Thinking about listening skills

Today we moved away from presentations and started to look at another aspect of communication: listening.

Although we are looking at something different, the same features of communication analysis arise. We've talked a lot about structure, purpose, audience, point-of-view in relation to essays and presentations. Then, you were the producers of communication "texts" (remember our broad definition of "text" way back in August?). Now, you are not producing texts - you are "receiving" information. In this case you are receiving information aurally (ie. via your ears) in the form of radio and television programmes.

We are now interested in how other people structure a piece of communication. We're interested in working out their purpose, intended audience and point of view. When we analyse these aspects we are in a position to judge the quality of the piece.

And hopefully we learn from what is good (and not so good) about the way they've put the piece together. We should be able to apply the principles that make a good piece of oral communication (like a presentation or programme) to a piece of written communication (like an essay or report).

Students in university and college spend a lot of time listening (or should). It is one of the main, and most traditional, ways of communicating information and ideas to students. That's not to say that it's always a good way to learn. We talked today about the future of the traditional lecture. One lecturer transmitting information to a lecture theatre of 150 students may be cost-effective for a university, but does it make sense educationally? Maybe pod-casts are the way ahead (even more cost-effective for the university: the lecturer does it once, then he/she can be fired!).

The point is that students will do a lot of listening and we need to spend a bit of time practising that skill.

Today we went down to the Learning Centre and listened to a documentary on BBC Radio 4's Word of Mouth series (see link below) on borrowing in language. Everyone seemed to find it very interesting and we had a thought-provoking chat about the issues that came up in it afterwards.

Before we went down, I showed students a method for note-taking called the Cornell Method. This method aims to help students produce more organised and meaningful notes by suggesting a two stage process in note-taking:

Stage one: on an A4 page with a very wide margin the student takes abbreviated notes.

Stage two: after the programme or lecture the student remains behind for a few minutes to review and summarise the notes in the space of the wide margin on the left-hand side.

This is probably better seen in practice. I took notes using this method when I listened to the documentary. I photocopied them and gave them out today. See the link below for more information on the Cornell Method.

Of course, we also need to assess your listening skills. We do this by getting you to listen to a couple of programmes and then answering a series of questions about the programme's: main ideas; purpose; point of view; intended audience. We also ask you to evaluate the programme.

I showed students the questions that we use. I also produced an example response for the programme we listened to today. This should give you some guidance in terms of what (and how much) you should write.

Next week we'll have a go at another Word of Mouth programme and you will have a go at the questions.

Here's the link to the Word of Mouth site. It's a very interesting series for anyone interested in language: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/wordofmouth.shtml


Here's a link to a video on the Cornell Method: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~acskills/videos/video_nt.html

Please post any comments or questions on anything relating to listening and note-taking.

Written assignments

Today I started giving students feedback on the writing pieces that were submitted before Christmas.

You need to think of your work for me as a process of building a portfolio of your communication skills. So, don't think of your essays or reports as things that need to be done as quickly as possible to pass an assessment. Rather we should see them as intellectual artefacts that you work on perfecting. It may take time and everyone will work at different rates. The main thing is that, over the next couple of months, you develop your writing skills to produce work to add to your portfolio.

One of the ways of developing skills is to pause and reflect on your current strengths and weaknesses. This awareness of your strengths and weaknesses should help you develop your formal writing skills.

Thoughts on first presentations

We started the presentations today. Hannah, very bravely, offered to do hers. It was a very interesting presentation on how the relationship between Ireland and Britain is represented through the works of three writers (Spenser; Heaney; Friel).

I'd like students to post some comments on these presentations as we go.

You should comment on your own (How did you feel beforehand? How did you think it went? What, if anything, would you do different if you did it again?). But please make any comments on the presentations in general.