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Critical Listening
An essential element of the critical-thinking process. The critical listener is an active listener. He or she does more than hear; he or she senses, interprets, evaluates, and responds to claims being made, to arguments being offered, and to analogies and examples being used.
Though critical listening involves evaluation, it differs from what the psychologist Carl Rogers defines as evaluative listening in that critical listening opens the mind to effective interpretation and knowledge gathering, while evaluative listening closes the mind with a mental critique process that bars understanding.
Critical listening is important in all stages of life, and teaching school-age children to listen critically is considered to be particularly essential. As children learn language, they learn to think.
At higher educational levels and in professional fields, the need ...