At home you will practice a 10 minute active listening exercise. First, find a partner – friend, parent, sibling… (it is great to find someone you often have conflict with). Then both of you turn off anything that will distract you (phones, tv, radio…) and go over the active listening tools together. Once you both understand them, choose one of you to be the active listener while the other is the talker. The talker will talk about a special event that happened in his/her life. S/he will talk for 5 minutes (set a timer). While the talker is talking, the active listener will be practicing the active listening tools (show empathy and support in a non-judgemental way, echo, restate, clarify, reflect). Then after 5 minutes you will switch roles (the talker also talks about an important event). Once you both have had a chance to be both the active listener and the talker you will discuss with each other what your experience was like. Also give feedback to your partner about what active listening tools you think s/he did well or which ones could have been used more to help.
When you have completed the exercise with your partner, you will write up your experience talking about how it felt to be the talker and have someone \”really\” listening to you actively and what it was like to be the active listener. Also talk about whether you feel this was useful and can be useful to do with other people – why/why not?
Two pages, double spaced.
