Listening Exercises

Listening exercises are essential to the learning experience. Can you imagine attempting to learn something without listening? Or maybe trying to teach someone without listening? Listening is a valuable skill that is essential for success in life.

There are different ways of listening, including effective and ineffective strategies. There are also different levels of listening.

When listening try doing it in different ways -from a solitary activity, to groups and in classrooms or large groups.

Solitary

Think to a time when you were trying to tell someone something and they simply were not listening. How did you know they were note listening? What cues did you notice? What could have been done better?

Take a moment to record these thoughts in a journal.

Pairs

With a partner, share a story. Note the ways in which you notice when your partner is paying attention to your story and engaged in listening and not doing so. This is also a valuable way in which others can watch a listening activity with the task to observe ways and evidences of actively listening or being engaged.

Threes

This is the implementation of the listening with a pair. Assign one member as a speaker. One member will be the listener. The last member will be the observer. Be sure to switch the roles around. Educators or guides can provide a list of questions to the observer.

Whole Group

In this rendition, an entire class would be listening. Think of a lecture atmosphere. Again, it would be valuable to reflect on the best practices of speaking and listening.

This type of listening -actively and with mindfulness -has significant benefits. It will improve and increase retention of the information. It will build relationships and develop rapport between people plus reduce conflict. It will reduce miscommunication and errors. It will increase productivity while also identifying potential issues or problems.

Questions for listening observations:

• What was the body language?
• Did the body language demonstrate active or passive listening? How? Why?
• How did you know the listener was engaged in the conversation?
• How did the speaker engage the listener?
• How can the speaker improve to engage the listener?
• How did the speaker and listener demonstrate their interest in the topic?