Psychology The Role of Listener Assignment

Watch: What Is Listening -- and How Do We Listen Well?

(Transcript)

Dear faithful communicators, the most important communication skill is listening. Listening, listening. Why is that? Scripture says, we should listen before speaking. Be slow to speak and quick to listen to listen. Because we are born into existing realities. We're born into a world that God has already created. We're born into culture that people have created ways of life through the gift of communication. There's already realities that we're born into. And listening fundamentally is at to reality, attending to reality, it is understanding reality the way things really are, not the way we want them to be, not the way we hope they will be, but the way things are listening is attending to reality. One reality we attend to as Christians is through scripture, the word of God that helps us understand reality. Second is Jesus Christ, God incarnate. This is God as person communicating with us. Third, through the Creation, the Creation itself speaks of reality. The heavens declare the glory of God. Fourth, we listen to culture to that which human beings have created and that we're born into the ways of life all around us. The culture to be a good listener is to attend to all four. Do you know that all marketing, all research, scholarly or otherwise, all of it is predicated on listening. Why do marketers do research to find out what reality is before they speak into that reality? Now, scripture divides people into two categories, among other categories. But in this sense of listening into two categories, there are the wise people who listen and the foolish who do not. We're all wise and foolish in different situations. We listen or we don't. The wise person understands reality, knows it, the foolish person does not, and comes barging in and says something, or writes something, or produces something without understanding reality. First, all listening is also a way for us to be obedient. That may sound strange, but to listen well is to become obedient to reality. Not necessarily to accept it, but allow reality to speak to us. In that sense, to submit to reality. Listening is a form of obedience. Listening helps us to know reality so that we can then act within reality. Wisely listening allows us to be intimate with reality, that when we communicate, we can do so with the way things really are. We can even love other people and love God, and love ourselves. In the Old Testament to know something well, to be intimate with it is equated with sexual relations. All knowing of anything is like sexual relations to be intimate with it. The Hebrew word is yada, Y, A D, A da. To be intimate with reality, to know reality. Knowing reality allows us to practice the three loves that God calls us to practice. The love of God, the love of neighbor, and the love of self. So we are called to be slow to speak, quick to listen, because it's by listening that we come to know the way that things really are so that we might better love God, our neighbor, and ourselves, Shalom.

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Reflection Papers Assignment Instructions

Overview

The goal of reflective writing is to interact with and integrate new information and apply it to what you already know and practice, thereby achieving personal growth. You will write a total of four reflection papers in this course. Each paper has a specific topic. All four papers have the same basic purpose, structure and format. Each paper must maintain a good balance between 1) examination and discussion of relevant course materials on the topic and 2) self-reflection on how these phenomena play out in your own interpersonal communication contexts.

Instructions

Begin each paper with a specific reference or a quote from the week’s assigned readings. Use this reference to anchor your discussion and reflections. Discuss the assigned topic by comparing, contrasting, and synthesizing a variety of course materials by different authors. You may also include additional sources and Scriptures. Provide a personal response to the topic and course materials. Reflections may include new insights about yourself, your communication style, and your relationships; realizations about existing communication barriers, challenges, and opportunities in your personal and/or professional arena; communication strategies and skills that you discovered and applied; and observed outcomes emerging from changes you have made. Each paper must also include a biblical worldview/faith journey perspective as well as a brief discussion of how your behavioral blend (as described by Carbonell) influences your communication and actions on the given topic.

Each paper should be between 900 and 1000 words long (3 pages of text). The content should be engaging, substantive, and interesting. It should be written in a focused and concise manner and be well organized with a logic progression of ideas and transitions that are clear and maintain flow of thought. Submit as a Word document, formatted according to current APA style, free of grammar, spelling, and other writing errors. A title page is expected, but an abstract is not needed. Repeat the paper title on page 2 according to APA format, but do not use any subheadings. Use APA style for both in-text citations and the reference page, while making sure references correspond and are correct.

Reflection Paper: The Role of Listener Assignment

Petersen offered guidance for making sure our listening practices are respectful, non-judgmental, supportive, and constructive (Chapters 14-16). Schultze and Badzinski described the process of attentive listening (Chapter 2). The also provided Bible-based principles for resolving interpersonal conflicts and maintaining relational harmony (Chapter 7-8). Examine yourself as a listener and communication partner in light of this material.

Publisher:  Biblica

Version Information

The New International Version (NIV) is a completely original translation of the Bible developed by more than one hundred scholars working from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.

The initial vision for the project was provided by a single individual – an engineer working with General Electric in Seattle by the name of Howard Long. Long was a lifelong devotee of the King James Version, but when he shared it with his friends he was distressed to find that it just didn’t connect. Long saw the need for a translation that captured the truths he loved in the language that his contemporaries spoke.

For 10 years, Long and a growing group of like-minded supporters drove this idea. The passion of one man became the passion of a church, and ultimately the passion of a whole group of denominations. And finally, in 1965, after several years of preparatory study, a trans-denominational and international group of scholars met in Palos Heights, Illinois, and agreed to begin work on the project – determining to not simply adapt an existing English version of the Bible but to start from scratch with the best available manuscripts in the original languages. Their conclusion was endorsed by a large number of church leaders who met in Chicago in 1966.

A self-governing body of fifteen biblical scholars, the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) was formed and charged with responsibility for the version, and in 1968 the New York Bible Society (which subsequently became the International Bible Society and then Biblica) generously undertook the financial sponsorship of the project. The translation of each book was assigned to translation teams, each made up of two lead translators, two translation consultants, and a stylistic consultant where necessary. The initial translations produced by these teams were carefully scrutinized and revised by intermediate editorial committees of five biblical scholars to check them against the source texts and assess them for comprehensibility. Each edited text was then submitted to a general committee of eight to twelve members before being distributed to selected outside critics and to all members of the CBT in preparation for a final review. Samples of the translation were tested for clarity and ease of reading with pastors, students, scholars, and lay people across the full breadth of the intended audience. Perhaps no other translation has undergone a more thorough process of review and revision. From the very start, the NIV sought to bring modern Bible readers as close as possible to the experience of the very first Bible readers: providing the best possible blend of transparency to the original documents and comprehension of the original meaning in every verse. With this clarity of focus, however, came the realization that the work of translating the NIV would never be truly complete. As new discoveries were made about the biblical world and its languages, and as the norms of English usage developed and changed over time, the NIV would also need to change to hold true to its original vision.

And so in the original NIV charter, provision was made not just to issue periodic updates to the text but also to create a mechanism for constant monitoring of changes in biblical scholarship and English usage. The CBT was charged to meet every year to review, maintain, and strengthen the NIV’s ability to accurately and faithfully render God’s unchanging Word in modern English.

The 2011 update to the NIV is the latest fruit of this process. By working with input from pastors and Bible scholars, by grappling with the latest discoveries about biblical languages and the biblical world, and by using cutting-edge research on English usage, the Committee on Bible Translation has updated the text to ensure that the New International Version of the Bible remains faithful to Howard Long’s original inspiration.