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Learning to Listen to University LectureIn this section: Learning to Listen: Listening to Learn Active listening and selectivity Next section...Note-taking Formats Learning to Listen: Listening to LearnWhen we talk about learning to listen, we are talking about learning to engage in an activity that takes skills and effort. Just because we can hear doesn't mean that we can listen effectively. (And for that matter, just because we may not be able to hear, doesn't mean that we can't listen effectively.) Simply put, listening is a thinking activity. If we are hearing without thinking, it may be the case that we are not listening well. And you may know from personal experience, it isn't always easy to listen. Perhaps the lecturer is speaking too softly. Maybe the way the lecturer speaks makes it hard to understand what is being discussed. It might be that the lecturer has said something you have taken offense to and so it is hard to concentrate on the rest of the message . Lecturers sometimes speak too slowly or too quickly or end up talking on tangents that may or may not have anything to do with the theme of a lecture. Some students even complain that the lecturer just reads out what is in the book. As you will see, there are many potential obstacles to listening effectively, some to do with you as a listener and some to do with the professor as lecturer. If you want to benefit from the lecture, however, it is often up to you to take responsibility for improving the situation. One very powerful way is to learn to listen more effectively. Active listening and selectivityAs I mentioned briefly above, listening is a thinking activity and as such can be improved with instruction and practice. It isn't enough to say that you ought to be thinking as you are in lectures (because it may be that you are thinking, but not about the lecture!). It is very helpful to define what activities you are actually mentally engaging in when you listen actively. Some of these activities include understanding, summarizing, analyzing, anticipating what will come next, mentally reviewing what has gone before, comparing what is said to what you found in the text, applying what you hear to your own personal experience, evaluating the information, selecting out what is most central, figuring out what can be ignored, interpretting the tangents the professor may venture on, reserving judgement when something controversial is said, posing questions, checking for accuracy, and shifting your attention between the lecturer and your notes. Clearly there is a lot going on when we listen actively. If your goal is to improve your listening, you don't have to do everything in this list all of the time. A very practical way of improving is to focus on one or two of these mental activities and practice them every lecture until they get to be second nature. Now, these activities take practice to master. They will take time and effort to do and for a while you may feel like the quality of your note-taking is going down. But hang in there. Active listening is very important to your process of learning and can relieve the boredom and frustration that comes with thinking that everything is equally important and hoping that what is said in lecture will just sink in. Some ideas will "sink in" but this is not because of the idea so much as what you are doing with the idea. If something stayed in your mind after lecture, it is because at some level and in some way, you thought about it. The more you think about what you hear, the more likely it is that you will understand and remember the ideas of your lectures. And this is the point right? That is, the purpose of attending lectures is to understand and record this understanding for future use in essay writing, thinking, and preparing for exams. If you are attending lectures and not thinking, you are basically wasting your time by postponing the learning of your course until a later date. (And you probably know what it is like to try to learn the whole course in a few days of cramming with notes that you took mindlessly in class! It's really tough.) As you embark on an exploration of how to engage your mind in active listening, focus on what you are thinking, try to learn your lecturer's teaching style, and focus on some common characteristics of lectures. We'll discuss these in more detail below. Lecturer CharacteristicsThe following checklist may help you define your lecturer's style: Some lecturers talk quickly, some slowly. Some give an outline at the beginning of a lecture, or review what was talked about the week before. Others tie up all the loose ends at the end of a lecture and provide you with a hint or two about what the focus of the next lecture is going to be. Some have titles for their lectures, which indicates a clear focus and main idea the professor has in mind, whereas others may just arrive and begin talking, forcing you to listen carefully for the main ideas. Some professors use humour; others tell stories; some seem dry, boring, and uninteresting. Some have a good way of repeating information that they find important, some use lots of examples, some rephrase what is said into different words to give you time to capture the idea. Whatever characteristics your lecturer has, it is a good idea for you to become acquainted with them. Knowing how your lecturer operates will give you a sensitivity to the cues -- both verbal and non-verbal -- that will indicate what's important. Features of the LectureLearning how your lecturer presents can be complemented by understanding some features of lectures that are common to many listening settings at university. Paying attention to these features can assist you in identifying the division of topics. They can also assist you in deciding on the main ideas of the lecture. These features or structural parts include:
Introductions and Conclusions The first few minutes of any lecture are very important, especially when the lecturer's style is to present a formal introduction or summary of the previous lecture before launching into the day's discussion. Sadly, some students rarely organize themselves to attend the class in time to take advantage of this important feature of the lecture. Without the guidance that the first few moments of a lecture can give, you may find yourself confused and lost as you try to categorize the information being covered. And, the beginning of the lecture is often a time when speakers offer their class announcements regarding tests, changes in times and dates for evaluations to be due, or class cancellations. Likewise, the conclusion of the lecture serves to wrap up the ideas of a lecture, lend a sense of closure to the discussion, and highlight connections the lecture may have to the course readings and future lectures. Because of the realities of time management, professors often discover that they have more to say than time to convey it in. As a result, the latter parts of a lecture may be characteristically more rushed and more densely packed with ideas. Additionally, professors may be more explicit about the connections between ideas presented near the end of a lecture. Here too, you may find it difficult to listen as you compete with your classmates who are packing up their books and knapsacks to make it to the next class or as you consider what you have to do next when class is over. These two features of the lecture format are often very important and often overlooked; make it a priority to hear and listen to them. Repetition The task of listening to a lecture is beset with one subtle, but immovable, obstacle and that is that, for the most part, speakers in lectures speak more quickly than note-takers write their notes. And lecturers know this . As a result, lecturers will often repeat the central ideas, rephrase them, or elaborate them over an extended period of time, for the purposes of emphasizing them for their keenly listening students. Others will offer a series of examples (rather than just state the idea or give one example) to achieve the purpose of repetition. Repetition is your defense against an in-born difference between your speaker's rate (200+ words/min.) and your writing speed (30-40 words/min.). Repetition gives you what you need most -- time -- to capture the important idea that is being emphasized. For you to take advantage of repetition, though, you have to be able to recognize its various forms as I have laid out above. It is really quite simple. You just have to prompt yourself to listen for the ways in which repetition is occurring. Sometimes you'll hear a word for word repetition (often with the professor slowing down to make it clear). Other times, you'll have to be paying attention to the meaning of the ideas so that you can determine that idea x is the same idea as idea y, just said with different words. As well, you can learn to listen for transitional phrases that indicate what is about to be said. The phrase "for example" indicates a special relationship between an idea that has just been stated and what's coming next. In its way this transitional phrase represents a repetition of the idea. (These transitional phrases are discussed further below.) Transitional Phrases or Linking Expressions Many students get caught up on the notion that they need to take down every single word in a lecture. Clearly students do this so that they can be sure they have everything noted that could possibly appear on an exam. Given the presence of repetition in lectures, you might begin to see how this is not necessary. Another feature of lectures that you can attend to are transitional phrases or linking expressions. Their purpose is to help you logically organize the relationships between the ideas expressed during your lecture. And there are lots of them. The fact that they exist to organize ideas means that in a way they aren't the ideas themselves -- another argument that you don't need every single word to get every single idea. Nonetheless, linking expressions are very valuable in assisting you in two of your chief jobs as a listener -- being organized and selecting the central material. In his book, How to Study in College, Walter Pauk lists out the most common linking expressions, including words which indicate contrast or change; additional material or repetition; emphasis; number, lists and order; summary; concession; amplification; and cause and effect. Some examples follow:
Rephrasing of Ideas Speakers often slow the rate of their speech to
allow students an opportunity to catch up during lectures. Another, somewhat
more subtle, way of allowing students a chance to both understand more clearly
and record more completely is rephrasing. Changing the way something is said
is, essentially, repetition. To make use of it effectively, though, you need to
be listening. And most professors have a style of speaking that involves some
use of rephrasing that you can learn to anticipate. That is, some professors
always, for example, repeat or rephrase a definition of new terminology. Think
of the time professors use for rephrasing as time to clarify the idea or to
finish writing down the thought you have. Elaboration is another feature of the lecture that you will notice. Some times you might feel as if your professor just blabs on and on about the topic. Some students have even said things like, "Why can't he just say what he means?" Well, in fact, the professor is saying just what he means. In addition to the basic main idea, the professor is often including detailed information about support for the idea, an argument for or against the concept, the history of the idea in your subject, its implications for your understanding of issues in your course -- any number of things. The purpose of this elaboration is to offer you enough information to be able to think for yourself about the ideas of importance to your course. To deal effectively with elaboration, it is important to listen for the main idea(s) and to then determine what kind of information is being given to elaborate on the topic. Next: Note-taking Formats
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