Listening and Evaluating
Unit 1
Section 3b
Vocabulary
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Analogy
Bandwagon
Begging the question
Card-stacking
Critical listening
Critique
Emotional appeals
False analogy
False premise
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Faulty reasoning
Hasty generalizations
Irrelevant evidence
Loaded words
Mnemonic devices
Name-calling
Propaganda
Signal words
Stereotype
Transfer
Factors that Affect Listening
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Your physical and mental state
The speaker
Your prejudices
The environment
HOW TO
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Control Factors That
Affect Listening
Be energetic and focused
Focus on the message
Keep an open mind
Do what you can to adjust the physical
environment.
Activity 1: Analyzing Your
Listening Skills
• Over the next two days, identify five listening
situations and determine whether or not you
listened attentively in each situation.
• If so, what factors helped you to listen so well?
• If you had trouble listening, what factors
hindered you?
• Were you able to overcome those factors? How?
• DUE FRIDAY.
Listening Critically
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Identify the speaker’s goals
Identify main ideas
Identify supporting details
Use context clues
– Synonyms
– Comparisons or contrasts
– Examples
• Take advantage of nonverbal cues
– Emphasis
– contradiction
Activity 2: Using Critical Listening
Skills
• Read an editorial or feature article in your
local newspaper.
• Identify the writers goal(s), main ideas,
and supporting details
Evaluating a Speaker’s
Reasoning
• Generalizations: general conclusions or
opinions drawn from observations
– Hasty generalizations: conclusions drawn
from a very few observations or ignoring
exceptions
• Begging the question: assuming the
truth of a statement before it is proven
• Premise: stated or implied starting point
for an argument
– False premise: premise that is untrue or
distorted
Evaluating a Speaker’s
Reasoning
• Analogy: form of reasoning by
comparison
– False analogy: draws invalid conclusion from
weak or far-fetched comparisons
• Irrelevant evidence: information that has
nothing to do with the argument being
made
Activity 3:
Analyzing Faulty Reasoning
• Evaluate each of the following items.
• Identify the form of faulty reasoning in
each.
• Write a brief logical analysis to explain
your answer.
Activity 3:
Analyzing Faulty Reasoning
1. Jackson was the lowest scorer in the game last night.
He’s simply not a great player and not worth the big
money they paid for him.
2. The people claiming doom from the green house effect
are like the little boy crying wolf. It hasn’t happened
and we shouldn’t respond.
3. The nation’s food companies are cheating their
consumers—every one of us—by raising prices this
year. After all, farmers had perfect weather and no
shortage of workers.
4. The saleswoman said I looked terrific in the jacket—so I
bought it.
5. Look at the year’s progress: five new downtown highrises and not one new park. The manipulation of the
city commissioners by real estate developers must be
stopped.
Propaganda Techniques
• Propaganda: persuasion that deliberately
discourages people from thinking for
themselves.
Propaganda Techniques
• Transfer: method that builds a connection
between things that are not logically
connected.
– Ex. Ad showing a prosperous, happy family
drinking a certain brand of milk. The goal of
the transfer technique is to get the viewer to
associate the brand of milk with prosperity
and happiness.
Propaganda Techniques
• Bandwagon: encourages people to act
because everyone else is doing it;
substitutes peer or crowd pressure for
analysis of an issue or action
– Ex. Someone says that you should vote for a
proposal because all your friends are voting
for him; no mention of why the proposal is
worth supporting
Propaganda Techniques
• Name-calling: labeling intended to arouse
powerful negative feelings. Its purpose is
to represent a person or group as inferior
or bad without providing evidence to
support the claim.
Propaganda Techniques
• Card-stacking: based on half-truths.
Presents only partial information in order
to leave an inaccurate impression
– Ex. A speaker might refer to a person who has
gained a fortune through illegal means as a
“good breadwinner.” The negative methods of
gaining the fortune have been ignored.
Propaganda Techniques
• Stereotypes: biased belief about a whole
group of people based on insufficient or
irrelevant evidence.
• Loaded words: words that draw out
strong positive or negative feelings.
– Connotation, denotation
• Emotional appeals: statements made to
arouse emotional reactions
Activity 4:
Identifying Propaganda
Techniques
1. Folks, the upcoming election is going to be a
landslide. Garver is carrying the entire West
Side. Here’s your chance to support a winner
the people really want!
2. Friends, my opponent is a fine woman, but she
is over sixty. Can you afford a mayor without
youth’s vigor—who might tire under the
pressure, long hours, and huge workload?
3. Only fashionable, good-looking people buy
Goodlook clothing. It’s the brand to try.
Activity 4:
Identifying Propaganda
Techniques
4. Wilson must be a gangster; he comes from a
family of gangsters. A vote for Wilson will put
the criminals in control.
5. They’re calling Wilson a mouthpiece of
organized crime. But would a criminal treat his
family in the loving way Wilson does? He is a
devoted husband and father. Vote for Wilson.
6. At night, these refugees go to sleep with no
food or shelter. In the morning, they wake up to
face another day of hunger. Do not ignore the
plight of these helpless people. Send money
to fee them now.
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Activity 4:
Identifying Propaganda
Techniques
I might be thin,
but Kelly is skinny. And
Yolanda looks practically emaciated!
8. I want to tell you what a vote for me means.
My roots are in a small, rural town. There the
sick were always cared for. There the police
were always friends, not adversaries.
9. The whole student council and the Athlete’s
Forum are going to the school board meeting
to protest the dress code. You’ll be part of the
group that stands up and fights!
10. The all-wheel-drive Lion doesn’t just go up
hills. It positively leaps. Stubborn and surefooted, it is the king of the mountain. If your
dream is to stand alone on the top, get one
vehicle only: the Lion.
Listening and Evaluating
• The oral critique
– Analyses and evaluations given out loud
– Valuable because everyone in the class can
profit from analyzing the mistakes and
successes of others
– Purpose is to help the speaker understand
what went right and what went wrong
HOW TO
Give an Oral Critique
• Give positive feedback
• When giving negative feedback,
concentrate on only one or two criticisms.
• When making criticisms, mention what the
speaker to could do to improve.
• Be specific.
Listening and Evaluating
• The Written Technique
– More complete and detailed than oral critique
– Develop a checklist of questions
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Organization?
Content?
Language?
Delivery?
HOW TO
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Develop a Written
Critique
Think about the organization of the speech
Consider the content of the speech
Analyze the language the speaker used
Comment on the delivery the speaker
used
Activity 5:
Giving an oral and written critique
• Choose a speech from this website
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speeches
all.html
• Practice evaluations with a partner
• Deliver the speech as if you had written it.
• Have your partner use the guidelines discussed
to give you an oral critique.
• Let your partner deliver the speech and prepare
a written critique of content and delivery.
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REVIEW QUESTIONS
Unit
3b
How is listening different from hearing?
What are the four reasons for developing good
listening skills?
What are the four obstacles to effective listening?
Explain how to overcome each.
List and explain the five strategies that allow a critical
listener to test the strength of what he or she hears.
Name and explain each type of faulty reasoning.
List the types of propaganda techniques. Explain three
of them.
List the four guidelines for giving an oral critique.
What are the four areas one needs to evaluate in
completing a written critique?