Lestening to one sided telephone conversations

Telephone conversations exemplify our day-to-day communication. A telephone conversation must be efficient in terms of length, topic, turn-taking and effective listening and speaking. Ignoring any of these considerations has a bearing on the cost, time and feedback. Hence, both the listener and the speaker have roles to play. On the one hand, the listener has to avoid distractions that may discourage the speaker from providing more information. The listener should also take note of key issues, avoid overlaps and predict what the speaker is going to say. On the other hand, the speaker should be efficient enough to talk only about what is important, using correct pronunciation and understanding the listener's characteristics.

Note

i. Telephone conversations require effective listening and speaking. In a telephone conversation, one is both the speaker and the listener; therefore, one should be attentive.

ii. A common understanding emerges from the speaker and listener when their utterances are logically organised, particularly because the utterance from the second speaker depends on what the first speaker says, and vice versa.

iii. Telephone conversations should be logically organised for ideas to flow together nicely from the first utterance to the last one, hence making them easy to follow. This is what we call coherence