List of Listening Styles

While effective speaking and communication skills are important in everyday life, listening skills are just as important because without the ability to listen, you wouldn't be able to understand what others are trying to communicate to you. There are several different types of listening, and each type is used every day when we talk, listen to music and learn new information.

Discriminative Listening

·         Discriminative listening is the most basic type of listening and is used whenever you are listening to another person speak. When someone listens discriminatively, he is listening for differences in volume, force, pitch and emphasis that allow him to discern meaning between different words and phrases. One must be able to hear the differences in sounds and discriminate between the differences of the sounds in order to understand subtleties. This includes identifying emotions or intents and reading body language.

Comprehension Listening

·         Comprehension listening is used to make sense of the different sounds and visual indications that you notice when you listen discriminatively. Also known as informative listening, the act of comprehension listening requires the listener to make sense of what she hears and sees. Learning is often done through comprehension listening. In order to successfully listen for comprehension, you must have a firm grasp of the vocabulary of the language you are hearing, strong concentration skills and the memory to process and remember information. Comprehension listening helps the listener understand the message that the speaker intends to portray.

Relationship Listening

·         The purpose of relationship listening is to develop or maintain a relationship between two individuals. Relationship listening can be used between two intimate lovers, close friends, family members or between two business people who wish to develop mutual trust. Another aspect of relationship listening is therapeutic listening, where a person talks about problems, issues or thoughts to an objective listener, usually a medical professional or therapist. Relationship listening helps individuals support one another and empathize with one another. Important aspects to relationship listening are eye contact and bodily movements. Attentive behaviors such as head nods, smiles and vocalized cues are a positive way to participate in relationship listening.

Appreciative Listening

·         When someone listens to music for enjoyment or pleasure, or to a speaker whose style is unique or enjoyable, he is listening appreciatively. A listener can also listen appreciatively when he seeks information that helps him meet his own personal needs or goals. Appreciative listening depends upon the ways in which the information is presented, the listener's personal perspective on the information and his previous experience with similar information. Previous experiences can include positive or negative associations that shape his feelings about the information being received.

Critical Listening

·         Critical listening allows the listener to form her own set of opinions on information based on how she evaluates and judges what she hears. This type of listening must be used with comprehension listening because if you cannot comprehend the information you hear, you cannot critically process it. Judgment of information might include an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in the information provided, agreement or disagreement and approval or disapproval of what is heard. Critical listening requires more effort than appreciative listening because more cognitive awareness is required to process, evaluate and compare the information against previous knowledge while continuing to listen to the speaker.