Sociology BUS 1070: Reflection on Barriers and Effective Listening

This essay addresses the barriers to effective listening, drawing from textbook material and personal experience. It identifies information overload and multitasking as major obstacles, particularly in the context of students constantly connected to digital technologies. The essay provides a relatable example of students struggling to balance social media engagement with academic demands, leading to impaired listening habits. To overcome these barriers, the essay suggests strategies such as thinking before speaking, practicing self-control, avoiding interruptions, and conveying thoughts concisely. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of these tactics in improving listening skills. Desklib offers a wealth of similar student-contributed assignments and study resources.

Running head: SOCIOLOGY
Sociology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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The barriers to effective listening
Effective listening skill is one of the most important personal development skills that
each and every person should have. There lies some of the biggest differences among the
context of hearing and listening. Some of the major barriers towards the process of effective
listening that is observed in the current days include the scenarios of overloaded information
and multi- tasking where individuals tends to be in the constant state of overloaded
information and are being distracted every two to three minutes at the employment place. The
facing and experiencing of the distraction is one of the main factor contributing to the barriers
of listening procedure (Duck & McMahan, 2017). Furthermore one of the factors of the
barrier include the difference among the though rate and the speech rate which highlights the
difference among the spoken message and the listener process of the information (Baker et
al., 2016). Factors such as the listening or hearing from own perspectives and other’s
perspectives regarding the factor of validation is the barrier towards the effective and correct
learning. Besides these factors such as evaluating, shifting of the focus, advising and
interpreting serves as some of the major factors of barriers towards listening.
The most relatable barrier
One of the most relatable barrier include the factor of overloading of information and
the multitasking. This is because the human brain is not as equipped and good as being
thought in case of multitasking and individual tends to get distracted due to the factors from
the effective listening or hearing procedure.
Example of the affected scenario
One of the most relevant example related to the relatable barriers of the listening is
the scenario of students who tends to face all types of distractions that generally comes from
the constant access towards the digital technologies. Students in the current generation are

2SOCIOLOGY
mostly connected and wired to their friends and the internet through their cell phones and
their laptops (Suleiman, 2016). Furthermore the engagement of the students in their social
media platform together with tackling their academic fields are some of the regular example
of the scenarios where people tends to get affected in their hearing and listening habits.
Overcoming tactics
Some of the important and essential factors that can be highlighted to overcome the
barriers towards effective listening skills include thinking before speaking, practising of the
self control skills, avoiding of the interruption of the speaking, being aware of the indulging
of the useless talking and conveying brief regarding the conveying of the thoughts.

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Reference
Duck, S., & McMahan, D. T. (2017). Communication in everyday life: A survey of
communication. SAGE Publications.
Suleiman, M. S. H. (2016). The Role of Listening Skills in Learning Process.
Baker, T. L., Wise, J., Kelley, G., & Skiba, R. J. (2016). Identifying barriers: Creating
solutions to improve family engagement. School Community Journal, 26(2), 161-184.