Active Listening

Active Listening

Sometimes people hear, but do not listen.  This happens most often in the classroom.  Students zone out, pretend to listen, but ultimately let the information go in through one ear and out through the other.  It’s not something done consciously out of a sense of rebellion or anything. Instead, it’s almost as if being distracted is the default mode of most students.  They daydream when they’re supposed to be listening, and this most commonly happens when there’s a load of information being dumped on them.  Case in point: history.  No other class can make most students subconsciously refuse to listen than history.  Listening, especially active listening, is almost impossible for this subject. But since it’s the subject where lots of concrete data like names and dates are supposed to be taught, active listening becomes doubly important.  However, there are several barriers to active listening, and they make life a lot harder for students.

Barriers to Active Listening

There are several barriers to active listening; the first and most formidable one is ‘distraction’.  It’s pretty easy to be distracted in the middle of a lesson.  Some students, in the midst of a riveting lecture about the Battle of Gettysburg, would go about wondering about the teacher’s mustache or something like that.  It’s not such a huge sin, but it’ll cost you if you don’t listen to the lectures.  People with a short attention span are the ones who often get distracted after a few minutes of listening to lectures.  Another barrier to active listening is vocabulary.  When the lecturer uses difficult words, students sometimes cannot follow.  It would be better if teachers made a conscious effort to simplify their lectures and still be effective.  However, the opposite seems to be happening.  Some teachers go out of their way to make their lectures more complicated, adding a lot of complicated words just so their lectures will sound more intellectual.  There may also be some physical barriers to active listening such as noise and some psychological ones, such as emotions.  Biases and prejudice may also serve as barriers to active listening.

How to Improve your Active Listening Skills

Now that you know the barriers, what you must do is to improve your active listening skills.  Note that there’s a difference between active listening and just listening.  Active listening involves full intent to interpret, understand, and evaluate the information that you are hearing. You have to overcome the barriers in order to listen well. A few techniques to keep you on your toes would be to question the speaker, paraphrase his words, put your biases and emotions aside, and most of all, eliminate distractions.  Remember to maintain eye contact with the speaker so that you can keep your focus.