Daryl Robertson
Liberty University
W3 #3 Reading through chapter 3, Burley-Allen talked about different styles of listening. The first style that was mentioned is the faker. According to Burley-Allen (1995) these individuals pretend to listen when their minds are actually off on a flashing tangent. When working in a high school with teenagers the faker style can be easily seen. In the reading it says that they exhaust themselves in playing the attentive role that they end up not listening at all (Burley-Allen, 1995). There is nothing more frustrating than talking with a student, explaining everything just to have them look at you with a blank stare and say that they did not hear anything that was just said. The next style that was mentioned was the dependent listener. Burley-Allen classifies these individuals as individuals who are highly dependent and live vicariously through the opinions, wishes, and feelings of others. This is another style that is very noticeable within a high school. Many students try so hard to be accepted by everyone that they live to have others talk in a positive light about them. When this does not happen and they are viewed in the negative light it affects the way that they live their life. Burley-Allen (1995) writes that their feelings are evoked in interpersonal communication situations, making it difficult for them to deal with abstract matters. The next style that is mentioned is the interrupter. In this style an individual takes the conversation off on unrelated tangents as a means to sidestep the issues being discussed (Burley-Allen, 1995). This is very common when student are getting in trouble. When an incident is brought up that does not go in their favor they will quickly go off topic and begin talking about things that are irrelevant to the situation. The final two styles that Burley-Allen talked about are the self-conscious and intellectual or logical listeners. The self-conscious listener is an individual who focuses too much attention on themselves by questions everything that is happening to them (Burley-Allen, 1995). This is a perfect style for majority of the teenage girls, because they are always self-conscious of what the teenage boys are saying about them and sometimes how they are viewed by the older crowd. The intellectual listen according to Burley-Allen (1995) listen mostly with their heads, hearing only what they want to hear, blotting out larger areas of reality. At times this can be an area that we all struggle with. I know when talking with students at times the stories that they tell are so far-fetched that you pick and choose the areas that you want to listen to.
W3 #4. Perception is shaped by the perceiving person’s experience and understanding of his or her place in the world