Understanding You & Me.

Understanding You and Me (:

Today's lesson is activity-based, because we were involved in activities which were to test our listening and memorising skills. I think this is rather fresh, because in our age now, we do not really bother to listen and be attentive to what others say. Compared to the younger days in kindergarden and lower primary, we still had listening comprehensions to test our listening skills. But now, in a more blunt way, we are too caught up with our busy curriculum to even bother about the basic- listening.

Listening is a crucial skill that people tend to neglect, because it seems unnecessary to adopt good listening skills. However, take a step back and think carefully, we are always listening, but is listening all about hearing the things people say? To be exact, listening is not only to pay attention, but also to absorb and understand. It may seems easy, but to have good listening skills is not easy.

L: Look interested and Lean
You must be interested in the things that you listen at, if not, the habit of selective listening will come in. This is when people choose what they like to hear, and ignore what they dislike. This is not an effective way of adopting good listening skills.

I: Ignore or Overcome Internal & External Distractions.
This factor is always easier said than done, because distractions will always be around us. It is up to us, whether or not, can we not be tempted by these distractions and stay focus on our listening. This also helps to improve our attentiveness, because if we are willing to listen, we become more attentive to everything people say.

S: Suspend Judgement.
Try not to make judgements about what people may say. Think carefully before you draw a conclusion. Sometimes bad judgements made will cause bad side effects.

T: Tell them what you've heard.
It is important to have good listening skills, because when it comes to conveying messages to others, it is necessary that the correct and accurate information is passed on to avoid misleads.

E: Experience their side.
This helps in making good judgements, by putting yourselves in other people's shoes before giving a conclusion to what you may have heard. Understanding and sparing a thought for the party telling you the experiences is important in the process of listening.

N: No interruption.
Of course, this is the last, but the most important too. When people speak, do your best and your might to not interrupt. By interrupting someone in his/her speech, be it formal or informal, it is rude! Thus, we should always wait for the other party to speak his/her mind, even if we may strongly disagree/agree with what he/she may say. This is the basic manners of having good listening skills (:

Therefore, to adopt good listening skills is definitely not as easy as we may think. If not for this lesson on listening skills, I'll probably never ever taken out a time to really think of the importance of listening. But after I've typed this post, I feel so much better, and of course, I've definitely learnt something important again (: