the art of listening 聆听的艺术.pptVIP

The art of listening But what of all those broadcasts which, so far from making these stern demands on the listener, make few or none at all? The inexorable highbrow will advise him not to waste his time on the stuff, but this advice leaves out of account the pleasures of participation which the wireless so surprisingly conveys to the solitary listener. When he switches on such a programme as “Any Questions?” he finds himself projected into a hall full of people humming with anticipation, and as questions and answers succeed each other he senses unmistakably the fluctuating mood of the audience. Indeed it is astonishing that anything so subtle as moods and feelings can be so powerfully transmitted in terms of sound alone and that the recipient should at once and automatically translate it back onto the moods and feelings that caused it. But the serious listener demands something more than animal noises to sustain his participation through three quarters of a hour and he may complain, after some of these programmes, that high spirits and common sense are not enough to keep him going.. In that case he had better switch his set and his attention to something less popular unless he is able to carry his participation to the length of silently contributing his own answers and vehemently contradicting those of the team. Other programmes which invite the listener’s participation are “Round Britain Quiz” and “Twenty Questions”; the first requiring of its teams an erudition so comprehensive that the most arrant highbrow need not blush to switch is on, even though, by doing so, he will find himself on the Light Programme: the latter offering innocent amusement to all listeners over the age of twelve or thirteen. “Twenty Questions” is the old game of guessing a hidden word by the animal-vegetable-mineral method and the listener may amuse himself by trying to beat the team to the answers. In “Round Britain Quiz” two rival teams of two a side, each equipped with its Question-m