How to Be a

Better
Listener
 Active Listening
A way of listening or responding to
another person which improves mutual
understanding.
It’s an important first step in diffusing
situations or finding solutions to
problems.
This requires the listener to fully
concentrate, understand, respond, and
remember what’s being said.
You make a conscious effort to hear
and understand the complete message
being spoken rather than just passively
listening.
 ACTIVE LISTENING AND NOTE TAKING
NOTE-TAKING is one way to enhance listening, and using a systematic approach to the
taking and reviewing of your notes can add immeasurably to your understanding and
remembering of the content of lectures.
Note Taking as Aid to Listening
Good reasons to take notes:
● Notes are a useful record of key information, and the sources
of that information.
● Writing notes helps you remember what you heard.
● Taking notes helps you to concentrate and listen effectively.
● Selecting what to note down increases your understanding.
● Notes create a resource for exam preparation.
● Notes taken in classes often contain information that can’t be
found elsewhere.
Good reasons to take notes:
● Keeps you alert. Notetaking keeps your body active and involved and helps you
avoid feelings of drowsiness or distraction.
● Engages your mind. Listening carefully and deciding what to include in notes
keeps your mind actively involved with what you hear.
● Emphasizes and organizes information. As you take notes, you’ll decide on and
highlight the key ideas you hear, identifying the structure of a class presentation.
You’ll also be able to indicate the supporting points of a presentation, making
study and understanding easier after class. Such organized notes also make it
easier for you to link classroom learning to textbook readings.
● Creates a condensed record for study. A set of concise, well-organized notes from
each class session gives you what you need for study, learning, and review after
class.
 Before the Lecture: Be Prepared
● Know what the lecture will be about. Check the course outline for weekly
topics.
● Do any required pre-reading.
● If lecture slides are available before class, download them.
● Review notes from previous lectures.
● Set up notebooks/ documents for note-taking.
● Arrive on time and sit near the front - in order to take good notes, you need to
hear and see clearly.
● Develop a mind-set geared toward listening.
● Test yourself over the previous lecture while waiting for the next one to begin.
● Read assigned material (SQ3R) or at least S (skim) and Q (question) to
acquaint yourself with main ideas, new terms, etc.
● Do what you can to improve physical and mental alertness (fatigue, hunger,
time of day, where you sit in the classroom, all affect motivation).
● Choose notebooks that will enhance your systematic note-taking: a separate
notebook with full-sized pages is recommended for each course. You might
wish to mark off the pages in a particular format such as that of the Cornell
System of Note-taking.
● INTEND TO LISTEN
During the lecture: Strategies for effective note-taking
● Concentrate and pay attention. Arrive prepared to actively listen and
learn, and to think critically. Analyzing and questioning the information
helps you to focus and understand what you hear. Pay attention to the
speaker for verbal (louder or higher pitched inflections) and body
language cues of what’s important.
● Don’t try to write down everything being said. Be selective—you don’t
have to transcribe the entire lecture. Effective listening note-taking
involves recognizing key concepts and identifying and selecting what is
relevant. Listen for the overall argument and note the main points and
key information.
● Be consistent in your use of form, abbreviations, etc. (key your
abbreviations).
During the lecture: Strategies for effective note-taking
● Make a conscious effort to concentrate on what the speaker is
saying. Don’t get sidetracked by:
➢ a speaker’s appearance or mannerisms.
➢ your emotional reaction to the subject matter.
● Label important points and organizational clues: main points,
examples.
● When possible, translate the lecture into your own words, but if you
can’t, don’t let it worry you into inattention!
● Ask questions if you don’t understand.
During the lecture: Strategies for effective note-taking
● Instead of closing your notebook early and getting ready to leave,
listen carefully to information given toward the end of class; summary
statements may be of particular value in highlighting main points,
there may be possible quiz questions, etc.
 After Class: SAME DAY AS LECTURE (Reduce, Recite, Reflect)
● Clear up any questions raised by the lecture by asking either
the teacher or classmates.
● Fill in missing points or misunderstood terms from text or other
sources.
● Edit your notes, labeling main points, adding recall clues and
questions to be answered. Key points in the notes can be
highlighted with different colors of ink.
● Make note of your ideas and reflections, keeping them separate
from those of the speaker.
 After Class: SAME DAY AS LECTURE (Reduce, Recite, Reflect)
● A checklist for editing your notes:
Did you state the main topic of the lecture?
Are all words intelligible?
Are symbols and abbreviations keyed?
Is the structure clear? If not, you may need to rewrite.
Did you write cue words in the left margin for self-testing?
● Did you miss any points? You may need to compare notes with a
classmate.
● To get the most out of your notes it’s important to review and re-engage
actively with them several times.
● Review your notes while the lecture is fresh in your mind. Reviewing helps
you remember what was said, builds up your understanding, and helps
identify gaps in your knowledge
 To Review:
• Read through your notes. Make sure they are clear and legible. Clean
them up - fix spelling errors, expand on abbreviations, and tidy up
handwriting (if necessary).
• Fill in missing words or information and add anything extra that you
may have thought of since the lecture.
• Code your notes - use color and symbols to mark structure and
emphasis, highlight major sections, main points, and diagrams. Use
different colors to emphasize main points, classify different topics,
and link concepts or information.
• Explain and clarify diagrams by writing a simple version of their
meaning.
• Identify anything that needs further clarification.
Following Directions/ Instructions
 Following Instructions
● Following instructions is an important ability to practice in
everyday life. Within an academic setting, following
instructions can influence grades, learning subject matter,
and correctly executing skills.
How well can you follow
directions?
Primary Factors that Influence the
Ability of an Individual to Follow
Instructions
● Researchers observed a subset of housewives who
demonstrated a preference to tinker with a new home
appliance to get it started or watch a demonstration video
on how to set it up rather than read the accompanying
instruction manual. Since then, numerous factors that
influence following instructions have been investigated
including a person’s working memory capacity, societal
rules, history effects, self-regulatory behavior, and
instruction format.
 Working Memory and Following Instructions
● Working memory is the brain’s workbench, linking perception, attention,
and long-term memory.
● Working memory performance is an important intermediary between
perception and learning. Because working memory capacity is limited, a
person’s ability to follow instructions may be impacted if the
instructional load is greater than that capacity, ultimately leading to
information loss
● This loss of information may be more pronounced when a task must be
performed immediately and the presentation rate of instructions cannot
be controlled by the user. Imagine a student named Dennis. During class,
Dennis is nervous about an upcoming examination and this emotional
state preoccupies his working memory, leading to, in that moment, a
lower working memory performance. As a result, when the professor
gives verbal instructions for an upcoming assignment, the amount of
instructional load supersedes Dennis’ capacity to hold on to those
instructions in his working memory. Because he cannot hold on to those
instructions, he is less likely to store them in his long-term memory and
will not be able to refer to them later when completing the task.
● To summarize, the ability to hold instructions within working memory is
necessary to execute the desired function; thus low working memory
performance can compromise a student’s ability to follow instructions. If
a student cannot process or hold instructions in working memory, they
will probably fail to complete a given task correctly.
There are two potential strategies to assist the learner
in this situation.
● One strategy is to have the learner immediately act on the received
information. A common example of this is the teach-back method, which
is a practice of enactment.
● The second strategy is to use different forms of instructions (eg, written
and verbal), which allows the learner to control the rate of presentation.
If the learner can control the rate, they can review the instructions as
needed or go at a slower pace to fully encode the instructions.
 Societal Rules and History Effects
● Following instructions is a behavior, and most human behavior depends on
social context. Part of the social context is the presence of another individual.
The mere presence effect is the phenomenon that human behavior changes when
another human is around. The presence of another person can make an
individual more pliant. Being more or less pliant, or pliance, describes behavior
that is controlled by a socially mediated consequence.
● Donadeli and colleagues explored the effect of the magnitude of
nonverbal consequences, monitoring, and social consequences on
instruction following. They observed that the presence of an observer
and social reprimand for not following instructions improved the rates
at which people followed instructions. This suggests that societal
constructs, such as following authority figures and the fear of reprimand,
may be drivers in motivating people to follow directions.
● Following instructions is affected by the presence of another person
even if there is no history of reinforcement for such behavior, suggesting
that instructional control may be strengthened by social contingencies.
However, societal rules can lead to history effects. If students never
receive feedback on or consequences for their inability to follow
instructions, history effects dictate they will continue that behavior. Now
imagine a student named Amber. Amber wrote down the instructions
during class but did not follow them because she generally does well on
her assignments despite not completely following the instructions. As
such, she abstained from following the rules because a consequence was
not associated with not following them.
 Metacognition and Self-regulation
● Following instructions also depends on self-regulation, ie, a person’s
awareness of their own behavior to act in a manner that optimizes their
best long-term interests. To do so, an individual must be aware of their
own thoughts and actions. This awareness plays a role in metacognitive
monitoring, or a person’s monitoring of their own thoughts and
behaviors.
● Imagine a student named Craig. Craig wrote down instructions for an
assignment, but after completing the assignment, he did not review the
instructions to ensure he followed them correctly. He failed to monitor
his progress. As such, the ability to be metacognitively aware can be a
key piece in following instructions. In this case, individuals may not
follow instructions because they are poor monitors of their learning.
● Students may not adequately plan before tackling their assignment, such
as by reading instructions beforehand. Next, they may not monitor their
progress during completion of the assignment. And finally, once students
think they have completed the task, they may not go back and read the
instructions to ensure they have fulfilled all expectations. To help them
with this and other aspects of instruction, students may need to use
accountability (societal rules) as a primary source of motivation.
 Verbal vs Written Instructions
● Written instructions are efficient because large amounts of detail can be
provided that students can read rapidly. Thus, step-by-step manuals can
be found for almost all electronic devices. While there is a large body of
literature describing the mechanics of how we read, there are some
important points to underscore.
● Spoken instructions are advantageous in face-to-face interactions (eg,
within the classroom). Spoken instructions are processed through the
phonological loop, a component of working memory focused on verbal
information, which is more flexible and convenient. Intrinsically,
listening requires less effort than reading.