I Hear You (NOT)

I am a proud Questia subscriber since 2006. If you are looking for a good on-line (American) library consider "10 Cool Things About Questia."

On February 15, I have received another newsletter. I find Questia's newsletters extremely interesting. This time I enjoyed the compilation of readings on listening skills. I found Ralph G. Nichols article very useful.

The ten bad listening habits identified by Ralph G. Nichols in a 1960 edition of The Supervisor's Notebook and posted online by Dartmouth College's Academic Skills Center make much sense. Did you ever catch yourself at these? The speaker has not finished, yet you are already:

1. Calling the Subject Dull
2. Criticizing the Speaker
3. Getting Overstimulated
4. Listening Only For Facts
5. Trying To Outline Everything
6. Faking Attention
7. Tolerating Distraction
8. Choosing Only What's Easy
9. Letting Emotion-Laden Words Get In The Way
10. Wasting the Differential Between Speech and Thought Speed

The article is called "What can be done about listening?"; so, Professor Nichols not only describes the problems, but provides suggestions. I cannot but insert the chunk related to the problem 10:

Americans speak at an average rate of 125 words per minute in ordinary conversation. A speaker before an audience slows down to about 100 words per minute. How fast do listeners listen? Or, to put the question in a better form, how many words a minute do people normally think as they listen? If all their thoughts were measurable in words per minute, the answer would seem to be that an audience of any size will average 400 to 500 words per minute as they listen.
Here is a problem. The differential between the speaker at 100 words per minute and the easy thought speed of the listener at 400 or 500 words per minute is a snare and a pitfall. It lures the listener into a false sense of security and breeds mental tangents.
However, with training in listening, the difference between thought speed and speech speed can be made a source of tremendous power. Listeners can hear everything the speaker says and not what s/he omits saying; they can listen between the lines and do some evaluating as the speech progresses. To do this, to exploit this power, good listeners must automatically practice three skills in concentration:

Anticipating the next point. Good listeners try to anticipate the points a speaker will make in developing a subject. If they guess right, the speaker's words reinforce their guesses. If they guess wrong, they'll have to do some thinking to discover why they and the speaker failed to agree. In either case, their chances of understanding and remembering what was said is nearly double what it would have been if they had simply listened passively.

Identifying supporting material. Good listeners try to identify a speaker's supporting material. After all, a person can't go on making points without giving listeners some of the evidence on which the conclusions are based, and the bricks and mortar that have been used to build up the argument should be examined for soundness.

Recapitulating. With the tremendous thought speed that everyone has, it is easy to summarize in about five seconds the highlights covered by a speaker in about five minutes. When the speaker stops to take a swallow of water or walks over to the blackboard to write something or even takes a deep breath, the experienced listener makes a mental summary. Half a dozen summaries of the highlights of a fifty-minute talk will easily double the understanding and retention important points in a talk.

Now, to cheer you up, let me share my observations: even if you ventilate the room, provide coffee, make a kitchy Power Point presentation which will usually enable you to present a half of the results of your research --- there will be yawning people in the audience, anyways! The question is: HOW MANY? :) So, don't bother too much about being "boring" --- just deliver the message faithfully, and enhance your own listening skills.

According to another article on common problems related to active and passive listening published in the Public Magazine, one should set a "listening goal" by answering the question: why are you listening? Besides the answer "I have to" the source suggests the following constructive answers:

1. Enjoyment.
2. Understanding.
3. Decision making.
4. Conflict resolution.
5. Problem solving.
6. Information gathering.

I absolutely agree with that the U.S. educational system largely rewards the students' abilities to talk. Yet not at an expense of making a point, right? :)

As one wise Chinese proverb suggests: listening is essential to all true conversation. Unfortunately, I doubt that academia provides space for "true" conversations among students and professors/teachers/instructors in class. Very often---we simply have no time to listen to each other. Blogging about our research topics and reading each others blogs could be one of the most fascinating ways to "hear" each other.