, to make great innovative leaps, it is often necessary to “immigrate,” something that can take many forms. Afeyan himself, as an Armenian from Lebanon who came to the U.S., has experienced it as geographic and social relocation, and also as the act of changing things while remaining in place.

“Here’s the really interesting thing I’ve learned over the years,” Afeyan said. “You don’t need to be from elsewhere to immigrate. If the immigrant experience can be described as leaving familiar circumstances and being dropped into unknown territory, I would argue that every one of you also arrived at MIT as an immigrant, no matter where you grew up. And as MIT immigrants, you are all at an advantage when it comes to impossible missions. You’ve left your comfort zone, you’ve entered unchartered territory, you’ve foregone the safety of the familiar.”

Synthesizing these points, Afeyan suggested, “If you imagine, innovate, and immigrate, you are destined to a life of uncertainty. Being surrounded by uncertainty can be unnerving, but it’s where you need to be. This is where the treasure lies. It’s ground zero for breakthroughs. Don’t conflate uncertainty and risk — or think of it as extreme risk. Uncertainty isn’t high risk; it’s unknown risk. It is, in essence, opportunity.”

Afeyan also noted that many people are “deeply troubled by the conflicts and tragedies we are witnessing” in the world today.

“I wish I had answers for all of us, but of course, I don’t,” Afeyan said. “But I do know this: Having conviction should not be confused with having all the answers. Over my many years engaged in entrepreneurship and humanitarian philanthropy, I have learned that there is enormous benefit in questioning what you think you know, listening to people who think differently, and seeking common ground,” a remark that drew an ovation from the audience.

In conclusion, Afeyan urged the Class of 2024 to face up to the world’s many challenges while getting used to a life defined by tackling tough tasks.

“Graduates, set forth on your impossible missions,” Afeyan said. “Accept them. Embrace them. The world needs you, and it’s your turn to star in the action-adventure called your life.”

Next, Kornbluth, issuing the president’s traditional “charge to the graduates,” lauded the Class of 2024 for being “a community that runs on an irrepressible combination of curiosity and creativity and drive. A community in which everyone you meet has something important to teach you. A community in which people expect excellence of themselves — and take great care of one another.”

As Kornbluth noted, most of the seniors in the undergraduate Class of 2024 had to study through, and work around, the Covid-19 pandemic. MIT, Kornbluth said, is a place where people “fought the virus with the tools of measurement and questioning and analysis and self-discipline — and was therefore able to pursue its mission almost undeterred.”

The campus community, she added, “understands, in a deep way, that the vaccines, as Noubar just said, were not some ‘overnight miracle’ — but rather the final flowering of decades of work by thousands of people, pushing the boundaries of fundamental science.”

And while the Class of 2024 has acquired a great deal of knowledge in the classroom and lab, Kornbluth thanked its members for what they have given to MIT, as well.

“The Institute you are graduating from is — thanks in part to you — always reflecting and always changing,” Kornbluth said. “And I take that as your charge to us.”

The OneMIT Commencement event started with a parade for alumni from the class of 1974, back on campus for their 50th anniversary reunion. The MIT Police Honor Guard entered next as part of the ceremonial procession, followed by administration and faculty. The MIT Wind Ensemble, conducted by Fred Harris, Jr., provided the accompanying music.

Mark Gorenberg ’76, chair of the MIT Corporation, formally opened the ceremony, and Thea Keith-Lucas, chaplain to the Institute, gave an invocation. The Chorallaries of MIT sang the national anthem.

Afeyan’s remarks followed, but were delayed for several minutes by protesters holding signs. After his speech, Lieutenant Mikala Nicole Molina, president of the Graduate Student Council, delivered remarks as well.

“Let us step forward from today with a commitment not only to further our own goals, but also to use our skills and knowledge to contribute positively to our communities and the world,” Molina said. “Our actions reflect the excellence and integrity that MIT has instilled in us.”

Penny Brant, president of the undergraduate Class of 2024, then offered a salute to her classmates, saying “I know I would not be graduating here today if not for all of you who have helped me along the way. You all have had such a profound and positive impact on me, our community, and the world.”

Kornbluth’s speech, which followed, was momentarily interrupted by shouting from an audience member, before students and other audience members gave Kornbluth a sustained ovation and ceremonies resumed as planned.

R. Robert Wickham ’93, SM ’95, president of the MIT Alumni Association and chief marshal of the Commencement ceremony, also offered a traditional greeting for graduates saying he was “welcoming you into our alumni family, your infinite connection to MIT.” There are now almost 147,000 MIT alumni worldwide.

The Chorallaries sang the school song, “In praise of MIT,” as well as another Institute anthem, “Take Me Back to Tech,” moments after Gorenberg formally closed the ceremony.

Preceding Afeyan, recent MIT Commencement speakers have been engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober, in 2023; Director-General of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in 2022; lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson, in 2021; and retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral William McRaven, in 2020.

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