Transcript Active Listening Training for Tutors

ACTIVE LISTENING
TRAINING FOR
TUTORS
What is active listening?
• Of course, as a tutor you’ll be listening to a lot of students
• However, there is a difference between “listening” and “active
listening”
• “Active listening is all about building rapport, understanding, and
trust” (Grohol, 2007)
• Improving and using your active listening skills will help you and
your tutees become better learners
Active listening skills:
• Anne Vermont Shearer (2012) discusses 3 verbal active listening
skills for tutors:
• Paraphrasing
• Using your own words to restate what you believe your tutee is saying. This helps
students hear how their thoughts are coming across to you and gives them an
opportunity to clarify, if necessary
• Encouraging
• This is a way of letting your tutee know that you are following what he/she is
saying (e.g. “OK”, “I see”, “uh-huh”, etc.). This way, the tutee knows that you are
listening/following along
• Summarizing
• As you might imagine, summarizing means that you are briefly going over what
was said, highlighting the main concepts and points that you discussed. Of course,
this lets the tutee know that you were actively listening throughout the session
and can also be encouraging for the tutee when he/she hears how much was
discussed/accomplished in the session
Active listening skills (cont’d)
• Of course, active listening can also include non-verbal cues
• Having good eye contact with the student
• Smiling
• Nodding your head as the student speaks
• Using open body language vs. closed or defensive body language
Some Examples
Good Listening Skills
Bad Listening Skills
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=-pY_7q7ZP5o
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=xAp9n3yBjyo
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=kjF4rKCR81o&list=PL6MeBinkeg3
t40rTTb8PrFhRfNQ-LABn5
Active Listening Skills to develop:
• According to Dr. John Grohol (2007) there are 13 steps to becoming
a better active listener:
1. Restating
2. Summarizing
3. Minimal encouragers (the “encouraging” we just spoke about)
4. Reflecting (reflecting student’s words in context of feelings)
5. Giving feedback
6. Emotion Labeling (e.g. “I get the sense that you are really
worried about this upcoming exam”)
7. Probing (remember our session on probing questions!)
8. Validation (acknowledge what your tutee is sharing with you)
9. Effective pause (pausing at key points to signal important points)
Active Listening Skills to develop (Cont’d)
10. Silence (become comfortable with silence. Give your tutee time
to process information and formulate thoughts and answers)
11. “I” messages (“I need to do X”, “I want to show you something”
vs. “you need to listen to this”)
12. Redirecting (appropriately shifting topics as necessary-may be
effective if a student is becoming overwhelmed or agitated with
a specific concept)
13. Consequences: although Grohol uses this in terms of counseling,
this may be beneficial for tutees as well. For example, “What
happened last time when you didn’t prepare for the test ahead of
time?”
What to avoid:
• As we discuss in our tutor do’s & don’t’s session:
• Don’t constantly interrupt your tutee
• Don’t ask questions in a way that makes tutee’s defensive (“Why didn’t
you do this?”, “Why don’t you understand this?!”, etc.)
• Put away your unneeded technology (such as cell phones) and focus on the
tutee
• Don’t lecture at the tutee. Engage the students in their own learning so
that they become an active part of the session
Small group activity/Role-playing
• Now we are going to break up into small groups
• You will each be given a scenario to act out
• First, you are going to demonstrate a session in which active
listening skills are NOT used
• Then, you will discuss with your partner how to incorporate active
listening skills to improve your session
• Yes, we will be acting these out for the group! Do your best; We
don’t expect an Oscar-worthy performance! 
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Suggestions?
References
• Grohol, J. (2007). Become a better listener: Active listening. Psych
Central. Retrieved on October 10, 2013, from
http://psychcentral.com/lib/become-a-better-listener-activelistening/0001299
• Shearer, A.V (2012). Active listening training for multimodal
learners. In Agee, K. & Hodges, R. (Eds). Handbook for training peer
tutors and mentors. Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning.