Top ten ways to listen to boring lectures

At the end of a 10-minute lecture most college freshmen will have retained only half of it. Then, 48 hours later they will have forgotten half of what they did remember.

Want to do better than that? Then, use effective listening techniques. Here are the “Top ten ways to listen to a lecture.”

Choose to find the subject useful.

• Poor listeners dismiss most lectures as dull and irrelevant. They turn off quickly.
• Effective listeners separate the wheat from the chaff. They choose to listen to discover new knowledge.

Concentrate on the words and message, not on the professor’s looks, clothes or delivery.

• Poor listeners notice faults in a lecturer’s appearance or delivery.
• Effective listeners strive to pick every professor’s brain for self-gain.

When you hear something you’re not sure you agree with, react slowly and thoughtfully.

• Poor listeners stop listening to the speaker and start listening to themselves. They either passively reject what is being said or they launch into impassioned rebuttals (to themselves).
• Effective listeners don’t jump to conclusions and then disengage. They keep conclusions tentative while getting more information.

Identify the “big ideas,” those fundamental concepts to which everything else in the lecture is related.

• Poor listeners say, “I listen only for facts.” They may retain a few of those facts, but the information is usually garbled.
• Effective listeners look for foundational concepts. They grab key ideas and use them as anchor points for the entire lecture.

Adjust your note taking system to the lecturer’s pattern.

• Some poor listeners attempt to outline everything, believing an outline and notes are the same thing. They get frustrated when they cannot see “points A, B and C.”
• Effective listeners adjust their note-taking to the organizational pattern used by the lecturer.

Stay attentive.

• Poor listeners let their minds to wander.
• Effective listeners remain focused and actively try to absorb material.

Aggressively tackle difficult material.

• When poor listeners encounter a tough topic, they stop absorbing and let things start bouncing off them.
• Effective listeners condition themselves to be interested in challenging matters. They find a challenge in grasping the meaning of what is being said — no matter how difficult the subject.

Don’t get derailed by emotionally charged “buzz” words that trigger negative responses.

• Poor listeners tune people out on the basis of a few words.
• Effective listeners don’t let the emotional baggage of a word hinder them from getting at the substance of a lecture.

Get to know the professor personally.

• Poor listeners see professors as talking heads.
• Effective listeners like to pick up interesting facts about professors (personal history, family life, hobbies, etc.).

Understand and use the differential between the speed of speaking and the speed of thinking. We think at about 400 words per minute. That’s four times faster than most speakers can talk.

• Poor listeners drift back and forth between a lecture and thoughts about other things.
• Effective listeners use the thinking/speaking differential in three ways:

1. Riding the crest of the wave by trying to anticipate the next point of the lecture.
2. Evaluating what the lecturer is using for supporting evidence.
3. Periodically summarizing the lecture to themselves.

source

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They scarcely spend enough to provide for their own necessities. The poor get nothing from them; and God’s Church, I was about to say, gets less than nothing, and I might truly say that, though it appears to be impossible, for there are some, who give a good deal less than nothing to the Lord’s cause, for they occupy a place in the building where services are held, which has been erected, and is still kept up, by others at an expense which these misers never attempt to share; so that, as far as God’s house is concerned, they absolutely take from that house, instead of giving to it, albeit that they have a superabundant substance of their own, from which they ought to contribute to the work of the Lord. Saving is well; but the first thing that a man has to do is to see to the saving of his soul; and there are some, who always look so much to the saving of their wealth that their soul stands very little chance of being saved.

Spurgeon, C. H. (2005). Exploring the Mind and Heart of the Prince of Preachers: Five-Thousand Illustrations Selected from the Works of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (316). Oswego, IL: Fox River Press.

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The following comes from one of my favorite resources. Click here to see what Dr Culbert has to say. He does a great job teaching and communicating about missions!

Ahead of time

1. Pray with your interpreter beforehand. Prayer has a way of bonding our spirits.
2. Give your translator time to think about expressing what you’re going to say by taking time to go over scripture passages and main points ahead of time.
3. Let your interpreter know what you hope to communicate by giving him or her a simply worded theme sentence or phrase.

During your presentation

1. Speak in complete thoughts. Grammar and syntax vary from language to language and unless you give complete thoughts, you can leave an interpreter hanging not knowing what to say.
2. Avoid complex sentences and parenthetical “rabbit trails.” Translators often forget parts of complex sentences and audiences may be confused by them.
3.  Realize that translators occasionally find they need to backtrack to clarify.
4. Don’t recite poems. It’s impossible to translate poetry “on the fly.”
5. Avoid slang words and idiomatic expressions.
6. Realize that humor which depends on specific words likely will not translate well.
7. Be visual.
8. Maintain eye contact with the audience when you pause for translation rather than turning to watch your interpreter.

Afterwards

1. Warmly thank your translator. Apologize for the fact that you don’t know the target language. Show appreciation of the fact that generally translators expend more mental energy than do the speakers they are translating.

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It is one thing to love persons at a distance, and to have philanthropic desires for their good; it is quite another thing to live with them, and still have the same fondness towards them; and another thing by far to receive bad treatment from them, contumely, and scorn, and a worse thing even than that, to be about to receive your death from them, and still to pray for them.

Spurgeon, C. H. (2005). Exploring the Mind and Heart of the Prince of Preachers: Five-Thousand Illustrations Selected from the Works of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (261). Oswego, IL: Fox River Press.

check out bcwe.org