Further notes on listening; talk topics on listening

Further Notes on Listening

Listening ultimately is a matter of concentration and conscious activity.
Impediments to listening include distractions, sensory or mental; physical impairments such as inebriateion, lack of good blood flow, lack of oxygen.
Assessing what distracts and what is tolerable is itself an excellent exercise. Techniques for listening: concentration. Remove distractions, limit musical choices, background noise, etc. inasmuch as one can and as one finds them distracting.
Work on developing means to improve concentration and focus as well as blood flow and slow release of sugars to the brain.
Breakfast is tremendously important to learning; a breakfast of complex carbohydrates is better than one of sugar-caffeine-starch (e.g. coffee, Red Bull, and a Twinkie is not a good breakfast for listening and thinking).

Topics Relating to Listening:

Listening as distinct from hearing

Listening as a conscious activity may be linked to memory but probably not as strongly as smell

One must cultivate ways to listen; one must know what to listen for

practice listening; listening practice

Listening with judgment and listening without judgment; prejudice limits listening

How to combine listening and reading
How to combine listening and writing
dictation
note-taking

How to tell a general point from a specific
examples and illustrations
tangents and meanders

Where speakers often fail their listeners
the importance of the pause
speaking speed and listening speed
ask for time to take notes
instructors/speakers:
stop, summarize, have students/listeners recap and then take notes

If instructors’ notes are clear and comprehensive, students’s should be also

Listening grading into speech
avoid straw person fallacy: always state or restate the opposing or alternate position