The average college student spends about 14 hours per week in class
listening (or perhaps I should say "hearing"--there is a difference!)
to lectures. See if you can improve your listening skills by following
some of the strategies below:
Maintain eye contact with the instructor. Of course you will need to
look at your notebook to write your notes, but eye contact keeps you
focused on the job at hand and keeps you involved in the lecture.
Focus on content, not delivery. Have you ever counted the number of
times a teacher clears his/her throat in a fifteen minute period? If
so, you weren't focusing on content.
Avoid emotional involvement. When you are too emotionally involved in
listening, you tend to hear what you want to hear--not what is actually
being said. Try to remain objective and open-minded.
Avoid distractions. Don't let your mind wander or be distracted by the
person shuffling papers near you. If the classroom is too hot or too
cold try to remedy that situation if you can. The solution may require
that you dress more appropriately to the room temperature.
Treat listening as a challenging mental task. Listening to an academic
lecture is not a passive act--at least it shouldn't be. You need to
concentrate on what is said so that you can process the information
into your notes.
Stay active by asking mental questions. Active listening keeps you on
your toes. Here are some questions you can ask yourself as you listen.
What key point is the professor making? How does this fit with what
I know from previous lectures? How is this lecture organized?
Use the gap between the rate of speech and your rate of thought. You
can think faster than the lecturer can talk. That's one reason your
mind may tend to wander. All the above suggestions will help you keep
your mind occupied and focused on what being said. You can actually
begin to anticipate what the professor is going to say as a way to keep
your mind from straying. Your mind does have the capacity to listen,
think, write and ponder at the same time, but it does take practice.
1. Start by Understanding Your Own Communication Style
Good communication skills require a high level of self-awareness. Understanding
your personal style of communicating will go a long way toward helping
you to create good and lasting impressions on others. By becoming more
aware of how others perceive you, you can adapt more readily to their
styles of communicating. This does not mean you have to be a chameleon,
changing with every personality you meet. Instead, you can make another
person more comfortable with you by selecting and emphasizing certain
behaviors that fit within your personality and resonate with another.
In doing this, you will prepare yourself to become an active listener.
2. Be An Active Listener
People speak at 100 to 175 words per minute (WPM), but they can listen
intelligently at 600 to 800 words per minute. Since only a part of our
mind is paying attention, it is easy to go into mind drift - thinking
about other things while listening to someone. The cure for this is
active listening - which involves listening with a purpose. It may be
to gain information, obtain directions, understand others, solve problems,
share interest, see how another person feels, show support, etc.
If you're finding it particularly difficult to concentrate on what someone
is saying, try repeating their words mentally as they say it - this
will reinforce their message and help you control mind drift.
3. Use Nonverbal Communication
Use nonverbal behaviors to raise the channel of interpersonal communication.
Nonverbal communication is facial expressions like smiles, gestures,
eye contact, and even your posture. This shows the person you are communicating
with that you are indeed listening actively and will prompt further
communications while keeping costly, time-consuming misunderstandings
at a minimum.
4. Give Feedback
Remember that what someone says and what we hear can be amazingly different!
Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort
what we hear. Repeat back or summarize to ensure that you understand.
Restate what you think you heard and ask, "Have I understood you
correctly?" If you find yourself responding emotionally to what
someone said, say so, and ask for more information: "I may not
be understanding you correctly, and I find myself taking what you said
personally. What I thought you just said is XXX; is that what you meant?"
Feedback is a verbal communications means used to clearly demonstrate
you are actively listening and to confirm the communications between
you and others. Obviously, this serves to further ensure the communications
are understood and is a great tool to use to verify everything you heard
while actively listening.
