Why is it necessary to teach listening skills in schools
Growing up we all had school teachers telling us to pay attention and listen carefully. That command itself required us to hear what the teacher had to say. Logically speaking, we were in fact listening to them in the first place to make sense out of that command.
Or were we?
Is there a difference between hearing and listening? Let’s try to understand this with the help of an analogy, shall we.
If you paid attention in math classes back in school (unlike the writer of this blog), you knew that in order to find the area of a circle, you needed the length of radius, but before that you were taught what the term “radius” even meant, and what formula you will have to apply to get to the answer.
Telling students to listen attentively is just like telling them to find the area of the circle without defining the radius.
As underrated a skill as it is, mindful listening needs to be given adequate attention in schools around the world. However, unlike math, there is no formal education around active listening currently in our education system.
That begs the question: Is it even important to teach kids at school how to listen? What purpose does it serve for them? Let’s find out.
How active listening helps students:
- Learning the art of listening will help students develop a good interpersonal relationship with their peers. It will also help them to develop empathy that will extend beyond the classroom.
- Active listening enables the students to take control of their academic and personal lives by helping them retain more information and increase their attention spans.
- In addition, improving a student’s listening skills can enhance their self-efficacy, which boosts confidence and helps minimize stress.
- Students skilled in listening pick up on more knowledge to reflect on, and think thoroughly before responding, hence improving the way they present information.
- Such students also tend to pick up on new languages with ease and are better at communicating as well.
Thus, listening skills help students sail through their roller-coaster academic journey with greater comfort and confidence.
Now that we have established the significance of listening for school students, let us try to understand how we can practically teach the art of listening in schools around the globe.
What can the curriculum include?
1. First thing’s first:
One of the first steps to inculcate listening skills in students is to establish the difference between active and passive listening.
- Active listening is paying attention to the speaker mindfully and empathetically to understand the contents of speech and motives behind it, without interrupting the speaker.
- Passive listening, on the other hand, is when the listener listens only to respond in a certain way without any regard to the speaker’s emotions or intentions.
More often than not, majority of students have engaged in passive listening all their school life.
It is essential to teach students the difference between the two so that they can consciously make an effort to avoid indulging in passive listening.
2. Practice makes perfect:
Just like learning any other skill, listening too comes with practice. Students can be paired up to practice listening skills, with one person becoming the speaker and the other listener and vice versa.
The speaker can talk about a variety of topics ranging from a happy memory to a funny story, or even a proud moment.
Group activities where every student takes a turn to speak on a topic can also teach them how to listen attentively in a group discussion.
3. Attention to body language:
The curriculum should also focus on teaching non-verbal listening skills which are essential to learn in order to master the art of listening. Non verbal listening skills include physical gestures to convey that the listener is fully invested in what the speaker has to say.
These can include:
- maintaining comfortable eye contact
- keeping an attentive body posture which reflects your openness to communicate
- maintaining facial expressions which indicate genuine empathy for the speaker
4. Meditation for better focus:
Finally, mindful meditation can help students tune out their thoughts and instead focus solely on the surrounding sounds, thus improving their listening abilities.
If they can replicate this ability to focus while having conversations, it will drastically improve their ability to listen mindfully.
Along with the above-suggested methods, students need to be encouraged to practice their active listening skills daily and focus less on making their opinions heard and more on listening, and responding to their classmates’ ideas and opinions.
Inculcating active listening skills would prove to be a paradigm shift for our education system.
It will not only improve the students’ social and interpersonal lives but also help create a more empathetic and welcoming community as a whole, something that is worth striving for.
Sources:
https://www.fortheloveofteachers.com/5-ways-to-promote-active-listening-in-your-classroom/q
https://www.waterford.org/education/active-listening-in-the-classroom/
