How to listen properly? - Strategies to improve listening skills

Strategies to improve listening skills

Most groups of people such as students spend a lot of time listening to their teachers/instructors during learning/class sessions. Listening is practiced in our daily life experiences. It is important to improve the level of listening so that to improve communication. Oral communication is the one mostly involving the listening skills. Various strategies can be used to improve listening skills. Some of these strategies have been stipulated here below;

Maintain eye contact with the instructor.

Eye contact keeps you focused on the subject matter at hand and keeps you involved in the matter. Eye contact Increases the level of concentration and understanding. If eye contact is not maintained, it is likely to lose focus, concentration and understandability.

Focus on content, not delivery.

Content carries the message that someone is about to deliver during the speech. Focusing on the content increases the level of understandability. Concentrating on the delivery can take away understandability on the main message in the content.

Avoid emotional involvement.

Too much emotional in listening may turn you on what you may want to hear and not what is actually being communicated. It is important to remain objective and open-minded when listening.

Avoid distractions.

In some situations, listening may involve disturbances that may take away the level of concentration. Sometime the environment may not be good for proper listening. Example someone may be disturbing you during listening process or there may be too much cold or cold but still it is important to remedy these situations in order to properly listen and concentrate.

Treat listening as a challenging mental task.

When listening, it is important to convey information into your own understandability. This is common in classes where you may be required to listen and at the same time convert the message into your own notes.

Stay active by asking mental questions.

Proper listening is closely related with asking questions on matters that are not clearly understood. Active listening involves questioning mind. Asking questions is one of the indicators of good listeners.

Use the gap between the rate of speech and your rate of thought.

Thinking what has not been delivered. This involves thinking beyond information to be received. This enables listener to create more questions and at the same time concentrating to the message in the content.