Kinds of Listening
Experts use various, overlapping descriptions for the many kinds of listening:
Appreciative—listening for aesthetic enjoyment of sound.
Active—listening as a willing act of attending to and interpreting with an open mind the words and feelings a speaker expresses.
Comprehensive—listening to learn.
Critical—listening in order to make decisions such as when one listens to a political debate.
Defensive—listening to discover arguments for oneself and against a speaker.
Dichotic—listening to two things at once.
Discriminative—listening in order to distinguish the significance of one sound from another.
Empathic/Empathetic—listening to put yourself in another person's place to understand, but not necessarily agree with what's being ...
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