What did you say?

I really enjoyed our CLRA this week on listening. I know it seemed as though I was not listening to our instructor (thanks Layne) but I was and I really learned a lot. Even though a lot of the stuff they talked about was pretty common knowledge, sometimes even the basics need to be broken down and analyzed. The more we evaluate the reasons behind the ordinary, the more we become aware of how to handle certain situations better. I think that the most valuable thing that I gained was understanding of the paper on barriers to good listening. This week I have found myself identifying “Pseudo listening” and “Pre-judging the speaker” frequently in myself and others. I have always considered myself to be an adequate listener, but it is interesting to learn that when I am honest with myself I can think of times when I have been guilty of every type of poor listening that we learned about in class. They say recognizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery.
It has been fascinating to notice excessive examples of poor listening when hearing people talk to each other about the recent election. I have heard many examples of “Pre-judging the Speaker”, “Rehearsing”, and “Listening for a Point of Disagreement”. I am convinced that if we could get most of the people involved in politics to truly listen (not “Hearing but not Listening”) to that CLRA, and then apply the skills that they learned we would soon have created world peace.
So how has this helped my tutoring? Well it has not had a chance to really be applied yet. Working nights gives me less practice then I would like. But I am positive that recognizing the listening levels of the students that I work with, and more importantly effectively monitoring my own listening, will improve the communication and effectiveness of every session I tutor. I have already found applying what I have learned to the rest of my life has helped me a lot, so why would tutoring be much different?