Poor listening is worse than none. A student put it correctly when he said, “There are only two kinds of listening, (1) good listening and (2) not listening at all. The student who half-listens not only misses a lot, but distorts what is heard, mixes truth with error, and makes the mistake of learning mistakes. Gradually, the student develops the bad habit of closing one’s ears and eyes until proper listening could not be accomplished even if desired. Then the student wonders why he or she works so hard and makes such little progress.
Now is the time to learn to listen. Next year and the next you will be given more and more in class that you must remember. In college more than half your knowledge is acquired through listening; in life, in the rapid tempo of the age in which we live, perhaps more than half your knowledge will be acquired by listening.
Listening takes will power; and it requires actions that will train the mind to behave itself. To that end the following suggestions are offered to help you become a good listener in class and in the lecture hall.
SUGGESTIONS FOR BETTER LISTENING IN CLASS
1 Get ready to listen as soon as the bell has rung. Usually important information is given at the beginning and at the end of class. If you practice listening attentively the first ten minutes of the period, you will develop the power to listen to the entire period.
2 Watch the teacher closely. Listen to every word he says, turn a deaf ear to all other sounds, and keep your eyes glued upon the teacher. Practice listening around the subject. Listen to other students when they speak. Hear what they say, note the good points, spot the errors, and be ready to supply information they lack.
3 Have your ear tuned for directions. Your work can be lightened greatly by following the teacher’s DIRECTIONS; the teacher is working for you and is trying to help you. But if you do not listen and do ten problems rather than the tenth problem, you haven’t saved much of what is most precious of all in school—time.
4 Adapt yourself to each teacher’s methods. Some teachers unconsciously bury valuable information under a mass of accessory detail. Here you must overcome their difficulty; you must listen so attentively that you will be able to find the important parts of information. Sometimes a clue can be found in repeated phrases, such as: “The important point,” “we must remember,” etc. Other teachers almost blueprint the information for you. They enumerate: One, two, three, etc., they outline or diagram on the blackboard as they talk. Never affront them by asking, “Do you want us to remember this?” You can be sure that they are making the information clear for just that reason.
5 Check every tendency toward mind-wandering. The brain, the ear, the eye must be working together if you are to hear what is being said. How many times have you asked a question in class, only to be humiliated by finding that the teacher had just finished an explanation of the same. Mind-wandering can be checked by taking notes. Writing is one of the best ways to train yourself to listen. In order to write you force yourself to listen.
6 Listen critically, thoughtfully, and understandingly. If your listening can do the same. Test each statement as you hear it. If you do not understand a point, ask for an explanation then or after the class.
SUGGESTIONS FOR BETTER LISTENING IN THE LECTURE HALL
1 Don’t enter the hall and slouch in a back seat. How would you feel if you were the speaker? By that act you are insulting the speaker—the very act says for you, “I am here. I will listen half–heartedly, if at all; just try to teach me anything.” Always fill the lecture room from the front; take the front seat if possible.
2 Put yourself in the speaker’s place. Perhaps for every minute the speaker talks, he has spent three hours in preparation. Would you like to see such effort on your part wasted?
3 Respect is essential. Do nothing to distract the speaker. Leave your knitting at home and dispose of your chewing gum outside the door.
4 Save your questions until the end of the lecture, unless the speaker asks you to speak up if you wish a point made clear.
5 Remember that you can always learn. Never approach a classroom with the feeling that the speaker cannot teach you.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1 According to Jacques Barzun, how many people are you likely to meet in your lifetime who know how to listen?
2 Explain why listening is the easiest and quickest way to learn.
3 Explain the two conditions which make listening the most difficult of all the learning processes to master.
4 Listening improves the whole of classroom attributes; explain.
5 State briefly the five suggestions for improving your ability to listen in the class.
1Jacques Barzun, Teacher in America, Little, Brown and Company, 1945, p. 35.
The Desire to Learn
Time is the most limited blessing that we have on earth.
INTEREST MEASUREMENT TEST
1 Do you believe that you really have a desire to learn, or would you, had you been left alone from birth, be totally primitive and beastlike in your thoughts and feelings?
2 Do you believe that circumstance and environment can prevent a person from learning if the desire is strong enough?
3 Do you want an education enough that you would work and pay for it yourself?
4 Why do you want an education?
5 What will your education really be when you get it?
Outside the wind swept through the giant trees that dwarfed the cabin. Inside the cabin a little figure lay on the boards of the loft. He listened. Below him voices spoke of strange things: places he had not seen; things he did not know about; the savage toll of the wilderness and the struggle those below were enduring. What was happening? Years later one of the greatest Americans we have yet produced was to write:
I can remember going to my little bedroom after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, though I often tried to, when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, until I had put it into language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend.1
Of all the incidents in Lincoln’s life, this has always seemed to me the most remarkable. That a boy of his years should have felt so keenly the burden of the inexpressible, and should have spent sleepless hours in attempting to free himself from this burden, seems at first glance to remove Lincoln from the class of normal men. We think of him as peculiar, as apart from others, as not so representative as he would have been had he gone straight to bed and not bothered himself about putting into definite words the thoughts that were busy in his brain.2
But, explain it as we may, here was the desire for expression in clear words. Here was the desire to learn. Lincoln had it to a greater degree than most mortals. But we all have it.