Question

Describe attentiveness as a characteristic of a good listener

Answer 1

Attentiveness is the most important characteristic of a listener but how do we know that someone is listening to us attentively? Is it when someone maintains eye-contact with the speaker? Is it when someone is nodding their head in approval? These two actions of body language do not ensure attentive listening although they are part of it. There are three major components that make the listening more attentive.

Listen empathetically – When someone listens empathetically, they use lots of encouragers that are both non-lexical and lexical utterances while they listen. They use them in order to encourage the speaker to go on. Empathy is about felling one with them in order to appreciate or suggest things at the end.

Paraphrase – Attentive listeners paraphrase whatever they listen. They now and then speak a complete sentence in order to cross check their understanding. They do this in order to follow the speaker thoroughly.

Summarize – Summarizing is a very good technique which attentive listeners do at the end of the discussion or speech in order to let the speaker know that whatever they understood is what the speaker meant