Active Listening Activities

I like to follow up a module on Critical Thinking with a lesson, or some activities, in Active Listening (a crucial skill in Anthropology and in life) --- up to now in classes students have most likely only engaged in:

‘informational listening’ (a lecture)
or
'appreciative listening' (music on their headphones).

Active Listening is a skill that needs practice and patience to nurture... but is crucial in research, difficult dialogs, conflict resolution and problem solving.

Activity One: I did this at a mentoring workshop with faculty and it was surprisingly effective on multiple levels. Can be done in small groups or as a whole class activity.

Last Word Response: In order to succeed at this game, you have to remain fully present because your sentence or phrase must start with the last word the person before you used.

For example, one student may start by saying a general phrase or sentence such as “I love cats,” the next person then starts their sentence with the last word of the previous person’s sentence and could say something like “Cats are cool pets,” the next person could say, “pets are named after people,” etc. For most of us, listening is paying attention when someone else is speaking, but we’d also readily admit that while someone is speaking we are also thinking of what we want to say. In this activity you can not do that! You must pay attention, withhold judgement, reflect and then speak.

Activity Two: I have done this in multiple workshops with students, faculty and administrators. People find it liberating as the speaker and often frustrating as a listener --- but both learn valuable lessons!

Don't speak, just listen! It's simple. In pairs or dyads, facing one another, one person speaks for two* minutes and the other person listens. The listening person cannot utter a word... they can make facial gestures, but no speaking. The roles are then reversed for another two minutes. In the final two minutes the couple can talk freely, ask questions, make comments etc.

Sometimes I use the outcome of the Diversity Circle activity (doc attached) as the subject matter of the discussion. Other times I may ask engaging questions.

As a collective class you can then debrief and ask how that felt. Speakers often find it liberating not to be interrupted, to be able to fully express themselves. Listeners often find it frustrating but revelatory about how much they interrupt people or try and interject their ideas and thoughts into a conversation without actually 'listening' to what is being said..

*Actual times can be adjusted, I have done it up to five minutes each cycle.

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