Assignment task: What are your thoughts on the answers below about Effective Listeners?
After selecting "Dating Violence" in the difficult tab of the general listening quiz section, I scored a 5/5. I found it quite easy to remember the points since each one was a bizarre event that could be easily recognized. I'm aspiring to become a linguist and so listening is my bread and butter. With that said I still have things I need to work on. My biggest problem when trying to listen to someone in a different language is trying to translate the words as fast as they are speaking. Once I lose pace I generally fall behind and have to pick back up later in the conversation. This obviously isn't a problem for English though.
I wouldn't say I need to become more empathetic as a listener since I find it pretty easy to put myself in someone else's shoes and imagine the frustration and anger after time commitment and energy is wasted.
Attentively listening to someone really only requires your undivided attention. I personally stay in tune with what someone is saying by forming an opinion and also preparing suggestions.
Active listening goes hand in hand with attentive listening. To be active you must first be attentive and my solution for being attentive is by wanting to engage with the conversation. I find one-sided conversations to be dull. A lot of people say that in arguments I am too active as I generally cut them off with an answer which most of the time comes off as rude. The reason I do this is to answer the question they have posed before they get ahead of me and start posing multiple more. I feel that if I stop doing this and just listen then I am simply lending an ear. This is fine if someone is telling me about their day but if it's a disagreement, then I can't stand a one sided argument. It especially annoys me when I do let someone make their several points and as I try to answer them, I have to spend time remembering them and in the pause, they make an example of the pause itself as me not knowing an answer to the problem which further annoys me. Didn't mean to go off on a tangent, but this would be my only gripe when having a disagreement with someone.