It is a good thing that the United States does not have an official language. With foresight, our Founding Fathers did not adopt an official language believing that the infusion of people from all over the world onto the North American continent would influence and strengthen American culture. Our 21st century demographics makes those men prescient. The world today, expansive and distant for our forebears, has become inextricably connected. People in the four quadrants of the globe can share a single conversation today. We need multilingualism to create understanding when multicultural understanding has never been more important.
What do we know?
I read in four languages. I also listen with fair comprehension in these languages. My generative language is not as strong, partly due to a lack of confidence and fewer opportunities to write and speak in those languages. The good news to me is that I can understand what people in these languages are trying to tell me. The better news is that while different languages can express a common concept, a people’s cultural relationships are reflected in the semantics of their language. More than knowing what people using different languages want me to know, understanding the semantics of their language allows me to know how they feel about what they are saying. To use a German word, language conveys a people’s weltanschauung – the way they see the world.
I commonly use the German phrase “Es tut mir leid.” Literally, I am saying that “I am sorry.” Empathetically, it means “This causes me sorrow.” Contextually, it means “It makes me want to cry.” To a German speaker, I can convey sorrow, compassion, and humility with four words that it takes a paragraph to convey in English.
US English and American speech sometimes is very curt and direct. We see it in contemporary media and politics. Plain speak is unembellished. It is the “ugly American” déjà vu. Years ago, from the television show, Boston Legal, I learned the phrase “bygones.” Entitled lawyers without sorrow said “bygones” to tell others to “forget it and move on.” Denny Crane (William Shatner) used these words to convey no regret, no sorrow, no contextual empathy other than a personal command to “move on.” Others might have said, “I’m sorry for that.” Crane said “bygones” and meant exactly that. In the way people speak to each other today, I hear the sentiment of “bygones” expressed broadly, especially when English-speakers talk to non-English speakers.
In Japanese, these words – そうは思いません- mean “I disagree.” In the Japanese statement of disagreement, however, there is an understatement of “pardon me” first followed by “I disagree” second. There is a graciousness in the disagreement. I find these nuances in other languages also.
A son-in-law is Mexican. Our daughter and granddaughters speak Spanish and English. In their conversations, I often hear a word of Spanish inserted into their English because the Spanish word and its nuance best express what they want to say. I also hear an English word or phrased inserted in their speech in Espanol.
Knowing what is meant inside the words that are spoken creates an understanding of what people think and feel and how they consider their world. Multilingualism breeds multicultural understanding and understanding allows people to know not just what someone is saying but also what they want you to know. How can we communicate if we do not invest in understanding the nuances of language?
The Big Duh!
Though immigration into the United States is becoming more selective and more difficult, language and lingual understanding is becoming more urgent. In each of the politico-economic hotspots around the world, people speak their own languages. In many news stories, the emotional anguish we see and hear is list because we do not know their language. So, we flip channels until we hear English spoken. Although our political leadership thinks English is the international language, knowing and understanding what the world’s people want us to know makes we monolinguals a handicapped people.
I was enthused by the number of my countrymen who watched World Cup broadcasts on Telemundo. The language of soccer is multicultural.
Today, only 20% of children in US public schools enroll in world languages. The decline in programs for elementary children is in a fast decline. There is no national impetus for schools to teach world languages and decreasing local school revenues make world languages an early program reduction. When national leadership understands only one language and is not interested in understanding other languages or the people speaking those languages, they set the tone for too many followers. We are being led toward monolingualism.
The growing urgency of global climate issues, epidemics of disease, tragedies of fire, hurricane, flood, and tornado, and hunger requires our national capacity to communicate with people everywhere and with understanding.
“Are you hearing me?”. Right question. Humans begin hearing sounds, including human voices, in the womb. Unless impaired, hearing, like seeing, is an innate characteristic of humans. We are made to hear the noise that surrounds us every day.
“Are you listening to me?”. Another right question. Listening is an acquired skill that the person you are speaking to may not have mastered. Given the noise a person hears in their immediacy, it is an assumption that you are being listened to. There is a huge difference between hearing and listening.
“Are you actively listening to me?”. A better question. But, “maybe not” is a very common answer.
As educators, the issue we face is how to teach hearers to become listeners and listeners to become active listeners. If we believe in natural learning, we can allow a hearing child to wander through life in the belief that experience creates listening skills. The skills of listening are in her and just need time and place to become effective everyday tools. That may happen, but many adults today demonstrate untrained listening characteristics. They hear. They recognize the source or speaker. They may acknowledge the topic of the speaker. Then, they fade into being untrained listeners. Their focus wanders, they insert own ideas, they start to create a rebuttal before the speaker has finished, and their thinking pursues unrelated tangents. Some of the unschooled just shut down when they are asked to listen because they don’t know how.
Listening is an acquired skill we need to teach to children.
What is listening?
“Listening begins by hearing a speaker producing the sound to be listened to. Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act. People are always hearing, most of the time subconsciously. Listening is done by choice. It is the interpretative action taken by someone in order to understand, and potentially make sense of, something one hears”.
Listening and seeing are the primary ways people gather information. This is one of the reasons Helen Keller’s stories is so meaningful. She was deaf and blind. She did not hear or see and was unable to learn from these two essential senses. With instruction, her brain learned to associate meaning through touch and smell and associate Braille dots with letters and words. She truly was taught to “listen” to non-sounds. Almost all of us take our hearing and seeing for granted. However, without learning how to listen and to discern listening from hearing, we also are disabled in our ability to learn from our sense of hearing.
There are other good reasons to become good listeners.
Good listeners are more likable. Individuals with strong listening skills are present in the conversation. People who listen with focus are often perceived as more likable.
Good listeners build stronger relationships. Communication is not a one-way street. Good listeners show interest, ask open-ended questions, and acknowledge what’s being said. This helps reduce misunderstandings and builds stronger relationships.
Good listeners have a clearer understanding of the topics being discussed. Individuals with refined listening skills seek to fully understand a speaker’s message. They pay attention to both verbal and nonverbal cues and ask for clarification when needed.
Parents are a child’s first teachers of listening skills. With their first “Say ‘Mama/Dada”, parents teach an infant to associate sounds and words with a desired meaning. A parent says a word and coos to give it meaning, or holds up a toy and names it, or points to food on a spoon and names it. They speak “baby talk” or “parentese” to encourage their baby to make a desired association. Most parents do not have training in this; they are not taught how to teach their child to listen. They do what they remember being done for them, or what family members tell them to do. Others talk with their young parent peers. In general, infants from birth to pre-school or instructional daycare are subjected to several years of popular wisdom-informed parenting.
The Science of Early Learning provides 22 techniques for parents to try in their efforts to move their baby from hearers of sounds to a baby who is building skills as a listener. A search of the literature, including the tenth edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, provides a plethora of resources for parents to teach their children to be listeners.
By age 4, children reflect many of their parents’ listening characteristics. This comes as conflicting news for many parents, because in their multiple family roles they are not always aware that an infant is listening to their every word. Children hear us even when we do not want to be heard. An infant’s auditory vocabulary is influenced by and mirrors the words, vocabulary, sentence structures, and dialects their parents or their older siblings use. Babies soak up almost everything they see and hear a parent do because they have no filtering mechanisms.
When infants do not begin to micmic parents and siblings, there is worry that hearing may be impaired.
That is why schools are mandated through Child Find activities to use auditory testing to verify a child’s hearing
In Wisconsin, schools, daycares, pre-schools, and local physicians partner to inform young parents about the Child Find activities of local elementary schools. One of the screenings typical of a Child Find appointment is a hearing assessment. Teachers work with parents in the primary school when either believes that a student/child has difficulty hearing. Testing and a diagnosis can lead to further testing and perhaps to special education service and accommodations.
Who at school teaches children to be listeners? Incidentally, we may think school bus drivers are at the frontline of teaching children to listen because they are the first adult to greet a child each school day. Be clear, drivers want children to listen but they do not teach listening skills. A drivers’ first priority is bus driving and student safety, and she/he does not typically speak instructionally but in an directing voice.
Schools are mandated to teach children to listen and do so indirectly and directly. One of a 4K-K teacher’s first action each morning is gaining student attention, channeling them from all the noise surrounding them as they get out of a family car or school bus, enter the school, put their things on hallway hooks or in cubbies or lockers, and enter their classroom. The sounds of their classmates surround them. Children hear their teacher say, “Sit down. Eyes on me. Give me your ears”. And so, school listening instruction begins.
Veteran kindergarten teachers look like magicians to parents of 4-year-olds gathered for Kindergarten round ups and orientations. They efficiently quiet squirming kids and boisterous children as easily as they herd cats. For most veterans, the use of curated commands, signals, words, voice, body language, and attitude over time work to change behaviors and make children more amenable listeners. Effective teaching at all levels incorporates myriads of indirect communications that move a hearing child to a listening student.
The mandate for direct instruction derives from our state’s adapting the Common Core ELA standards into Wisconsin’s ELA standards. All children are to be instructed in listening, as well as reading, writing, and speaking. The Wisconsin DPI standards place listening and speaking in the context of effective communications. Schools are mandated to instruct children in how to listen and in how to speak that causes them to be active and “productive communicators” in a wide variety of school and life circumstances.
These standards are directed toward developing students’ abilities to productively participate in communicative exchanges. Productive participation means that students are able to communicate in large group, small group, and one-on-one exchanges with varied audiences, for varied purposes, and in varied situations; can respond to and develop what others have said; can contribute accurate, relevant information; and can analyze and synthesize a multitude of ideas in various domains. Students must have ample opportunities to take part in a variety of conversations and communicative exchanges in order to practice and apply these standards. Some standards repeat from grade-level to grade-level in recognition of the fact that students’ understandings develop and deepen over time. The ultimate goal of these standards is that students are able to understand and make flexible choices in their use of language in order to meet their communicative goals with varied audiences, for varied purposes, and in varied situations.”
Each phrase in the above introduction points to a facet of effective communication and the last sentence poses the capstone – to meet communicative goals with varied audiences, for varied purposes, and in varied situations. Additionally, the fluid use of the word “varied” causes almost all listening skills instruction to be embedded in subject, content, or skills instruction. The context is listening within the instruction of reading or math or art or PE. Seldom do teachers provide naked listening skill instruction devoid of a context for listening to something to be learned.
Elementary teachers focus early instruction of listening skills, so children learn to listen in these multiple school situations:
Audience – one-to-one communications, small group, large group.
Purpose – listening for directions, information, entertainment, conversation.
Responding based upon purpose – repeat what is heard, interpret what is heard, personalize what is heard,
When choices are available, be able to make a choice based upon what has been heard.extend
Teachers prepare and move children from one learning activity to another many times during a school day. Routines are normalized and expectations for student listening are essential. Teachers use routine signals to alert children to listen. They may flick the classroom lights on and off, use a chime, or a buzzer. The concept is that the signal alerts children to listen. Once alerted to listen, a teacher focuses students to listen for “who is to do what, how, when, and why”. Twenty or thirty minutes later, another signal is used, students are alerted to listen, and the class moves into another activity.
Many listening skills are universal for school children. Given the age of elementary learners, a great deal of instructional time is committed to group expectations and how an individual student in a group or classroom listens. One college’s teacher prep program stresses the “Three As of listening – attitude, attention, adjustment.” Teachers must shape children’s behavior first to an attitude of community. A recognition that all classmates matter is a huge first step for a 4K-K child. Once teachers have each child moving from “me” to “we”, the teacher creates, uses and reinforces strategies for gaining student visual and auditory attention. We tend to pay attention to what we are looking at and that attention helps us to block out the noise so we can focus on the sounds coming from the person being seen. In evolving from hearing to focused listening a child is ready to adjust to what is being said, asked, or directed.
Put into context, the routine above is used to prepare children for whole group activities, like recess or lunch. Listening routines also are used to prepare students for reading group instruction, or individual work time at interest centers in the classroom.
Hearing to listen is a first step. Listening for a purpose is a second. Listening as preparation for doing something based upon what one listens to is a new step. Studies indicate we remember only between 25-50% of what we hear – the rest is abandoned as noise. After ten minutes of listening, most people begin to drift and can remember less that half of their initial level of remembering. Unfocused listening results in an awareness of less than 25% of what we hear.
Based upon these studies, teachers learn to “chunk” communications they want children to hear, listen to, remember, and be able to respond to or act upon. To do this, there are several time-tested cues for getting a child to listen and follow directions. The institutional experiences of Boys Town tell us to do this.
So far, we have addressed the importance of listening, the mandate to teach children to listen, and the general routines and frameworks for listening. The next level, teaching children to be active listeners, is where the effective communications expectations of the mandates make an educational difference.
Accuracy. For decades teachers have heard and used the phrase “checking for understanding”. Ask children to repeat back to you what they listened to you say. An accurate repeat conveys congruence – the child heard and listened to what you said. Asking multiple children to repeat what they listened to you say creates an accountability for listening.
Don’t be surprised when a child’s repeating of what they heard you say is nothing like what you said. They “heard”, they did not “listen”. Listening is a learned skill. Patience and persistence are called for. Simply tell your information a second time and again check for understanding. And perhaps a third and fourth time.
Because listening is an acquired skill and “acquiring” requires time to learn and time is a valuable instructional commodity, teachers sadly diminish checking for understanding over time. Teaching accuracy in listening takes time and time wasted due to misunderstanding is far greater that the time to check for initial understanding.
Detail. Active listening requires an ear for details, and we can teach children to pay attention to details. The first step is to write down the details as they are verbally given. Check for understanding on the details. A second step is to create “responsibility” for details. One student listens for the “who”, another for the “what”, another for the “how”, another for the “to what degree” and another for the “when”. Check for understanding. Rotate responsibilities as some details are given at the end of the directions and everyone must listen to the entire direction.
I observe high quality teachers checking for understanding and for the details of listening in junior and senior high school classrooms. Not only is what the mandate tells us to do, it is best practice.
Nuance. Many of the things we listen to are loaded with clues as to the feelings and values and dispositions of the speaker. Accuracy and details may be further understood by the way they are delivered. Teachers are not robotics delivering information in monotoned voices. They imbue what they tell children with the excitement and suspense of new learning. Children need to understand nuance and identify when it supplies extra meaning to their listening. Have children listen specifically for descriptor words and phrases; listen to the adjectives and adverbs and prepositions. Ask listeners to interpret the socio-emotional flavor of what they listened to.
Clarification and response. Assign listening students to craft a clarifying question after their listening. Is there a detail that is not clear enough? Is there a possible early response a listener wants to try out while still in a checking for understanding phase? Consider all the time teachers spend answering student questions after the work has begun. When children ask clarifying questions at the time of the directions they demonstrate and reinforce their skills as active listeners.
Synergy. Active listening demonstrates a respect and rapport between teacher and students. When the speaker and listeners are actively engaged, speakers are encouraged to be more descriptive of details and nuance. Respect for the speaker
In order to propel student learning, communications must become two-way, respectful, challenging, and nuanced. It may require specific vocabulary and exacting terms. As communication becomes more focused in specific outcomes, the need for listening and responding skills become even greater.
How to teach children to be active listeners?
Generalized, active listening is hearing, paying attention, listening, and an ability to respond to what is listened to. These statements cover the waterfront of how children and teachers engage in school communications, especially as children get older. It takes loads of concentration, focused attention, and personal commitment to be an active listener. To be active, a listener has to set aside all of the bad habits of hearing and initial listening and shift into being a committed listener. Active listening skills come from with in the listener.
Pay attention. When paying attention, there is about a one second lag between the speaker speaking and the listener’s brain hearing.
Show that you are listening. When a speaker perceives you as a listener, the speaker’s brain recognizes and begins to lock into this interpersonal communication. Take notes.
Provide feedback. Repeat key points to demonstrate listening.
Defer judgment.
Respond appropriately. Ask valid and respectful questions, summarize key points, suggest what you want to know or do next.
Elevating active listening to upper-level listening.
Knowing that active listening is within the listener yet is cued by teacher communication, we can elevate active listening by moving our teaching interactions from the lower three levels – remembering, understanding, and applying – to higher levels of thinking – analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The sociometrics of a classroom conversation change drastically when we move from asking students for the recall or interpretation of knowledge to the comparing and contrasting ideas, evaluating an ideas significance, or generating new solutions. Instead of teacher-student interactions, conversations become student-student exchanges. Teachers use wait time to assure students have time to consider their arguments while using body language to assure a student who is eager to contribute will be able to do so. Active listening leads to intellectual excitement – the teaching moments teachers cling to in their memories of classroom work.
Once again we are called to use what we know to be true of good teaching and learning yet find difficult to do in the fast pacing of school life.
We know these things.
Listening is a core skill essential for students at all levels of their education.
Listening is a learned behavior that we must teach at all grade levels and in all subjects.
Listening is more than hearing if it is to be educational.
Listening takes time and commitment to the behaviors of attention, attitude, and adjustment that allow us to receive, understand, and act upon what we listen to.
Active listening leads to higher levels of intellectual and academic productivity.
And we too often do these things.
Pace our teaching based on the first child who appears to have heard us.
Do not check for accuracy, detail, or nuance with enough children to assure that good listening occurred.
Let the clock determine what comes next in a lesson rather than what we listen to as student readiness for next instruction.
Students are more likely to mirror how we listen and use listening skills than they do our instruction in reading, writing, and speaking. You know this is true. Just listen to yourself.
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