Self-reflection time: do you ever do any of these things while you’re supposed to be listening? Do you ever do them when you are listening to your students?
Fake noises: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh... With your encouraging noises and body language, it might seem like you are listening – but your mind is really somewhere else.
Assumptions: Rather than listening to what the speaker is trying to tell you, you make assumptions about what they have said, based on things like how they look or what they said last week.
Yeah, but…: It doesn’t matter what the person says – you are going to come up with a counterargument!
My turn yet?: Instead of mindfully focusing on the speaker and making sure you understand, you spend your time preparing your own point.
You need to…: You have an answer for everything. Whether or not the person asked, and regardless of whether you have all the facts, you go ahead and offer your advice and solutions.
You can probably think of some more listening pitfalls to add to this list. Talk to your students about the value of good listening, and have them do their own self-reflection. Have they ever noticed someone doing the above behaviours? How did that feel? Have they ever done these to someone else? What was the situation? Could they listen better next time?
Can they remember what everyone else said?