COMM 1035 Listening

Unit 7 focuses on adaptive and resilient listening, emphasizing how to remain effective when communication becomes difficult due to emotional reactions, cognitive overload, or environmental distractions. The lecture explains that listening breakdowns often result from internal triggers, limited processing capacity, emotional intensity, and external stressors, and it highlights that effective liste...

As Unit 7 concludes, the focus shifts from simply understanding listening to being able to apply it effectively under pressure. You learned that the real challenge in communication is not comprehension in ideal conditions, but maintaining accuracy when faced with internal triggers, cognitive overload, emotional intensity, and environmental distractions. Throughout the unit, you practiced strategie...

Unit 7 focuses on adaptive and resilient listening, shifting from simply understanding messages to maintaining effectiveness when communication becomes difficult, emotional, overwhelming, or high-stakes. You will learn how factors like internal triggers, cognitive overload, emotional intensity, and environmental stressors affect your ability to listen, and how to apply strategies such as emotional...

In this lecture, you will learn how to move beyond simply understanding messages to actively evaluating their credibility . You will explore how listeners often rely on fast, automatic thinking, and how this can lead you to accept information too quickly based on confidence, emotion, or familiarity. You will learn how to slow down and evaluate messages using the EERB framework— expertise, evidence...

In Unit 6, we shifted from simply understanding messages to actively evaluating the quality of the information we hear. You learned that listening is not just about comprehension—it’s about determining whether a message is accurate, reliable, and credible. Using the EERB framework— expertise, evidence, reasoning, and bias —you practiced analyzing how messages are constructed and identifying when i...

In Unit 6, you shift from focusing on how listening works to evaluating the quality of the information you hear. Instead of just asking what a message means, you begin asking whether it should be believed. You learn that not all information is equal—some messages are supported by strong evidence and reasoning, while others rely on emotion, assumptions, or incomplete details. Using the EERB framewo...

In this episode, we wrap up Unit 5 by turning the focus inward. You’ve moved beyond analyzing communication from the outside and begun examining your own role within it. This unit explored how response styles and personal biases shape not only how you interpret messages, but how conversations unfold. You learned to recognize patterns like defensive, avoidant, aggressive, and empathic responses—and...

In this episode, we take a deeper look at what really shapes communication—not just what is said, but how it is interpreted and how we respond. While earlier units focused on external factors like context and environment, this lecture shifts inward to explore the role of the listener. Why can two people hear the same message and walk away with completely different reactions? The answer lies in per...

In Unit 5: Response Styles and Personal Biases , the focus shifts inward. If Unit 4 was about reading the room, this unit is about reading yourself. Even when messages are clear, communication can break down—not because of what was said, but because of how it was interpreted and how we respond. Our habits, emotional triggers, and past experiences shape how we hear messages and how we react to them...

In this recap of Unit 4, we reflect on how contextual intelligence transforms both speaking and listening. You’ve learned to identify relational, situational, cultural, power, and channel influences — and to apply them in real-world communication. As we reach the halfway point of the course, the upcoming Midterm Unit serves as a checkpoint rather than an exam. There is no midterm test or major pro...

In this Unit 4 overview, we introduce the central idea that words don’t carry meaning on their own — context does. This module explores the five key communication contexts (relational, situational, cultural, power, and channel) and how they shape interpretation in both speaking and listening. You’ll move from recognizing contextual influences, to designing messages that reduce defensiveness, to ev...

In this episode, we focus on how to listen with contextual awareness in real time—especially in personal, face-to-face conversations. Using a relatable relationship scenario, you’ll learn a practical step-by-step method for pausing before reacting, separating content from interpretation, and quickly scanning relational, situational, cultural, power, and nonverbal cues. Rather than responding defen...

In this episode, we shift from analyzing how context shapes listening to learning how to speak with contextual awareness. Communication doesn’t fail only because people mishear us — it often breaks down because we ignore the relational, situational, cultural, power, and channel contexts surrounding our message. This lecture explores how anticipating those five layers can dramatically reduce misint...

In this episode, we explore how meaning is shaped not just by words, but by the contexts surrounding them. Using the recurring example, “Can we talk about your last report?”, we examine how relational context, situational context, cultural norms, organizational power structures, and communication channels influence interpretation. Drawing from major communication and social psychology theories — i...

In this Unit 3 recap, we revisited the major theories and principles that explain how listening works beneath the surface. Rather than viewing listening as automatic, the unit emphasized that listening is cognitive, emotional, relational, and interpretive all at once. We began with the HURIER Model, which breaks listening into six internal stages: hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting,...

This Unit 3 lecture shifts from the “what” of listening to the “why” and “how” by introducing the major theories scholars use to explain listening. The unit’s main goal is to analyze and evaluate listening models—not just define them—so students can diagnose breakdowns and choose better responses in real conversations. The lecture traces how listening became a formal area of study in the mid-20th...

In Unit 3, we move beyond understanding what listening is to exploring why and how it works through major communication theories. Earlier in the course, we examined attention, perception, and memory. Now, we focus on how scholars explain listening and how those theories help us analyze conversations, identify breakdowns, and respond more effectively. The central goal of this unit is to analyze and...

In Unit 2, we examined why listening often breaks down—not because people don’t care, but because barriers interfere with attention and understanding. We explored four major types of listening barriers: physical barriers like noise and technology issues; physiological barriers such as fatigue, illness, or hunger; psychological barriers including stress, emotions, defensiveness, and preoccupation;...

Unit 2 focuses on the barriers and challenges that interfere with effective listening, emphasizing that even strong listeners encounter obstacles that affect understanding. This unit introduces four main types of listening barriers—physical, physiological, psychological, and semantic—and explains how environmental conditions, physical states, emotions, cognitive overload, bias, and language differ...

This episode explores the barriers and challenges that interfere with effective listening, emphasizing that listening is an active skill influenced by both internal and external factors. It introduces four main types of listening barriers—physical, physiological, psychological, and semantic—and explains how each can disrupt comprehension, from environmental noise and fatigue to emotional reactions...

In this bonus episode, Dr. Sunny explains how you will be graded, the different types of assignments, and the course latework policy, as well as time expectations.

COMM 1035 is built around the idea that listening is an active, learnable skill that shapes how we learn, work, and connect with others. The course includes eight units, each following a clear, consistent structure that guides you through learning, applying, and reflecting on key listening concepts—without exams or high-stakes surprises. All work must be completed through the Modules page in Canva...

In this recap episode, we review the key takeaways from Unit One. You learned the difference between hearing and listening, explored the stages of the listening process, and examined how attention, perception, schemas, and memory shape what we understand and remember. We also connected these concepts to real-life situations in school, work, and relationships, showing why active listening matters....

This lecture introduces listening as an active, cognitive process rather than a passive act of hearing. Students explore the key differences between hearing and listening, the three stages of listening (receiving, understanding, and remembering), and the roles of attention, perception, memory, and schemas in meaning-making. Through everyday examples and current research, the lecture highlights why...

Unit 1 introduces listening as an active process rather than a passive skill. Students learn to distinguish between hearing and listening by examining attention, perception, memory, and prior experiences that shape meaning-making. Through videos, knowledge checks, and applied activities, students practice the stages of listening and reflect on real-world communication. The unit concludes with an a...