Listening

As instructors, we’ve seen students doing things during class other than paying attention to class discussion or taking notes. These things range from reading a newspaper or magazine to text messaging, answering phone calls or just talking to a friend. This is distracting not just to instructors, but to others in the class.

Being able to take good notes, and to be a good student overall as well as being successful in your career, primarily involves good listening skills. We want to teach you things that will contribute to you being a person and a professional of good quality. We want you to be respected by other people. If you show people that you are a quality person, they will respect you more and you will achieve more in your career. Being a good listener is a mark of a person of high quality because:

1. You show respect for everyone involved and they will respect you for that. When you are engaged in something else during class, during a meeting, in court, etc., it sends the message that you are not fully listening. As an instructor, boss, coworker OR a classmate, that tells me that you are discourteous and unprofessional!

2. When you pay full attention, you show people that they are worth your full attention. They then tend to respect you more!

3. The more you pay attention, the more you can take in and use information, which shows that you are a capable person, which will earn respect. On the other hand, if information seems to “go in one ear and out the other,” people will tend to think of you as unreliable or flaky and will not respect you or value you as a professional.

4. The more you listen, the more likely you will be able to follow through on instructions or requests and people will learn that you can be trusted with tasks. This is important while in school because first, it will help you take the best notes possible, which will help you perform the best on exams and on projects and second, the instructors you have here will be the people you ask to vouch for you when you go out in the workforce. The more reliable you are in listening, the better you will perform in school and the better the job recommendation your instructors can provide. In a job this is important because the more your bosses or coworkers know that they can depend on you, the more responsibility you will be entrusted with and the further you will go in your career.

As instructors, we have all been told by students that, “I can do this and listen at the same time!” or “I already know this, so I’m bored,” or “I don’t need to know this for my future career, so I don’t need to pay attention.” The bottom line is not listening is not fair to everyone, including yourself, and here’s why:

1. As teachers, we need to know if you’re really listening. The only way we can do that is if we can see your face and your reaction to what we’re saying.

2. While you may believe you can “multi task” and do something else during a lecture, the truth is many students do not do it well and they miss hearing something important. Also, they often wind up being a distraction to those around them.

3. You show a lack of respect for your instructor and your classmates. The time an instructor must spend getting your attention back, as well as refocusing everyone’s attention on the class is time wasted by the instructor as it means less teaching and learning for everyone. It is stealing time and education, which you are all paying for!

4. If people are not fully listening, more repetition is necessary. This not only causes the instructor to work harder and take longer to finish what s/he has to say, but it is rude to those who are listening and have already heard what was said. The more an instructor has to spend time repeating things for those who didn’t hear the first time, the less time there is to spend on covering concepts the entire class could benefit from.

5. If someone isn’t listening, they often need help later on because they missed information that they need to succeed in the class. These students often become frustrated and may waste their own time trying to figure something out simply because they were otherwise engaged when the original lecture was going on. They also may fall behind in their work because they do not understand concepts that were presented. Instructors then have to “re-teach” these students information the rest of the group learned just a few minutes earlier which is discourteous and unprofessional.

The more you pay full attention, the better your notes will be, the better your overall study skills and class performance will be and the better professional you will become!

Taking notes during lectures actually helps you become a better listener!