Com 200

Listening Barriers

Com 200

Jessica Salb

August 17, 2015

Claudia Owens

Listening Barriers

Listening isn’t as easy as it sounds. Of course we all think it is, you hear a noise or someone talking so you listen, but are you really listening? In this paper we were asked to describe a situation from our life when we had trouble listening. That is sort of hard to do since I still have a hard time listening to anything. Let’s say the last time I went to the movies. There was so much going on around me that I could not listen to what was being said or what was going on in the movie. People talking, playing on their phones, digging in the popcorn bowl, chewing with their mouths open, walking in and out of the room, and so on. There was way too many distractions going on in a spot that was meant for you to sit down and hold still for about two hours.

Listening barriers are things that happen that keep you from actually hearing what someone is saying to you, or in my case what was going on in the movie. I had plenty of distraction going on that I could not focus on just the movie. If someone turns a bright light on in a very dark room you’re going to look towards it, even if it is just for a second. You’re not supposed to be on your phone while in a movie because of this reason. It is too distracting to the people who are actually trying to watch the movie.

Another barrier for me would probably be self-absorbed listeners. The self-absorbed listener is actively involved in doing several things other than listening. Out of the maybe 20 people in this theater at least half of them were doing something other than watching the movie. Some people were yelling at their friends that they had ran into there, but for some reason did not sit together, that were up on the top row. Like, seriously? Do you not see other people in here actually trying to watch the movie? Some of them even started throwing popcorn...