There have probably been many times when I have spoken to people about something important and I could tell they weren’t listening. It is frustrating at times because you know what your saying is important and they just blow it off. It sometimes happens when I am telling a friend story about something that happened, and it also happens a lot when I am babysitting and I am trying to tell the child to do something or stop doing something and they just don’t listen. When I am talking to a friend I can usually tell when they don’t care and aren’t listening because they either look really bored or they are doing something else while you are talking to them like texting or looking at their nails or just staring into space. Usually if this happens I just stop my story or whatever I am trying to say and I just move on to something else. It is frustrating and kind of disappointing sometimes but then again I think that I probably do the same thing when I don’t care what the person is saying to me. I should try to be more of an attentive listener and try to listen to people better because I know how it feels to be ignored or just tuned out and I should try not to make other people feel that way.
In high school I had a teacher that was very disorganized during his lectures. He would start off by talking about a subject and he would go off topic so much that I could never follow along. He was a science teacher, so I remember one time we were talking about animal cells at the start of class and by the end of class we were talking about trees. That class was so hard to keep up with and take notes and it seemed like everyone in that class was as confused as I was. If I could go back and give the teacher some advice id tell them to not go off on random tangents and stay on task and organize the lesson outline better.
Wow, that is really frustrating when a person is texting on their phone while you are telling them something important. I think it is a very good idea that you try to be a more attentive listener. I think that many of us could use work on that. Perhaps more than just being an attentive listener, but also opening up your mind to try to care what the other person has to say even if it doesn't pique your interest right away. It is very easy to fall victim to tuning another person out based on the first few things they have to say.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea of random tangents being distracting. I think if teachers, professors, and other public speakers focused their "tangent" energy into embellishing on (as you said)organized points, the listeners would learn much better.
I think what that teacher of yours needed most was some lessons in planning lessons and organization. From the sound of it he had no idea what he was going to discuss from a day to day basis. Part of being successful in a classroom requires you to plan more then just a day or two ahead. Weekly, or even monthly, plans helps you stay on task best. So, if he wanted to talk about animal cells one day he should have made it into a whole lesson about cells in general and how different cells (human, animal, plant) are built and function differently. That would, I think, have made it a lot easier to understand because not only would you be staying on topic but the other days lessons could be applied to that lessons as well and enhance the learning.
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