How you hear is as important as what you hear. In many ways, how you hear actually determines what you hear. You can practice effective listening strategies to gain a better and more accurate understanding of the meaning behind others' words. Once you understand how you hear others, you can also apply your knowledge to the way you speak, so that you emphasize and enunciate clearly when others are listening to you.
This game is also called gossip or telephone. A group passes a normal phrase among each other, one at a time, by whispering it into each others' ears. The game is finished when everyone in the group has heard the phrase whispered, and the final participant repeats the phrase she believes she heard. Due to the likelihood that the phrase will become distorted as it is passed in whispers among so many people, the phrase the final participant speaks will tend to be unusual or nonsensical, in contrast to the original whispered message. The game is designed to demonstrate the perils of passive listening and poor communication skills. Participants learn to listen actively to messages they receive first hand, and to think critically about the subtle or overt changes that can take place when a message passes between several parties.
The emphasis a speaker places on certain words in a sentence may completely change that sentence's meaning. For example, there are seven possible meanings to the phrase, “I never said she stole my money.” Emphasizing the first word indicates that the speaker did not make this claim, but that someone else did. Emphasizing the third word implies that the speaker may have suspected it, but never voiced her suspicion. Emphasis on the final word hints that something other than money may have been stolen. By observing the effects of these different points of emphasis, listeners learn to consider more than just the words they are told. They also learn to discern the more subtle signs of meaning and to listen actively for emphasis, as well as tone, inflection and other indicators of the speaker's intent.
All students are asked to listen carefully to every instruction they are about to receive before doing anything. The students are then asked to write or draw several things, one at a time, on their papers. Some of these instructions may seem normal or mundane, like writing their names, while others seem silly or pointless. At the end of the quiz, the students' final instruction is to ignore all of the directions they have received. Attention is then called to the first instruction, which advised them to take no further action until the end of the quiz. Students who listened to this have blank papers in front of them, while those who didn't have filled their papers. This exercise teaches the importance of listening and acknowledging details.