Public Speaking The ACA Open Knowledge Online Guide

Visual Mapping and Mind Mapping
Visual mapping can be traced to several sources. An older source we are all familiar with is diagramming, as of sentences, but this method can use branching to illustrate major and subordinate ideas—as in the main thought, modifiers and dependent and independent clauses of a sentence. Mind mapping and visual mapping are taught in speed reading and study skills classes as a way to visually display information and information relationships. These skills have been shown in a major meta–analysis to increase knowledge retention significantly (Nesbit & Adesope, 2006). Wikipedia has a good description with illustrations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map ). Or see study skills sites like that at James Cook University (http://www.jcu.edu.au/studying/services/ studyskills/mindmap/index.html ).

Summarizing
Summarizing a presentation is another way to take notes. This method is the interpretation of what the speaker is saying put into your own words and in a way that preserves what you need to recall from the presentation. The Gingrich speech to National Federation of Republican Women (mentioned above) can provide an example of this note taking method. A summary of one important section of his speech would look like this:

Newt Gingrich: some good ideas about reforming and modernizing government. He compared the lack of efficiency of the US government to the ability of FedEx and UPS to meticulously track and deliver packages anywhere in the US overnight. He suggested that the government could be streamlined to do better. Here he is making a case for reform of government and that perhaps certain functions of government should be outsourced where they can be done more efficiently.

This example illustrates how to summarize the major point of a speech and it also implies that critical listening was involved to sort out and highlight this significant argument in Gingrich’s speech. The last method of note–taking is especially useful for listening to persuasive presentations and requires critical and evaluative skills.

The last method is a two column method that puts arguments or key points in a left hand column and evidence/”facts.” A related method is the Cornell method (Brownell, 2006, 128), in which one takes down details, ideas, thoughts in the right (Record) column and then goes down the left hand (Reduce) column distilling the recorded material to a summary which might be easier to sort through when reviewing notes for a test or writing a paper.

A brief example from the Gingrich speech would look like this:

Critical Listening builds upon Appreciative Listening
Skills for critical listening build upon appreciative listening, a skill we do not usually think of as important for critical listening. If we can appreciate we can learn; if we can learn we can understand; if we can understand we can impartially evaluate and approach a communication situation critically. From this example we can see how appreciative listening is needed for a more complete understanding and a fair–minded evaluation of the speaker’s message.

Of course, appreciative listening is not some idealist perspective, but an active listening that leads to an objective critical attitude, including the asking of challenging questions about the ethos/credibility of the speaker, as well as the assumptions, evidence, arguments and conclusions. These are the sort of questions that reverse the persuasive process. A speaker’s role is often to simplify and focus the topic and arguments of a speech so as to make them easier to listen to and accept. A listener’s role is to find the limits assumed by the speaker and expand them, and then to listen through what was said in order to understand the original complexity of the issue. Issues are represented rhetorically as having solutions, listening fleshes out the issues to place them in their multi–faceted, real–world context.

Finally, the awareness of the critical listener also includes the maintenance of a healthy dose of intellectual humility in consideration of the multi–dimensionality of issues. Paul and Elder (2006) frame humility and fair–mindedness as critical listening, “connected to positive insight into the complexity of and many–sidedness of most important world issues and large–scale conflicts. Those who have achieved this state can insightfully role–play multiple perspectives on a multitude of issues” (7).