Interactive Listening and Communication

1 credit 

Winter

10-week course

This speaking and listening skills course focuses on active listening strategies, negotiation of meaning, and relationship building in conversation in the academic community. Students learn conversational patterns and how to use them effectively, how to give encouragement and affective responses to their interlocutors, to get and give clarification of possible misunderstandings, and to recognize and utilize typical conversational patterns. 

Activities include analysis of conversations on videotape and in transcripts, role plays and practice activities in class; homework assignments put skills learning in class to use in the students' own academic environment. In addition, students participate in and lead discussions, practice skills of turn-taking, agreeing and disagreeing, and persuasion in the context of formal and informal discussions.