Are You Listening?

It's an important question at times, "Are you listening?" It's also an important skill, as the old saying goes, "We've got one mouth and two ears because listening is twice as important as speaking."

As an ELA teacher I try to develop all 6 modes of communication: reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and representing. However I am keenly aware that I (and the world at large) have favourites communication modes. My students have their own favourite communication modes like texting and IM that are sometimes challenging to more traditional modes. And I dare say that across our society the mode of listening is largely undervalued. I must admit that in planning my courses, listening is often an underlying skill to others. By its nature, it does not compete for the attention of others like speaking or representing, but is more akin to reading and viewing. Interesting enough, listening is often a skill that people wish others were more proficient in, but how well do you know your listening abilities or care to improve them?

In a recent TED talk, Julian Treasure presents 5 exercises to improve the quality of listening. I found the video version to be thoughtful and an excellent resource for my classroom practice, but also for any person in any role as well.

The first of Treasure's exercises calls for 3 minutes of silence a day, to allow your listening abilities an intentional rest and recalibration. The second exercise he calls "channel listening", referring to the channels of an audio mixer. The goal of this exercise is to identify each sound on it own as if it were an individual channel. The third exercise Treasure calls savouring sounds or "the hidden choir", where an individual focusses on a commonly heard or mundane sound, but tries to delve deeply into the richness of that sound experience. The fourth exercise refers to changing listening positions, examples of which are active/passive, reductive/expansive, and critical/empathetic. These positions are like changing the intent or purpose of your listening. The final exercise involves the acronym RASA which stands for the 4 phases of quality listening: Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, and Ask.

If listening is an underlying skill that is required for success in countless other fields of skill and knowledge, we need to address and strengthen our students' listening. I am very interested in including some of these exercises in my classroom this coming semester, as they appear to be simple but are more so simply important.