Overview

Active listening and effective speaking can help you be more successful in school, sports, jobs, and personal relationships.

Active listening helps you to understand, interpret, and respond to what you hear. For any particular situation, you will probably need to use a combination of the following types of listening: empathetic listening allows you to understand and respond to another's feelings; you separate facts from opinions when you employ critical listening; when you exercise reflective listening, you identify main ideas and consider the implications of the ideas being spoken; and appreciative listening allows you to enjoy or interpret a performance.

Active listening strategies—preparing, listening, interpreting, and responding— allow you to fully appreciate and understand the messages that you encounter. Active listening skills will help you to evaluate a persuasive message by considering the message's purpose, intended audience, facts, opinions, errors in reasoning, persuasive techniques, and values and biases. Then you can decide whether the message is reasonable and worth acting on. When you evaluate a literary performance, think about the performer's voice qualities and body language. Also consider the literary elements that the performance emphasizes before you rate it.

Speaking effectively, informally or formally, can influence your relationships with individuals and groups. Most speaking is informal, or unprepared. In-person or phone conversations, announcements, directions, and instructions are types of informal speaking. When speaking informally, let others speak without interruption, encourage questions, present your points in a series of logical steps, and speak slowly. Preparing a formal speech involves many of the same steps as writing a research paper or persuasive essay. Once you have a topic for your formal speech, carefully consider your purpose and audience. Use a library and the Internet to gather facts, examples, and expert opinions on your topic. Organize the information you gather into an outline. Use your outline to draft and revise your speech. When writing your introduction, consider using one of the following methods: telling a compelling story, asking an intriguing question, using an interesting quote, or stating an amazing fact or statistic. Practice your speech using an outline or note cards as cues. Keep in mind the various verbal and nonverbal techniques for delivering a speech.

When you develop effective listening and speaking skills, you can positively contribute to a group. A group operates most effectively when members follow these guidelines:

• Be prepared.
• Focus on the issue.
• Listen actively.
• Show respect.
• State your ideas clearly and concisely.
• Respond constructively to the ideas of others.
• Encourage everyone to participate.

You can also use these skills while conducting research interviews, remembering to follow up after the interview.