Section 10 Ch. 21-23

These sections talked about the importance of listening in a classroom, and how this aspect is greatly overlooked. But recently, "listening is assuming greater and greater importance" (p. 238).  I feel that in every education course I have taken, there is one common theme: interaction in the classroom.  In chapter 21, there was a lot of emphasis on how important it is that the students interact with each other and the teacher.  This is called recirpocal learning, and part of conversing with others is listening.  How can we expect our students to be able to have a conversation with someone if they aren't taught how to listen?  And when I say listen, I don't just mean listen to a tape recording of vocabulary words; I mean having different types of listening activities so that the students are exposed to a variety of situations where they have to listen for different things.  Having learner-centered strategies can greatly help with these activities.  Again, this is another reoccurring theme that I find in  all of my education classes.  I think that we as educators need to focus on what is best for the students, not necessarily what is easiest for us.  I remember from my Spanish courses in high school that most of our listening activities consisted of listening to lectures and tape recordings of a woman speaking in a non-natural voice and speed about nothing that would ever relate to me in real life.  I hated these because although I did understand them, I never really paid much attention to them or took them seriously because I couldn't relate to the examples. 
In chapter 23 on page 249, there was a sentence that said "pause fillers...help the speaker to solicit more time to plan and in turn to furnish the listener with more processing time."  As a second language learner myself, I can personally testify that I love when people take a pause to say "um" in the conversation because it give me as a listener time to focus on what they are saying and process it all, and when I am the speaker, it gives me time to think about what I am going to say next.  I feel that as future educators, we should emphasize to our students that it is okay for them to take pauses and to also take chances when they are speaking.  They will never really learn if they don't take chances and get out of their comfort zone.  Many students are scared of being judged and so it is up to us to create a stress free and safe environment where all feel comfortable to speak, listen, and take risks.