Speech

Chapter 3: Listening

Activity Lesson Plan

Charting the History of Hip

Introduction
In Chapter 3, students studied types of listening and how to take notes effectively. In this activity they will practice using the guidelines for good listening, which will require recognizing and removing listening roadblocks. Students will listen to an interview between NPR journalist Renee Montagne and John Leland, author of Hip: the History. Leland and Montagne discuss Leland's definition of Hip, his theory of the evolution of hip, and those individuals, or even cartoon characters, that exemplify hip.

Destination
National Public Radio

Lesson Description
Students will click on the above link. Then they will click on the Listen icon to hear Renee Montagne's interview with author John Leland. Students should take notes while listening and then answer the questions that follow.
Note: Students will need to use a media player to complete this activity.

Instructional Objectives

1. Students will use effective listening strategies to answer questions about an audio selection.
2. Students will identify and remove listening roadblocks.
3. Students will practice using various listening types including critical listening, discriminative listening, and appreciative listening.

Student Web Activity Answers

1. Answer: Miles Davis, Langston Hughes, and Jack Kerouac.
2. Hip comes from the Wolof word hepi (to see) or hipi (to open one's eyes), and its use can be traced back to 1700s America.
3. Answer: "Hip is a verdict, not an intention."
4. Answer: Whitman, Melville, Emerson, and Thoreau.
5. Possible answer: Leland is referring to the blending of the African and European cultures, especially in the United States. Hip evolves from the tense relationship between these cultures.
6. Answer:African-Modern hipsters can be traced back to African American folk tales in which the hero is usually a trickster who is smarter than his oppressors.
7. Possible answer: Hip is an elusive quality, but it indicates enlightenment and crosses racial, class, or ethnic lines. A hipster is an outsider with knowledge of what's going on outside the mainstream and in the mainstream. A hip individual is a wise innocent, a mischief maker, someone who is smarter than his or her tormentors.
8. Possible answer: Answers may vary but should refer to parts of Leland's interview response: "Hip was never in the products ... Real hip is what it's always been ... It's a kind of enlightenment ... across racial, class, and ethnic lines."
9. Student answers will vary.
10. Possible answers: Answers will vary but should reference some of the following: tuning out dull topics, yielding to distractions, criticizing delivery, jumping to conclusions, overreacting to emotional words, and listening with filters that distort.

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