Techniques of Listening Skills - Essay Example

Techniques of listening skills COM101 Section February 25, Listening skills are hugely important elements of non-verbal behavior which contribute to personal and professional development of individuals. They not help to understand issues but also promote better interpersonal bond between people and across the group. Most importantly, I strongly believe that improving interpersonal communication is vital ingredient of increasing one’s knowledge and building stronger relationships within and outside one’s professional arena or academia (Guirdham, 2002). I have found that using different techniques of listening skills has significantly impacted my learning abilities and communication with my peer group. The two most difficult areas where I was not able to focus on core issues were classroom lectures and my interaction with my peer group in the college. So I had tried applying three techniques: asking questions; focusing on content; and using the gap between the speech of lecturer and rate of my thoughts. The surrounding chosen were classroom where participants are students and lecturer at a daytime lecture. The other place chosen was the cafeteria where I normally interact with my peer group during class breaks. The classroom lecture by XX was specially chosen because he teaches social science but has irritating habit of lapsing into silence and using lot of hand gestures. I get distracted when my chain of thoughts and focus is broken by silence and I often find myself going off track. Moreover the excessive hand gestures tend to be funny and sometimes downright confusing which make me forget everything! So learning becomes difficult, resulting in low grade. Cafeteria is another area where it is most convenient to interact with peer and seniors to get important tips and gain tacit knowledge from their experience. I have always had problems in focusing on people and content as I easily get distracted by minor inconsequential acts in the surrounding. As such, cafeteria was hugely distracting because of the crowd, noise and tempting smell of food. But it was also the only place where it is easy to interact with seniors and other peer group. So communicating effectively during afternoon tea with seniors was really challenging. Asking questions in the classroom was very successful because it helped me to be alert and use questions to clear doubts and concepts. I also found that this technique helped me to get attentions of not only the lecturer but also other students where my image as student considerably improves and gave me impetus to become more conscientious student. It also helped improve my skills of critical thinking and enhanced my learning capabilities by making me look at new aspects and generate new ideas for asking questions. The funniest thing was that initially the technique provided me with opportunity to irritate professor with lots of questions but later it turned out to be an exhilarating experience because expectations rose from both sides: professor started looking at me and expecting me to ask questions which challenge me and could challenge his knowledge. The subtle duel between us was both private and public and most importantly, very invigorating for me to ask questions which would make professor think! But it served the basic purpose of the activity and contributed to learning processes and learning per se. The technique of using gap between lecture and rate of thought was also crucial as it helped me to anticipate lecturer’s speech in advance and prepare new questions! I strongly believe that the technique was important facilitator of learning as it helped to work on my courseware so that I could anticipate lecturer’s speech. It was both interesting and constructive activity that improved and improvised my knowledge database as well as helped to develop skills for critical thinking. I now find that critical thinking has become a habit which makes me look at various perspectives of issues and situations and thereby develop wider understanding of not only pertinent issues but also about people who might come from different background cutting across racial and cultural divide. The technique of focusing on content and not on mode of delivery failed to elicit any concrete result as I kept getting distracted with lecturer’s hand gestures. It was only when I started asking questions and anticipating what he is going to say next that I was able to focus more on content. The communication message is delivered and received through various sensory stimuli and therefore, gesture, touch, spoken and written words, clothes, color etc. all send specific message. Reactions are natural conclusion of the messages sent or received. Thus, external stimuli tend to distract and interrupt communication. While hand gestures were quite distracting in classroom, the noise, tempting smell of food and coffee etc. of cafeteria were elements which made communication, especially listening very difficult with the peer group. These are crucial part that can considerably send wrong message and interrupt though processing and constructive communication. So I selected a relatively isolated corner which was far away from the kitchen so that drifting smell of food was not so strong as to distract conversation. Moreover, I found that the place encouraged better interaction which was interspersed with lots of laughter and bonhomie. I was not only able to focus on the conversation but enhanced listening helped me to gain new knowledge about the various subjects and current issues. The major criteria to determine success or failure was the level of my learning and my increased capability in answering classroom questions and holding long conversation on the relevant subjects. As my grades had also improved, they also reflected the success of the techniques in non-verbal communication, especially the listening skills. The social interaction becomes a need based communication where conforming to expected norm of the other person becomes intrinsic part of realizing one’s goals. In my case, the objective was to enhance learning abilities which the listening techniques helped to achieve with great success. The most thought provoking issue was that while hand gestures proved very distracting in classroom, the same were source of inspiration in the cafeteria while interacting with peer group. It could be because the environment was more informal and gestures, laughter etc. contributed to greater involvement which was lively as well as informative. I would therefore, recommend the two techniques: asking questions and using gap between speech and rate of thoughts constructively. (words: 1040) Reference Guirdham, M. (2002). Interactive Behaviour at Work. London: Prentice Hall. Read More