At first it may seem strange to describe listening as a skill. Listening may seem like an automatic response to things being said, not something one practices to improve, like free throws. However, the best listeners are active listeners, not passive listeners.15 In passive listening, someone may be speak ing but the receiver is not focused on understanding the speaker. Instead the receiver may be thinking about the next thing he will say or how bored he is in listening to the speaker. In either case, the receiver is not paying at- tention to what the sender is saying. To get the fullest meaning out of what someone else says, we need to practice active listening. Individuals who are listening actively exhibit a certain pattern of nonverbal behaviors, do not disrupt the sender's message, try to put the sender's message into their own words, and scan the sender for various nonverbal signals. Knowing what nonverbal signals to send and correctly interpreting the sender's non- verbal signals are the knowledge component of listening skills. Nonverbal signals are the behavioral component, and how well we can paraphrase s sender's message makes up the evaluative component of listening skills.