Learning to Listen

If the heart of oral history is the interview and the heart of the interview is listening, then how can we learn to listen, and how can we teach interviewers to listen with empathy? This book reframes listening from a natural talent to a teachable skill and presents a series of listening exercises the author created to teach students and other interviewers how to become better listeners. The exercises are suitable for people at various levels and can be used by anyone interested in improving their listening skills or teaching those skills in courses or workshops. The book also includes passages from students’ listening journals where they write about what they learned about listening from that exercise. In addition to offering insights into listening the journals serve as examples of how people can write their own listening journals. Other books describe ways to improve listening, but this one offers people a series of specific exercises designed to improve their listening skills.