Reflection Paper
Since my childhood I have been having problems with listening in that when my mother send me to buy a lot of items from the shop, I ended up forgetting others, the reason being I did not listen properly and in high school the problem was the same. In high school, I have been experiencing poor performance during exams in English subject because of my poor listening skills especially during English lessons. I joined this university where I am studying Interpersonal and Communication Studies and I still experience problems in listening especially during presentations. This has even made me perform poorly in grammar because I was once told by my uncle that if I want to speak good English, I need to be a good listener. I find it difficult to express my ideas especially during class presentations. However, I have a higher expectation that by the end of this course, I will be in a position to be an active listener and as a result my English language will improve since I am weak in this area and I suppose from then henceforth, I would be able to be a good listener especially now that I am a peer counselor at school.
Interpersonal skills are also referred to as “people skills” and “communication skills” (Wikipedia) and they use skills include “active listening, tone of voice, delegation and leadership”. I expect the active listening skill in interpersonal skill is going to be of importance to me because currently I am a peer counselor in the school and I need good listening skills so as to be effective in administering my clients. For me to be an effective peer counselor, I need to be a very good listener of my clients in order to counsel them well.
During my childhood at around 10-14 years when I was still at pre-high school level, I was indeed a poor listener. When told anything both by teachers or parents I would forget it within the next minute. This was because I was not patient enough to listen well before I acted and it caused me a lot of troubles with my relatives at home and teachers at school. For instance, at school, I would speak in class when the teacher is explaining something and when asked what was said by the teacher, I would not answer anything just because I could not listen. Indeed, this impacted me negatively. This course is going to assist me a lot to improve my listening skills so as to be effective in serving students as a peer counselor and to address their problems effectively
In my situation at school as a peer counselor, I am always engaged in interviewing students who are worthy to receive financial assistance in paying school fees and in addition, I always participate in counseling students. These activities really need me to be an active listener in order to attend to them effectively if not then I would fail in my responsibility. These have been my motivation.
Participating in class discussions: In class I would make sure I have joined the discussion group which I would actively speaking, listening and taking notes from what is discussed.
Practicing to listen and responding: I would engage my best friend in reading me any article which I would later respond by explaining how I understood.
Practicing listening and responding to questions in class: I will actively participate in listening to the teacher during lessons and ensure that I asked and answered questions.
References
D. W. (2009). Reaching out: Interpersonal effectiveness and self-actualization (10th ed.). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Social_skills (n.d). Wikipedia.org. Retrieved from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_skills
