Part 2 Practice the following communication skills. These are serious exercises that may require great effort.
a. This week, listen carefully to everyone with whom you engage in conversation. Don’t worry about what you plan to say when they are finished, just listen actively and openly while they are talking.
b. When they are done, consider what you want to say in return. Validate what other people say before stating your views. Let them know you really listened and heard what they said.
c. As you are listening carefully to a person talk, be open to learning something from them. Perhaps you will learn to appreciate why they feel as they do. Perhaps you will learn more about an issue on which you previously were closed-­‐minded. Perhaps you will even change your opinion! d. Write a paragraph every day this week. In your daily paragraph, briefly describe a conversation in which you actually kept your own thoughts quiet while you listened to another person. Describe the conversation and how you validated the other person. Tell what you learned from this conversation. You may have learned something about the other person, about an issue, or about yourself. Send all five paragraphs, each about a separate conversation, to your teacher with your other work for this lesson.