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You can learn a lot through listening. In college, it will be a prime source of information. Unfortunately, people do not instinctively listen well. Quite the reverse! Listening is a skill which must be developed. If you apply the following suggestions, you will find yourself listening more effectively, both in class and out.
1. Determine why what the speaker is saying is important to you. If you don't have an immediate, vivid reason for listening to a speaker, you are an unmotivated listener.
2. Remember: the responsibility for interest and understanding lies with you, not with the speaker. Learning is up to the learner. If you simply want to sit passively and blame the speaker for your lack of success, then you're not a serious learner. 3. If you can't hear, arrange things so you can. Move away from sources of noise-human or mechanical. Sit where you can see the speaker easily, and where other distractions are at a minimum. 4. Listen to what the speaker is saying. Don't tune the speaker out because you don't like something about him/her or the message. Be sure you understand something before you reject it. 5. Look for the speaker's pattern of organization. In a lecture, a speaker is generally referring to notes or some other source of information. You can understand much better if you are able to recognize what the speaker's driving at and how the speaker's getting there. 6. Look for the main idea or ideas of the presentation. Facts are important only as they support the speaker's points. If you have trouble distinguishing between the important and the trivial, a friend or a tutor in the Academic Skills Center can help you.
7. Don't let your mind wander. Your thoughts move far more rapidly than the swiftest mouth, and the urge to stray is tempting. Your attention span can be increased, however, through deliberate effort. Continue to practice the habit of attention and don't be discouraged by early failures.
8. Take notes while you listen. even if you recognize everything being said, jot it down, because you won't remember it later unless you do.
Class Participation: Making Contributions that Count
Participating in discussion-based classes is an unfamiliar expectation for many Princeton students. Some students have already developed strategies for effectively speaking up in class, asserting their ideas and opinions, and taking center stage, whereas others are acquiring them now. But if the aim of class discussion is to learn from others and allow them to learn from you, there are lots of contributions that count, including questioning, listening, and responding. And, there are lost of ways to make these contributions, such as those described below. Your instructor will value these, too.
Prepare to contribute by carefully reviewing the syllabus and locating the current readings and topics in relation to the course as a whole. Know why you are discussing this particular topic at this juncture in the course. Use the syllabus and lecture material to generate questions and comments in advance.
Explicitly relate or link your observations and comments to course objectives, central themes and main topics.
Ask a question that encourages someone to clarify or elaborate on a comment.
Make a comment to link two people’s contributions.
Explain that you found another person’s ideas interesting or useful, and describe why.
Build on what someone else has said. Be explicit about the way you are extending the other person’s thought.
Paraphrase a point someone has already made and build on it.
Summarize several people’s contributions, taking into account a recurring theme in the discussion. "It seems we have heard variations on two main points of view; on the one hand…”
Ask a question that relates to that week’s course topic--for example, “Can you explain how this example illustrates the concept (course topic) of …?”
Find a way to express appreciation for the insights you have gained from the discussion. Be specific about what it was that helped you understand something better.
Disagree with someone in a respectful and constructive way. You might reflect the comment back to the speaker to indicate that you have listened well. If possible, point out what is interesting or compelling in someone’s comment before explaining why and how you disagree.
from The McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning at Princeton University 2016
"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. " William Strunk, Jr.
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