Active Listening Activities

Active listening helps one improve his/her ability to understand and grasp verbal information. It is a communication skill that facilitates effective communication of your ideas and concepts. On a simple note, a communication process actively involves a speaker and a listener, and one of the fundamentals of communicating well, is to listen carefully. It is no secret that good listeners also make good communicators. The article brings you some active listening activities that will help improve your listening skills.

This activity requires a large space as physical activity is involved. The teacher can also participate in this game. The participant group has to arrange itself in a circle. Then, the teacher will call out someone’s name and pass a soft toy/ball to him/her, who will pass it to another student, after calling his/her name. The toy/ball will continue to be passed till all the students are covered. In this activity, gradually, all the students become alert as they are supposed to catch the ball as soon as their name is called. The element of surprise in the game will make the students listen with attention and carefully watch out for their name.

This activity just requires a common topic that will be given to a group of students, and is supposed to be debated upon by them. The first topic could be fun and easy to speak on, which can then be followed by more difficult ones. Once the discussion ensues, the teacher will stop the speaker in the middle and ask any other student to continue the discussion from the same point where it has been left by the previous speaker. Once everyone gets a hang of the activity, the teacher can randomly pick any of the students and ask him/her to continue speaking.

 

This activity is to be performed indoors and requires a supervisor. Each member of the group is supposed to go to the front of the room. The other participants will ask three questions relating to themselves, to the one standing in the front. The supervisor will make a note of the answers given by each of the participant as their turn comes. It is then that the supervisor will reveal it to the participants that they were part of a quiz, to check whether they listened carefully or not. Then, the supervisor will ask the members to recall which member had given what answer.

The group of participants is to be divided into pairs and each pair is to have a listener and a speaker. The speaker is then given a topic to speak on and the listener has to listen to the speaker actively. After the speaker is through, the listener will have to recall and rephrase the speaker’s content. The listener is supposed to interpret speaker’s content and offer solutions and feedback to the supervisor accordingly. Then the speaker and listener can critically analyze and review each other’s performance. This can also be followed by a swapping of roles among the two. This exercise helps improve the business communication skills of the participants and the ability to co-ordinate with one another.