ACTIVE LISTENING TRAINING FOR TUTORS

What is active listening? Of course, as a tutor you’ll be listening to a lot of students However, there is a difference between “listening” and “active listening” “Active listening is all about building rapport, understanding, and trust” (Grohol, 2007) Improving and using your active listening skills will help you and your tutees become better learners

Active listening skills: Anne Vermont Shearer (2012) discusses 3 verbal active listening skills for tutors: Paraphrasing Using your own words to restate what you believe your tutee is saying. This helps students hear how their thoughts are coming across to you and gives them an opportunity to clarify, if necessary Encouraging This is a way of letting your tutee know that you are following what he/she is saying (e.g. “OK”, “I see”, “uh-huh”, etc.). This way, the tutee knows that you are listening/following along Summarizing As you might imagine, summarizing means that you are briefly going over what was said, highlighting the main concepts and points that you discussed. Of course, this lets the tutee know that you were actively listening throughout the session and can also be encouraging for the tutee when he/she hears how much was discussed/accomplished in the session

Active listening skills (cont’d) Of course, active listening can also include non-verbal cues Having good eye contact with the student Smiling Nodding your head as the student speaks Using open body language vs. closed or defensive body language

Some Examples =-pY_7q7ZP5o =xAp9n3yBjyo =kjF4rKCR81o&list=PL6MeBinkeg3 t40rTTb8PrFhRfNQ-LABn5 Good Listening SkillsBad Listening Skills

Active Listening Skills to develop: According to Dr. John Grohol (2007) there are 13 steps to becoming a better active listener: 1.Restating 2.Summarizing 3.Minimal encouragers (the “encouraging” we just spoke about) 4.Reflecting (reflecting student’s words in context of feelings) 5.Giving feedback 6.Emotion Labeling (e.g. “I get the sense that you are really worried about this upcoming exam”) 7.Probing (remember our session on probing questions!) 8.Validation (acknowledge what your tutee is sharing with you) 9.Effective pause (pausing at key points to signal important points)

Active Listening Skills to develop (Cont’d) 10.Silence (become comfortable with silence. Give your tutee time to process information and formulate thoughts and answers) 11.“I” messages (“I need to do X”, “I want to show you something” vs. “you need to listen to this”) 12.Redirecting (appropriately shifting topics as necessary-may be effective if a student is becoming overwhelmed or agitated with a specific concept) 13.Consequences: although Grohol uses this in terms of counseling, this may be beneficial for tutees as well. For example, “What happened last time when you didn’t prepare for the test ahead of time?”

What to avoid: As we discuss in our tutor do’s & don’t’s session: Don’t constantly interrupt your tutee Don’t ask questions in a way that makes tutee’s defensive (“Why didn’t you do this?”, “Why don’t you understand this?!”, etc.) Put away your unneeded technology (such as cell phones) and focus on the tutee Don’t lecture at the tutee. Engage the students in their own learning so that they become an active part of the session

Small group activity/Role-playing Now we are going to break up into small groups You will each be given a scenario to act out First, you are going to demonstrate a session in which active listening skills are NOT used Then, you will discuss with your partner how to incorporate active listening skills to improve your session Yes, we will be acting these out for the group! Do your best; We don’t expect an Oscar-worthy performance!

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Suggestions?

References Grohol, J. (2007). Become a better listener: Active listening. Psych Central. Retrieved on October 10, 2013, from listening/ Shearer, A.V (2012). Active listening training for multimodal learners. In Agee, K. & Hodges, R. (Eds). Handbook for training peer tutors and mentors. Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning.