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“*Are you listening to me*?” This question is often asked because the teachers /speaker think  the listener is nodding off or daydreaming.

 *We sometimes think that listening means we only have to sit back, stay barely awake, and let a speaker’s words wash over us*. listening is often understood as a “passive” activity. More recently, O, the Oprah Magazine featured a cover article with the title, “*How to Talk So People Really Listen*

Four Ways to Make Yourself Heard.” This title leads us to expect a list of ways to leave the listening to others and insist that they do so, but the article contains a surprise ending. The final piece of advice is this: “*You can’t go wrong by showing interest in what other people say and making them feel important* .

 *In other words, the better you listen, the more you’ll be listened*

*You may have heard the adage, “We have two ears but only one mouth”—an easy way to remember that listening can be twice as important as talking. *As a student, you most likely spend many hours in a classroom doing a large amount of focused listening, yet sometimes it is difficult to apply those efforts to communication in other areas of your life*

4.1 Listening vs. Hearing

*Hearing is an accidental and automatic brain response to sound that requires no effort*. We are surrounded by sounds most of the time. For example, we are accustomed to the sounds of airplanes, lawn mowers, furnace blowers, the rattling of pots and pans, and so on. We hear those incidental sounds and, unless we have a reason to do otherwise, we train ourselves to ignore them. We learn to filter out sounds that mean little to us, just as we choose to hear our ringing cell phones and other sounds that are more important to us.

*students who develop better listening skills are more likely to feel confident, comfortable, and prepared to succeed in school*.

The *importance of active listening also branches into social-emotional development.Improved relationship skills*. Stronger sense of empathy.

*students with strong listening skills don’t just retain more information, but they are also less likely to feel unprepared and frustrated* Additionally, *improved listening skills can lead to improved self-efficacy, or a student’s belief that they can succeed in class*

*This means that students who develop better listening skills are more likely to feel confident, comfortable, and prepared to succeed in school*.

*Learning how to listen can also teach students how to communicate their ideas*

*This is because students who listen pick up more knowledge to reflect on and think critically about before they respond*. Plus, for dual language learners in your class, learning how to listen can help students pick up their second language faster.[6]

*Teaching students listening skills leads to lasting advantages in a student’s academic career and beyond*, including:

• Greater ability to communicate
• Faster second language acquisition
• Lower levels of frustration, anxiety, and depression
• Improved relationship skills
• Stronger sense of empathy

*How to Help Students Develop Stronger Active Listening Skills*

*On average, people listen at about 25% of their potential*& in the classroom, teachers often understand that listening is an important skill to have but rarely teach it Clearly, teaching students how to be active listener should be a part of our class curriculum.

Active listening is easiest when there are fewer distractions. Try to limit the number of distracting decorations in your classroom, such as too many posters or large, very bright items. This will not only be helpful for your classroom as a whole but also students with disorders that act as a barrier to active listening and focus, like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

If you have students who struggle to listen in class, multisensory learning and curricula  can be helpful. *Multisensory learning involves any activity that engages two or more of the senses (such as sight, hearing, or smell). You could, for example, *sing a song to teach students the names of the solar system* planets or have students draw a scene from a book as you read it in class.As you engage several of your students’ senses, they will be better able to listen and comprehend class materials.

And finally, lead by example. Provide students with an opportunity to model active listening skills by holding regular classroom meetings. The subject of these meetings (anything from class policies to recent academic topics) doesn’t matter so much as the structure. Remind students to practice their active listening skills and focus less on making their opinion

INSTEAD OF HEARING DO LISTEN