Listening Step 8

Listening: The receiving, retaining and processing of information or ideas.

Step 8: I show I am listening by summarising or rephrasing what I have heard

Outcomes

To achieve Step 8, learners will demonstrate that they are understanding more complex ideas by repeating or rephrasing what they have heard.

This builds their listening skill further by showing engagement with the content of what they are hearing itself.

Learners need to be able to:

Summarise or rephrase what they have heard
Work summarising or rephrasing into conversation

Introduction

Summarising is about capturing the key points of what has been said. This works well when what you are listening to is not too complicated. Here the focus is on making sure that you can repeat back the key points without significant change, and to ensure that you have not missed anything important.
Rephrasing is an extension of summarising. You take the main points that have been said and change the way the idea has been expressed. Rephrasing is most helpful when the speaker is talking about more complex concepts but means you need to have understood what you have heard.

Skill Starter

We are the Champions

Play learners clips of sports people's interviews after winning, where they outline how they are feeling.

Ask learners to either rephrase or summarise what that person was saying, making sure they have plenty of opportunities to practice each. Remind learners about the difference between the two, summarising should be them repeating the key points and words, rephrasing is them expressing the main points but in a new way.

10 mins

Group activity

Discussion

Teach & Apply

Summarising and rephrasing can be helpful tools to help structure the flow of information. If done well, it can ensure that you can clarify anything that wasn't clear and helps you mentally process and store the information.
Timing is critical for summarising and rephrasing. If you interrupt to summarise or rephrase it can stop the flow of the conversation. You need to allow time for the speaker to fully explain the idea.
You can tell if you’ve got your timing right, because:

If you’ve timed it right, then your speaker should seem appreciative of what you’ve checked.
If you've done it too soon then they might seem flustered as they feel that they’ve interrupted.
If you leave it too long then they might start trailing off, and appearing less confident to keep speaking.

Optional Activity

What did they say?

Make cards with different sports-related movement challenges written on them of different complexities, for example balance on one leg whilst throwing and catching a tennis ball. The cards need to be in two different colours, one for rephrasing and one for summarising.

Learners work together in pairs. One member of the pair will pick up a card and read it to their partner. Their partner needs to look at the colour of the card and either rephrase or summarise. They should then complete the action.

Pairs should regularly swap roles and work their way through multiple challenges.

15 mins

Paired activity

Active

Reflection & Assessment

Embed these strategies across your teaching and coaching to help learners apply what they’ve learnt.

Model summarising or rephrasing, as appropriate, when a learner says something to the group. Ask the other learners to identify which tool you have used and why.

Use these ideas for ways of assessing this skill step to help you check learners’ understanding and confidence.

Pause at regular intervals during sessions and ask learners to either summarise what they have learnt or rephrase it.
Ask these reflective questions
- What does it mean to summarise what you have heard?
- What is the value of rephrasing what you have heard?
- How would you choose between summarising or rephrasing?