Listen!

Join our course on Listening Skills to Succeed at University to develop this vital skill for learning and life.

Active listening is a vital skill that helps us to make sense of the world and understand each other, it enhances our lives, our relationships and our community.

Listening Skills to Succeed at University is a two-week course to improve your listening skills for academic success. The course is free to join – just select the “limited access” option when you sign up – and it only takes about 8 hours to complete.

Course outline

During the course you will explore listening as a conscious, active and mentally engaging process and learn how to improve your listening skills whilst in an academic environment.

University life provides a variety of listening situations from lectures, seminars and tutorials to social interactions like meeting for a drink on campus. It is a place where people from many cultural and linguistic backgrounds come into contact with each other and interact. Discover the importance of intercultural awareness during your academic life and its impact on being a critical listener.

You will get to explore a model of academic listening, identify which listening skills are required for each academic situation, and learn about the main challenges of effective listening and how to tackle them. There is a focus on what effective listening is and how to practise it during university lectures. You will understand what listening skills are required for different types of lectures, and what lecturers from a range of disciplines expect students to do.

By the end of the course, you’ll have explored and practised different strategies that support effective listening so you’ll be able to:

• identify what is involved in effective academic listening.
• identify the intercultural aspects of listening and explain the impact of culture on communication.
• apply critical listening skills at university and other contexts.

Join today

Join the course at any time on the FutureLearn platform: Listening Skills to Succeed at University and reap the benefits whilst at university and later in life.