Books : How to Speak How to Listen

In association with Amazon.com
 View Shopping Cart or Checkout 

Author name: Mortimer J. Adler

 : How to Speak How to Listen
View Bigger Picture

Regular marked price: $14.00
Discount Price: $11.20
Cost Savings: $2.80 (20%)
Price fluctuation possible.

Used Price: $5.96
Third Party New Price: $7.96


How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day



Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.2242
EAN num: 9780684846477
ISBN number: 0684846470
Label: Touchstone
Manufacturer: Touchstone
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: April 01, 1997
Publishing house: Touchstone
Sale Popularity Level: 64725
Studio: Touchstone




Accessories: Other books you might be interested in perusing:

Editor's Notes and Comments:

Product Description:
Adler here gives the listener a short course in effective communication. Both instructive and practical, this work is invaluable to professionals as well as families seeking to improve communication among themselves.



Customer Reviews
User popularity level:  out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Must Read this book
Adler's book on speaking and listening will prepare you to have a proper conversation with others. You must read this book.

Stan Faryna



Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - Useful but very long-winded
Just like the title promises, this book teaches how to communicate via speaking and listening (as compared to writing and reading). If you'd read Adler's previous hit, How to Read a Book, you already know what to expect: a bit of useful advice, a lot of belabouring the obvious, all smothered in a huge amount of wordy generalities. If Strunk & White wrote like Adler, their seemingly timeless brochure would have been a two-thousand-page monstrosity long out of print and out of minds.

Bottomline: How to Speak How to Listen is overall useful but noticeably spoiled by a lack of focus; three stars. Worth a quick read; expect to fast-forward often.



Rated by buyers 2 out of 5 stars - Long on commentary
Adler is obviously a very learned man and a very successful teacher. I found his argument that listening and speaking were critical skills left ignored by most educational institutions to be very well structured, and, as confirmed by my own experiences, very accurate.

That said, I listened to the unabridged audio version of this book and found it a long treatise on oral communications in society rather than a practical book on self-improvement.

I did find parts of it valuable, but the aggregate of these parts were only a fraction of the 7+ running hours. I probably would have been more pleased with the paper book version that I could skim, pick and choose.



Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - A Fabulous Teacher
I was hoping that this would be the only book I would need as a guide to developing my knowledge and skill as a public speaker. Rather, the book is about the oral communication process in all contexts. Thus delivering prepared speeches, in particular the lecture, was just one element of it. There is considerable emphasis on the listening component--rightfully so, given that Adler argues that listening well is the component of verbal communication that is the most difficult to learn and teach, and hence the most lacking. The book is a companion to Adler's "How to Read a Book", and in fact there are numerous references to it. Although the book turned out to be something different than I had hoped, I nevertheless found it beneficial. It is packed with helpful ideas and guidelines on speaking and listening in various contexts. I also enjoyed reading the book because it helped me to improve my vocabulary, which is one of the side benefits of reading any book by Adler. He is truly a fine teacher.

A few of the key points include: Silent listening vs. active listening, Guidelines for note-taking, Several do's and don'ts of effective conversation, and Instructive speech vs. persuasive speech



Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - The very first 90 pages are worth their weight in gold!
This is the best book, bar none, that I have ever seen on this subject. Adler takes some of the classical Greek writers ideas about persuasive speaking and "updates" them, makes them more understandable, and provides concrete illustrations of how it is done. He helps you to better grasp the process of outlining, and provides an example of a speech he had given that employs the "methodology" of the text. Very readable, very insightful



Find other books like this one:

 


Beating Facial Psoriasis / Curing Stress / Back Home / Behind A Mask / Cars /
Baskerville Present Psoriasis Medication Corporate Gifts Sherlock Holmes Movie Islamic Knowledge Alice In Wonderland Drug Gourmet Fruit Gift Baskets Children's Birthday Gift Jungle Book Birthday Gifts Day Gift Him Idea Sweetest

Home - Kids Books - Fairy Tales - Classics - Youth Fiction - Romance - Spy Novels - European Books - Pottery Books - Architecture Books - Comedy