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Analyzing Active Listening Skills. Essay

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The theories of counselling, listening skills sessions, offered the opportunity to learn and exercise the practical application of listening skills. Such skills involved actively listening to the speaker and asking forth bringing questions. The knowledge attained throughout the theories of counselling module, was applied in these practical sessions. Even though the students in these listening skills sessions were supposed to work in mock therapeutic session, it was made clear that these exercises did not provide the necessary training for the students to become professional counsellors. Nevertheless this does not mean that these practices were not helpful. We were provided the possibility to gain a better and newer understanding of the …show more content…

The listener has to show that they are following the speaker by sending out non-verbal signals (Canadian Association of Student Activity Advisers, n.d.). Throughout each listening session I gave short comforting smiles, and nodded occasionally to reassure the listener that they had my attention. The various facial expressions that were usually in line with what the speaker was saying were clear indicators of attention in both listening sessions. In the second listening video my facial expression was not always corresponding to what the speaker was saying. This was also pointed out by the Observer, who stated that I did not respond in an enthusiastic manner to the speaker’s enthusiastic speech (Ross &Short, 2011). I provided good Soler contact in both sessions, my proximity to the speaker was upright and I was sitting at a comfortable angle and distance to the speaker, at all moments. My posture was open, relaxed and inviting. As meaning cannot always be conveyed effectively, the listener must participate actively in the cycle of communication (Canadian Association of Student Activity Advisers, n.d.). In either session, I tried to offer short, reassuring verbal comments to encourage the speakers in their speech process. During the first listening session, I did not need to provide many encouraging, verbal comments as the speaker had a very good speech flow. Before I made a comment, I waited for the speaker to finish talking in order

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