Design Successful Learning
, Listening Strategies:  #1 Planning, Lateral Communications, Lateral Communications

There are several active listening strategies that we can teach to our students.

I’ve grouped them into 8 categories:  


Focusing attention







All are important! 

Consider concrete ways to teach, discuss, practice, and review these strategies! 

Group 1:  Planning

Planning means:  developing an awareness of the steps needed to accomplish a listening task.

It means considering the outcome before you begin. In other words, clarify the goals of a task before listening. 

How to do this?

Anticipating content that may be introduced: what words, what ideas, what attitudes.

Anticipation provides a “template” for slotting in information as you hear it.

Anticipating means coming up with an ‘action plan’.  What am I going to do when I get this information.

An action plan provides a “task structure” for anticipating what is going to happen next.  

These are ways of mentally rehearsing the steps to take to deal with a listening task.  

Teaching Tip: 

One concrete planning device is using “advance organizers.”  

Create an outline or a graph or set of visuals to guide the listening process. 

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