One of the major skills that we’ve talked about in class, and tried to practice in our hospital placements, is active listening: trying to really listen to what a person is saying and, maybe more importantly, appearing as though you’re really listening.
Several months ago, I spent some time with a person who was able to guess that I’m on the autistic spectrum (something that I generally prefer not to talk about, having trained myself to a point where most people can’t tell,) and she said that one of the main tipoffs was that I seemed like I had studied and practiced active listening, rather than having grown up never thinking of listening as a skill to be learned.
It put me in mind of My Fair Lady, where a linguistics expert concludes that the main character, a Cockney woman who’s undergone intensive training to adopt upper class speech, must be a non-native speaker, because she sounded like she had studied the language academically.
she said that one of the main tipoffs was that I seemed like I had studied and practiced active listening, rather than having grown up never thinking of listening as a skill to be learned.
What’s the difference? What exactly do you do and sound like, and what would somebody who it came to naturally do and sound like?
Well, if I knew exactly how what I do differs from someone who learned naturally, I would try to do that differently, but she was pretty vague about it. It sounded like she thought I was too consistent about using physical and audible “I’m listening” cues though.
Several months ago, I spent some time with a person who was able to guess that I’m on the autistic spectrum (something that I generally prefer not to talk about, having trained myself to a point where most people can’t tell,) and she said that one of the main tipoffs was that I seemed like I had studied and practiced active listening, rather than having grown up never thinking of listening as a skill to be learned.
It put me in mind of My Fair Lady, where a linguistics expert concludes that the main character, a Cockney woman who’s undergone intensive training to adopt upper class speech, must be a non-native speaker, because she sounded like she had studied the language academically.
What’s the difference? What exactly do you do and sound like, and what would somebody who it came to naturally do and sound like?
Well, if I knew exactly how what I do differs from someone who learned naturally, I would try to do that differently, but she was pretty vague about it. It sounded like she thought I was too consistent about using physical and audible “I’m listening” cues though.