Active Listening: Learning to Listen Well

Listening. That’s easy, right? Sit still and listen: that’s all your teenager has to do…
Unfortunately, it’s not as straightforward as that. Listening and ‘active’ listening are quite different: it’s the latter that will help maximise your teenager’s learning. So, what is active listening?

This type of listening means: remaining engaged and understanding the speaker’s delivery and intent; avoiding distractions, as well as making eye contact/watching body language that accompanies the speaking. It’s tricky because- as we all know- it is much easier to do these things when we find the subject content interesting, and your teenager is unlikely to find every single lesson interesting!

Even when they do, it doesn’t mean that they won’t zone out or start to ‘drift off’ once their teacher starts talking. Active listening is focussed and purposeful.

Keep Involved

As a revision provider, we know the importance of keeping teenagers engaged and involved in their study. Our revision courses are intensive and impactful. They are led by a subject specialist who will guide your teenager through all they need to know for their SQA exams. Therefore, when it comes to actively listening, your teen can be assured that everything being delivered to them will potentially have an impact on their exam results. Our experts are experienced and knowledgeable, providing your teenager with top quality revision support.

Squash Distractions

Another way of getting your child to listen well is to squash those distractions! In a classroom context, this may be anything from having a chatty friend right through to a general classroom murmur that can ‘take away’ from the ability to truly listen to one voice. It’s not always easy, in a big, busy classroom, to fully hear and retain everything the teacher says. Smaller revision sessions, therefore, are an excellent way of giving your child the chance to zone in on what an experienced teacher has to say. Our revision courses are run in small groups, giving students the perfect chance to succeed and truly focus.

Ask Questions

Another tactic to improve listening is to encourage your teenager to ask questions. In order to ask questions, they must be zoned in to what they are learning. Even if your child doesn’t feel they want to ask questions out loud, perhaps suggesting they write questions down- even if they think they know the answer- is a good way to practise ‘active listening’ (and may make great prompts for revision later!)

Lewis is very thankful to all the teachers who delivered his higher subjects course over the Spring break.
He found all the teachers extremely helpful and he is much happier to take the exams now.
He is looking forward to the all day revision courses held the weekend before the exam.
Parent – Easter School – 2019

Summarise

Finally, note-taking can be good when listening to a speaker… but at the same time, if your teenager doesn’t know the meaning of what’s being said then there might not be much point writing it (unless they actually intend to find the meaning later.) Instead, your teenager might benefit from writing themselves a ‘summary’ after they have listened to a speaker. This encourages them to solely listen to all of the content before doing anything with it.

There are many ways your child can learn to get better at listening- and there are many ways that they can maximise their revision techniques, too.

For more ways to support your teenager, we recommend signing up to our excellent revision courses.