Midyear Exam P1-F

Revision 2022-2023 Fall

REVISION for MIDYEAR EXAM - LISTENING

THREE WAYS to LISTEN BETTER

Take notes using the headings below while listening to the lecture on “Three Ways to Listen Better.”
You will hear the lecture TWICE.

Losing Our Listening Skills

Reason 1

Reason 2

Reason 3

Improving Our Listening Skills

Why?

Exercise 1

a sound mixer

Exercise 2

Exercise 3

a choir
Listening in Schools

Why?

What to do?
Part A. Decide if the statements below are T (true) or F (false), according to the lecture.

______ 1. It is surprising that so many people use headphones and listen to music outside nowadays.
______ 2. We keep in mind just 25 percent of the things we hear.
______ 3. People have to go to a café to do the sound mixer exercise.
______ 4. If schools teach listening skills, students will be more aware of the importance of this ability
and improve their skills.
______ 5. A few generations is enough time to change the world into a place where people listen
carefully.

Part B. Choose the best answer according to the lecture.

1. According to the lecture, recording technologies make our listening skills worse because _____.
a) we generally turn on the volume too high and damage our ears while listening to things
b) we can look at or listen to the necessary information again after recording it
c) the quality of recordings we listen to is very bad and this makes them hard to understand
d) high volumes affect our hearing negatively

2. According to the lecture, now people prefer _______.

a) long speeches
b) small talk
c) other people talking
d) silence

3. For the first exercise, what should people do if they can’t find complete silence?
a) They should turn off the lights in the room.
b) They should put on their headphones and listen to some relaxing music.
c) They should go to the quietest place they can find.
d) They should turn up the volume of their speakers.

4. Which of the following can you do in a café as a listening exercise?

a) Try to actively listen to different people or noises around you
b) Use the DJ’s sound mixer to entertain the people in the cafe
c) Put on your headphones and listen to relaxing bird sounds
d) Start a conversation with people you don’t know

5. The lecturer mentions a _______ as an example in the sound tasting exercise.

a) coffee machine
b) washing machine
c) photocopying machine
d) refrigerator
 THREE WAYS TO LISTEN BETTER - TAPESCRIPT
Today we are going to talk about a very important ability of human beings: listening. We are
losing our listening skills and this causes communication problems between people. In this lecture, first I
will explain why we are losing our listening skills, and then, I will recommend three simple exercises to
improve your listening skills. Finally, I will tell you how we can teach listening skills in school.

As I said at the beginning, we're losing our listening skills. Why did I say that? Well there are a lot
of reasons for this. First of all, we have invented ways of recording -- first writing, then audio recording
and now video recording as well. Whenever you want to check something again, it is always there for
you; you can listen to it again and again; therefore, the need for careful listening has simply
disappeared. Secondly, the world is now so noisy. It's not just hard to listen; it's tiring to listen. In this
situation, nobody is listening to anybody. That’s why, it is not surprising that so many people use
headphones and listen to music when outside these days. Another reason is that we are becoming less
patient. We don't want long speeches anymore; we want small talk. And the art of conversation is being
replaced by personal talking. I don't think there is much listening in a typical conversation anymore.

It is a serious problem that we're losing our listening skills because listening is our access to
understanding. We spend roughly 60 percent of our communication time listening, but we're not very
good at it. We keep in mind just 25 percent of the things we hear. If you don’t listen carefully, you
cannot understand the people around you. A world where we don't listen to each other at all is a very
frightening place. So I'd like to share with you three simple exercises, tools you can use to improve your
own effective listening. Would you like that?

The first one is silence. Just three minutes a day of silence is a wonderful exercise to turn off
your ears so that you can hear the quiet again. Some people cannot get complete silence anywhere and
those people should go to the quietest place they can find.

Second, I call this the sound mixer. Even if you're in a noisy environment, such as a café, listen to
the different channels of sound you hear. Ask yourself this: How many people or noises in that
environment are you listening to? You can do it in a beautiful place as well, like at a lake. How many
birds are you hearing? Where are they? It's a great exercise for improving the quality of your listening.

The next and last exercise is probably the most important of all of these. This exercise is tasting
simple sounds like tasting food and it is a beautiful exercise. It's about really enjoying regular sounds. For
example, I listen to my washing machine. It gives me a waltz. One, two, three. One, two, three. One,
two, three. I love it. Or you can try other machines. So, regular sounds can be really interesting if you
pay attention. I call that the hidden choir. It's around us all the time.

I believe that every human being needs to listen carefully to live fully – if we want to be
connected in space and in time to the physical world around us and connected in understanding to each
other. That's why we need to teach listening in our schools as a skill. Why don’t we teach it? And if we
can teach listening in our schools, we can improve our listening skills again. For example, some schools
teach listening in literature courses; however, if they put a separate course on listening and note-taking
skills instead of teaching it in literature courses, students will be more aware of the importance of this
ability. So, I invite you to connect with me and connect with each other. Take this mission out and let's
get listening courses in schools, and change the world in a few generations to a world where people
listen to each other carefully -- a world of connection, a world of understanding and a world of peace.

Thank you for listening to me.

 ANSWER KEY

Part A.

1. F 2. T 3. F 4. T 5. T

Part B.

1. b 2. b 3. c 4. a 5. b