How to Be an Effective Listener
Skilled listening can improve two-way communication with your teachers, family, and friends. We listen for three
basic reasons. Work with your group to develop a role-play that shows how to listen effectively for each purpose.
We listen for the following reasons:
1. To retain (to remember the key points of a speaker’s message)
v Retention Strategies:
1. Identify main and supporting points (what, why, when)
2. Outline mentally as the speaker talks
3. Focus on key words (create mental images)
4. Organize sentences with several points into categories
⇒ Pros and Cons
⇒ Advantages and disadvantages
⇒ Likes and dislikes
⇒ Similarities and differences
Suggestion: Let one student be the teacher while the other students pretend to be his class.
Students could say their thoughts aloud or hold up posters showing how they are using the four
retention strategies in their minds.
2. To understand (not to judge or disapprove of what the speaker is saying while he’s saying it)
v Understanding Strategies
1. Assume what the speaker is saying is of value and that you want to
understand him. (Explore how useful the speaker’s ideas are rather than if
they are useful.)
2. Confirm when you think you understand by stating what you understand the
speaker said and why the speaker said it.
3. Clarify when you can’t confirm because you honestly don’t understand. Get
more information from the speaker by asking about what has been said
and/or why.
Suggestion: Have a student play the role of speaker talking on some controversial topic (e.g.,
raising the legal driving age, improving the school cafeteria, increased graduation credit
requirements).
3. To establish trust and confidence (to let the person know you consider his or her concern
important)
v Rapport Strategies
1. Acknowledge by expressing that you are aware of his concern
2. Tell him what you plan to do next to help him with his concern, and how it
will help him.
Suggestion: Have a group of students bring a concern to a teacher (e.g., too many tests on
Fridays, favoritism being shown towards girls in class, too much homework). Have the student
playing the role of teacher demonstrate the strategies.
PROTEAM DREAMQUEST CURRICULUM
2-35