Week 2 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 2 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 69–79 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (17–21 min total)

• Hearing vs Listening — Amy Merkel
• Types of Listening — SkillsYouNeed
• Knowing Your Audience — Toastmasters International

① Hearing happens; listening is chosen

Chapter 2, Section “Hearing versus listening: choose to take the message in” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Hearing versus listening” · Remember: hearing is sound reaching the ears on its own, while listening is a choice to attend, understand, respond, and remember.

• How Do We Hear? — National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders — a short, plain explanation of how sound waves become signals the brain registers; read it as a picture of the receiving stage, the only part of listening that happens automatically. (reading, 5–7 min)
• Hearing vs Listening — Amy Merkel — a 90-second listening exercise: a run of bus-route directions, then a question many listeners miss because they followed the numbers instead of the words; it shows that hearing every word is not the same as listening, and it builds on Week 1's six-element model, since a listener is the receiver who decodes the message. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)

② Five types of listening

Chapter 2, Section “Types of listening: match the type to the job” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Types of listening” · Remember: the job the listening has to do sets the type, and critical listening means weighing a message fairly, not being negative.

• Types of Listening — SkillsYouNeed — a skills site's guide to discriminative, comprehensive, informational, critical, and empathic listening, plus a few extra types; it sorts them a little differently from the chapter, so match each one to the course's five as you read. (reading, 10–14 min)

③ What blocks listening, and the habits that fix it

Chapter 2, Section “Barriers and active listening: catch what blocks you, then fix it” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Barriers and active listening” · Remember: name the barrier first, then reach for the matching habit, such as lean notes for overload or a paraphrase for pseudolistening.

• Active listening is a skill! Here's how it's done. — HeartlinesZA — short tips, opening with stop, breathe, listen, for being an active listener when someone shares their story; watch it as empathic listening in action. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)
• Taking Notes: Crash Course Study Skills #1 — CrashCourse — tips for coming to class prepared and finding a note-taking system that helps you keep and review what you hear; it builds the lean-notes habit that guards against information overload when you listen to a lecture or a briefing. (video, 9 min) (captions: creator)

④ Reading the room and adapting to it

Chapter 2, Section “Audience analysis: read the room through three lenses” · Session 2, Segment 5, “Audience analysis” · Remember: read an audience through the demographic, psychographic, and situational lenses, look for tendencies rather than stereotypes, and let every finding change something.

• Write for the reader — Digital.gov — a government plain-language guide on learning who your audience is and telling them why the material matters to them; written for writers, but every move works for a speaker, so use it while you complete the Week-2 module overview. (reading, 4–6 min)
• Knowing Your Audience — Toastmasters International — guidelines for meeting and exceeding an audience's expectations, whether the room is a small group of stockholders or an international society; listen for which tips are demographic, psychographic, or situational. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
• Audience Analysis for Public Speaking — Stephen Klien — a longer video lesson on why audience analysis matters, the situational variables, audience traits such as prior exposure and disposition, and ways to gather information; stop here before choosing a topic and writing a purpose, which next week takes up. (video, 25 min) (captions: automatic)
• Knowing Your Audience — NWS Learning Office — a meteorologist explains how the audience shapes a presentation's type, length, and tone; compare it with the adaptation column the chapter builds for the first-year seminar. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Credo for Ethical Communication — National Communication Association — the course's ethics anchor; this week, read the principle about understanding and respecting other communicators' intent before evaluating and responding, which is the ethical side of listening, and skip the rest for now. (reading, 4–6 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com