Listening

The act of listening can be quite difficult at times, can't it? Teaching Public Speaking classes over the years has taught me a lesson about the art of listening. Think back to your PS class. How many speeches did you listen to? 15, 20, 30? Did you find it difficult to listen to so many speeches throughout your semester?

Or take for instance a work meeting. Or perhaps a classroom setting where one person dominates a conversation. Was it difficult for you to listen to that person......for the hundredth time......rambling on and on and on about the same thing......AGAIN???

This week's discussion is interesting for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is diversity of personal experience. Quite a few of my discussion questions ask for personal examples. Have you wondered why? Of course I ask about course concepts, but your person experiences are very interesting to me. I love reading about them! In the virtual classroom, asking about personal experience creates diversity. The concepts in the book are there, and each student can read them. But stepping out of the book and into everyday life is where I find excitement in communication.

Diversity and applicability is the exact reason I have developed each course assignment. The first assignment in this class, as difficult and frustrating for some as it may have been, was to bring forth the idea of using concepts in a practical way. After all, this is a 4-unit practice course (Comm 141p). Practice means using the concepts and actually putting them into practice.

The final project in this course, along with the other two projects, do exactly that. Each project allows you to 'practice' and reinforce the concepts we are studying throughout the semester. They encourage students to think about real world situations and put them to use. As you can tell, this is not simply a 'theory' course, as some of your classes may have been.

This week's discussion is an interesting one. It highlights the issues that each person has with listening. After all, each of us struggles with this a different times in our lives. Would you agree?