How to Be a Good Active Listener

How to Be a Good Active Listener Listening is a study skill most of us take for granted. Listening is automatic, isn’t it? We might think we’re listening, but active listening is something entirely different. Think of how much easier it would be to study for tests, to write papers, to participate in discussions, when you know you have really heard everything important that was said in the classroom, not only by your teacher but also by other students actively engaged in learning. It may sound silly, but active listening can be exhilarating. You might be surprised by how much you have missed in the past when your mind has gone off on errands like what to make for dinner or what your sister really meant when she said... You know what were talking about. It happens to everyone. Learn how to keep your mind from wandering with some tips here, plus a listening test at the end. Test your listening skills and then start practicing active listening in the classroom. It’s where your studying begins. Three Kinds of Listening There are three levels of listening: Half listeningPaying attention some; tuning out some.Focusing on your reaction.Commenting to others.Waiting for a chance to break in.Distracted by personal thoughts and what’s going on around you.Doodling or texting.Sound listeningHearing the words, but not the meaning behind them.Missing the significance of the message.Responding with logic only.Active listeningIgnoring distractions.Ignoring delivery quirks and focusing on the message.Making eye contact.Being aware of body language.Understanding the speaker’s ideas.Asking clarifying questions.Recognizing the speaker’s intent.Acknowledging the emotion involved.Responding appropriately.Remaining engaged even when taking notes. 3 Keys to Developing Active Listening Develop active listening by practicing these three skills: Keep an open mindFocus on the speaker’s ideas, not on the delivery.Give the speaker your full attention.Resist forming an opinion until you’ve heard the entire lecture.Don’t let the speaker’s quirks, mannerisms, speech patterns, personality, or appearance get in the way of listening to the message.Stay focused on the central ideas being communicated.Listen for the significance of the message.Ignore distractionsBe fully present.Make sure your phone is silenced or turned off. Everyone can hear a vibrating phone.Tune out any chatter around you, or politely tell the talkers that you’re having trouble listening.Better yet, sit up front.Face away from windows if you can to avoid outside distractions.Set aside all emotional issues you brought with you to the classroom.Know your own hot buttons and don’t allow yourself to respond emotionally to issues being presented.ParticipateMake eye contact with the speaker.Nod to show understanding.Ask clarifyin g questions.Maintain body language that shows you are interested.Avoid slouching in your chair and looking bored.Take notes, but continue to stay focused on the speaker, looking up often. Active listening will make studying later so much easier. By paying close attention to the significant ideas presented in the classroom, you’ll be able to remember the actual experience of learning the material when it comes time to retrieve it. The Power of Meditation If youre a person who has never considered learning to meditate, you might think about giving it a try. People who meditate take control of their thoughts. Just think of how powerful that can be in the classroom when your thoughts are wandering. Meditation also helps manage the stress of going back to school. Learn to meditate, and youll be able to pull those thoughts right back to the task at hand. The Listening Test Take this listening test and find out if youre a good listener.

The Economic Growth of Developing Countries Assignment

The Economic Growth of Developing Countries - Assignment Example More recently WTO has focused upon the need to sustain an open multilateral trading framework, particularly in the light of the proliferation of regional blocs. In spite of some weaknesses and limitations of its strategies, WTO has benefited the economic growth of developing countries and involves them in free trade relations and international trade. The main question worried many nations and economists "Does WTO really promote free trade or just control the international trading relations and economic order The WTO was established on 1st January 1995 by the Marrakesh agreement. It was a new agreement between the global nations which improved and extended articles of GATT established in 1947. .WTO differs from GATT as it is based on different principles and policies of trade relations. GATT is just a set of rules while WTO is an international institution with governing bodies. In contrast to GATT, WTO commitments are full. GATT rules and principles of trade cover only retail trade while WTO regulates services and intellectual property industries. The main difference is that WTO is based on multilateral agreements applied to all members of the institution while GATT involved selective agreements applied to some local economies. The befit of WTO is that it is undeniable that trade policy leaders have their own bases of support, such as interest groups and the bureaucratic institutions they direct. As they depend on those bases to maintain their current position, policymakers' interests, pr iorities, and responsibilities in policy making are put by their support bases. In fact, the state-oriented approach underlines the importance of the demands of society on trade policymaking. In contrast to GATT, WTO has a stricter system of trade control and does not permit trade violations. Trade violations involve such impotent issues as labor relations and environmental concerns. These rules and principles can be seen as a response to dissatisfaction with the explanatory power of international trade relations that concentrate on international factors or assume country interests to be external. Such attempts are grouped by WTO into four, based on their characterization of the international and the domestic, and the lines of responsibility they draw between these political issues. WTO has a set of laws aimed to restrict the activity of those companies which violate accepted rules and norms of international trade. The domestic and international relations each possess different and distinct features and limitations on country action; thus domestic goals are more effectively pursued with international trade strategies.

Three historical actors Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Three historical actors - Assignment Example The most spoken language is English, with Roman Catholicism as its official state religion. It’s the largest economy in the USA, with a range of industries, and has the leading sports activities in the entire country (Cooke, 2005). In this five-page paper, I am going to talk about three historical actors who played significant roles in shaping California and the reasons behind their shaping positions. Industrialization, as an actor, played significant roles in the shaping of California’s present environment, both natural and manmade, during the early 19th and 20th Century. The country went through a rapid growth through industrialization, increasing both its agricultural and industrial power. â€Å"Industrialization led to make the California economy to specialize in agriculture, oil, tourism and shipping among others, which later resulted in a rise in technological advancement† (Jakes, 17). The state improved in aerospace and electronics industry, leading to the emergence of film stars of the Hollywood, making the country attract attention from all over the world. Industrialization later resulted in high advancement levels of computers in the country, specifically in the Silicon Valley, thereby emerging as the global center for all the process of innovation and invention of computers. The discovery of oil in California, during the periods of 1848 was later enhanced by industrialization that brought in all the technological machinery that got required for the process of extracting the oil. Later on, the state got in a position to develop all the machinery needed for manufacturing the oil since it was purely crude oil. This can get attributed to the necessity of industrialization to meet the increasing oil demand by the growing population in this state. The crude oil got manufactured, and different petroleum products such as oil gas, paraffin, kerosene, diesel, among other bi-products got made (Isenberg, 11). Some of these products were

Environmental issues Essay Example for Free

Environmental issues Essay Nowadays, environmental issues are rapidly raising concerns and awareness to the society. It is good to know that problems involving environmental neglect and degradation are a problem of environmentalists no more, but also of politicians and ordinary citizens as well. Say, we should analyze a hypothetical problem regarding the issuance of business license in a local western coast, where two pre-dominant businesses already exist, a bait fish fishery of pilchards and an oyster lease. There are two promising businesses vying for the license, a Tuna Cage Farm and a Dolphin Swim Tourism Project. Both of the new establishments would create added benefits and disadvantages to the area and the pre-existing businesses, so the choice should be carefully examined. Primarily, the bait fishery in the western coast consists of pilchards. Pilchards are any of various small marine fishes especially the commercially important edible species. These pilchards are caught throughout the year, mostly during the night, using purse seine nets. The nets are pursed and drawn to an area adjacent to the vessel, and fish are removed from the net with pumps and placed in the hold of the boat. In layman’s term, pilchards have a wild capture. Unlike the wild pilchard capture, the tuna harvest is spawned in floating cages. Since it is a controlled environment, the unutilized feed components in the cages usually accumulate in the ambient water columns and substantially alter the benthic environment for the fishes. The toxic wastes from tuna cages caused massive pilchard mortalities, as shown in 1995 and 1998 incidents. Furthermore, the toxic wastes spread far at a rapid pace, about 500 km in 20 days, as shown in graph. The Dolphin Swim project, on the other hand, would introduce more boats that might disrupt the spawning season of the pilchards. There is also a probability that dolphins would consider the pilchards as prey. But aside from that, the dolphins can co-exist peacefully with the pilchards. The benthic area is preserved and the probable food cycle is just a natural process. Moreover, the industry in the coast will be promoted. Comparatively, it is evidently more harmful to facilitate a tuna cage farm with a co-existing pilchard industry; thus, the Dolphin Swim project should be favored. The decision was based on two significant aspects; which business is economically efficient while remaining ecologically sustainable. The Dolphin Swim Industry fulfilled these criteria.

Television - Lost in the Unreal World of TV :: Media

Lost in the Unreal World of TV In our modern society, two separate worlds exist. The first, the world of reality, is where most of our important life experiences take place. The second, however, is where nothing substantial exists. Nothing there can have any direct impact on our lives. This is the world of the unreal; the world of television. Television lures people in with wonderful stories that have very little or no application to the real world. Instead of teaching about how the world works, it replaces healthy human interaction. When people watch television, they receive only input. This does not help them deal with other people, because it does not train them to respond. Doing things with other people is necessary to develop social skills, which must be used every day. Television does not provide any workable context for behaving around people. Everyone knows that television shows are designed to be entertaining, not to show how actual people will react to certain situations. When a person watches television, a mind is wasted. That person is throwing away time which could be used for a number of productive tasks. Which person, when asked what they did in life that was really important, would reply "I watched as much television as I could!"? As similar their names might sound, a television is not like a telephone. A telephone connects two people's minds to each other, while a television only sends pictures and sounds to one person's eyes and ears. In fact, if you let television affect your mind too much, it can cripple your imagination. You might have more images stored in your mind, but you will be out of practice for generating new ideas. Television does not provoke original thought. Sometimes television is deceiving because the watcher feels connected to a character on the screen. The observer begins to mimic the character's emotions, and feels satisfied at the end of the episode, as if something had really been accomplished. What the viewer feels is just the opposite of what has happened.

Computer Technology Essay

Charles Njogu, the name does not ring a bell does it? That is my name. Why should my name matter to you? It should matter because I am one of the biggest success stories to come out of my native country, Kenya. I come from a third world country and nothing I have ever achieved or have in life came on a silver platter. I worked hard to reach my status in my life now and I am working even harder to make sure that I do not waste any of the opportunities lady luck has thrown my way. Completing my education has always been my personal battle. There were some real times in the past when I thought that I would do better to throw in the towel and just give up. But I have a dream, a dream to help my countrymen realize a better life and for the future generation of Kenyans to have a better chance in life than my generation did. This is why I strive to reach even greater heights in my educational accomplishments. I want to be the example every Kenyan will look up to and realize that there is a brighter future ahead of them. All they have to do is keep moving towards the goal. No matter how impossible it seems. Though life was rough for me back home, I never let anyone derail me from achieving my goals. That character trait of mine was built up over the years of failure and hindrances that I had to overcome. Looking back on my educational achievements in Kenya, I amaze myself because I never believe I could all that and much more. I have always had a fascination with Computer Technology. This is why my earliest educational achievements were in this field. The Computer Training Center in Nairobi awarded me an ACP certificate in Computer programming back in 1993. This was quickly followed by an ACP Advance Diploma in Computer Studies as well as another ACP Diploma in Systems Analysis and Design. My interest in computers helped me understand that Management plays an important role in the way any office works. All the best computers and databases in the world will be rendered useless if efficient office management is not firmly established by the office right from the start. So I toyed with the idea of taking some management courses. After all, it has always been a personal dream of mine to own my own business someday and, hopefully, be able to teach my fellow Kenyans all about business management in order to help their business skills. Three years later, in 1996, graduated with a National Diploma in Business Management with an Advanced Certificate in Business Administration from the Kenya Institute of Management. For most people, that would be enough of an achievement to make them feel accomplished in life, but not me. I knew there was more to learn and that Kenya based educational institutions had probably taught me all that I they had to offer me. So I set my sights higher. This time, I was eyeing further advanced education in the United States of America. It was with great pride and joy that I was accepted into Brandeis University in Massachusetts. I attended the school as a masteral student of International Finance and Economics. My major was in International Finance and International Economics. I completed these studies back in 2003. Now, in 2007, am expecting to complete my Master of Science degree in Management and Systems with a major in Leadership and knowledge from New York University. You might ask yourself, with all these accomplishments, why would I still want to complete a Ph. D. in Management at Rutger University? The answer is really part of a very logical process of educating myself that is deeply rooted in my sense of self-accomplishment. I want to be a results oriented businessman with vast experience in business administration, financial management, information technology, knowledge and organizational management. I believe that in order to properly manage a business, I must be highly skilled in strategic planning, implementation and information systems auditing as well as knowing how to properly increase productivity while keeping a streamlined business operational. It is my intention to complete my Masteral Degree in Management because in the future, I wish to see a challenging career as a Business Systems Analyst, project manager, as well as a network engineer / person. These positions will require me to fully utilize all my extensive skills, analytical and leadership abilities in order to realize my potential for future growth. Why should Rutger University even bother to consider me for a student slot in the system? The answer to this lies in my soon to be published thesis entitled Managing Knowledge Capital: How Organizations Measure Knowledge Capital and How the Make It Grow. It was recently reviewed with much praise by Lydia Rich and should be published in the short-term future. In this thesis, I am reminding everyone that computers do not do the managing of businesses although they are an integral part of the management system. I proposed that what really keeps the business running is a thoroughly new, yet proven to be accurate method of determining the value of businesses today through proper management ideas. Lastly, I am sure you will want to know why I want to attend Rutger University. The answer, simply put is that I believe that your university will provide me with fertile ground where in I can learn even higher levels of academic theory and practice based on one of the most admirable Ph. D. curriculums this nation has to offer.

Gender Inequality Essay - 1849 Words

It is only recently that sociology has begun to explore the topic of gender. Before this, inequalities within society were based primarily on factors such as social class and status. This paper will discuss gender itself: what makes us who we are and how we are represented. It will also explore discrimination towards women throughout history, focusing mainly on women and the right to vote, inequalities between males and females in the work place and how gender is represented in the media. The term ‘gender’ was coined by John Money in 1955: â€Å"Gender is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself/herself as having the status of a boy or man, girl or woman, respectively† (Coleman and Money, 1991, 13). In†¦show more content†¦This perhaps explains why so many women changed their name to that of a male to be able to get their work published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For example, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brà ¶nte published their work under the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Studies have also been carried out into whether or not there are differences between male and female brain size and whether this affects how we relate to each other in terms of gender. Simon Baron-Cohen believes that male brains are wired towards systematic understanding and females are wired towards empathy. In addition he says that this is not necessarily always the case but the majority are wired in this way: â€Å"Both sexes have their strengths and weaknesses. Neither sex is superior overall.† (Baron-Cohen, S. 2003). It is also thought that much of the gender inequality in today’s society can be put down to social and biological construction of our characteristics. Stereotypically, men are seen as the â€Å"strong† gender and women as the â€Å"weak†. In reality, women fail to make full use of their bodies potential and with a greater awareness of getting hurt, are less likely to take part in a dangerous activity. â€Å"Men more often move out toward a ball in flight†¦women tend to wait for it and then react to its approach† (Young, I. 2010, 207). Women have always been seen as a lower social class than males and are therefore identified as having limited privileges and rights compared to men.Show MoreRelatedEssay On Gender Inequality1127 Words   |  5 Pagesâ€Å"superior† race/gender of a white male were typically treated as if they were less. Women and African-Americans aren’t being treated as bad today, but they’re still being treated worse than the white males of society. Even today, when white males are typically the leaders of society, it’s not always race and gender that creates inequality; sometimes it’s money that creates the issue. 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