um...

one quick i guess word of introduction to the workshop today this is

technically the

first of two parts

uh... next week we're going to talk about taking better lecture notes

it's really hard when the teacher is talking

full-speed

and that's pretty much how they all talk to know what to write and how

to write it and just gets very confusing

one of the reasons that this is part one is because

if you're not mentally in the room

listening carefully

you can't take good notes and so many people struggle with their concentration

with their uh... listening skills

so the idea is

i want to try to get that stronger today and then if you're able to be back next

week i'll teach you how to actually physically write notes in a way that

might be different than what you do now

and might be better might be more helpful okay so that's kind of the idea

here's what i want to say to begin with

whenever students see the title of this workshop improving your listening skills

i get some really interesting

responses from people

people look at me and they say

you're gonna teach us how to listen

and i said well actually yes

and people say well i already know how to do that been doing that all my life

and hearing and listening

are not the same thing at all

and most people as i said are really not good at it and we're gonna talk about

that to start with

but here's my little uh... quick introduction to this whole thing and

that is

um... i talk to students really often and i don't know if this is gonna sound familiar to

you but i talk to students and i go up to one and i say

do you ever have a hard time concentrating when somebody's talking to

you

and here's their answer...wh..what

yeah okay good you come to me with me to the workshop

uh... people's ability to concentrate is kinda scary and so what we're gonna do

is we're gonna start with problems

we don't want to think about those too much but

there are a lot of reasons why people have a hard time concentrating

we're gonna talk about three of them really fast and then we're going to

focus on solutions

it's always nice when there are twice as many solutions as problems too bad life

isn't quite like that but anyway that's sort of encouraging so um... out of all

the reasons you might think of why a person has trouble concentrating

some of those are going to be addressed over here but i wanna show you three of

them

and what i'd like to have you do while i'm explaining these

is to figure out something for yourself i'm not going to actually ask you i just

want you to think about it

which one of these three

are you guilty of the most often in other words it's your personal weakness

and one thing i know for sure this might surprise you

i know even though i don't know anybody in here really

i know that all of you suffer from all three of these

and how can i know that's it's 'cause you're a human being

you'll understand as i go through 'em ok so the first one

which is a major problem for a lot of people

is what's usually referred to as

pseudo listening

okay and what does

pseudo mean

yeah it means false or fake

okay so the question is do you ever fake listen

okay and if you say no

then you're either the greatest

listener of all time or you don't understand what that means yet but

let me give you an example of it and then you'll realize oh yeah i do that

whether it's some or a lot

when i teach a class

at any given moment everybody in the room is in one of three categories

related to this issue

and so i'm gonna make some of you nervous here in a minute but that's okay

uh... some people when i'm talking and i don't just stare at my notes i kind of

make eye contact with people as i teach

sometimes i look at a person and they're looking at me like this

and i can tell

right away when i look at 'em they're locked in on me

and they're paying really good attention to me

do i like to see that

uh... yes

it's nice to know somebody's listening

so i tend to look at those people more often than anybody else okay and then

there are some people and i hope none of your ever like this because it's pretty

disrespectful

who sit in class and are just like this

and all that and their advertising the fact

i'm not listening i don't care

who cares if i'm being rude i'm not listening that doesn't happen very often but every once

in awhile and then

there's the third group

all of you are in this group every once in awhile but some of you and when i

describe this you realize that i almost live there

and i gotta get out of there

these are people like this

as i'm teaching i look at somebody and i see them doing this

everything looks

really good on the outside

but when i look deep in their eyes there's nobody there

they're gone on what i call a mental vacation

and if you saw

this from the front of a room it's it's it's like a science-fiction movie

like somebody

sucked them right out of their body

they're just sitting there

like that and i know they're not listening to one word i'm saying

ok when somebody goes on a mental vacation

that's normal

but the question is for you and don't answer me

how often do you go on vacation

and how long are you gone when you go

and i'll let you in on a little secret sometimes i've looked at somebody in

class and i see them

and i know that they're not listening so i look somewhere else and talk then

i look back and

they're still on vacation

so i look over here and i then i look back and a few minutes later

they're still on vacation

and so i've always wanted to do this and i'm really big on respect so i would

never do this but

this is sort of a dream

weird dream

i would go up to 'em like this right in the middle of class

and i'd lean over and say

where are you

take me with you

wherever they are it's obviously a lot more interesting that what we're doing

there on the beach somewhere

i don't know what they're doing

if you're the type of person who let's your mind wander

and then it comes back after a few seconds and then it wanders later

welcome to the human race

but if you take

frequent-flyer vacations and you're gone for like ten minutes at a time

that's not good obviously you're missing a huge amount of uh... of the work i've

uh... i don't know if this has happened to you before but when i was a student

i tried so hard to concentrate but sometimes

it's hard ok you know that

and every once in awhile i'd drift away and go on vacation

and then a couple minutes later i would come back

into my body

and i'd start listening again and the first thing i heard the teacher say is

okay so don't forget that all right

and i'm thinking

i have no idea what you're talking about so

does that again don't answer me does that sound like a constant nagging

problem or an occasional one just depends on you ok

the second one is something that a lot of students misunderstand when i write

this down

but i want to try to give you a little example of this too

it's called uh... selective listening

ok now

selective listening usually means

you listen to what you want to hear

you tune out the rest right

that's sometimes a problem but that's not exactly what i mean by this

what i mean by this is this word

and that is

distractions

ok so the question for you is how easily are you distracted

and as a result you don't listen carefully to the person talking to you

this could be in a conversation

this could be in a classroom and i'm gonna give you this example uh... and again this will

either sound very familiar to you or you'll think uh..not so much

i had a student last semester who came up to me after class one day

and uh...

said something i haven't heard to often from students

he said can i talk to you for a second

and i said

yeah sure what what's up

and he we went off into my office which is right here

and he said

could you do something about the noise

in the classroom

now the reason that was so strange is that class he was in was one of the

quietest classes i've ever had in my life

you could hear a pin drop

and that's on the carpet

so that's really quiet everybody just sat there what noise i'm trying to get people

to talk more and here's what he said

he said well i'm trying to listen to you i'm trying to concentrate but

the person over here

is chewing gum

the person over here is clicking their pen

this person's chair is

squeaking

and they're giving me a catalog of every sound going on in the room

i never heard any of those some other people sitting near them might not not have

heard 'em

but some people are so

hypersensitive

they're so easily distracted by anything that it just takes the smallest thing to

completely have them lose focus other people are really good at tuning

everything out and focusing

and barely notice anything around them

well if you're the type of person

who is really easily distracted

gonna talk about some things over here about how to overcome that a little

but that's the second one and again out of these

two probably one of them sounds a little

more common to you then the other

but the third one

is

major problem for at least

some people

and this has two meanings too including one that i don't mean so i wanna make

sure i got this

and that's critical listening

there is a type of critical listening that's actually good

that's when you listen to something like a sales pitch

and you don't automatically believe it

but you

analize it critically that's a good thing but that's not this what i mean by this

and this might help you to remember it is this and that is to write another word

that comes from the same one which is the word criticize

so what that means is

you are

thinking something

about the person talking to you whether it's in a conversation or a class

and it's not something really that just distracts you it's something that

bothers you

a lot

and as a result you end up spending all your time focusing on that

instead of listening to what the person is saying

two examples of this for you so you understand it the first one is this

i had a student a few semesters ago who came to me

with a really odd story i hear strange stories but this is one of the all-time

best

he came to me and he said

you know i've got a major problem in one of my classes and i don't know what to do

about it can you help me

and i said i'll try

and he said well it's my political science class

and he said everytime i go to that and then leave

i have no memory