Clapping Back on Closed Ears

Three Strategies for Communicating with Bad Listeners

Two students, a staff colleague, and I at a Latinxs Uni2 meeting at Baltimore City Community College when I was an adjunct faculty advisor of the club in 2018.

Last night in our Advanced Listening & Note Taking class, students and I discussed strategies for navigating conversations in which their interlocutor “does not want to understand us.” The three strategies I shared are:

1) Enact research-based avoidance of disrespectful people using qualitative databases like ratemyprofessor.com and action research like reaching out to a professor before the start of the semester to evaluate their response;

2) Reset the context, zoom out before zooming back in to the detail that was being discussed when they interrupted with supposed incomprehension, then take power by brushing off the “I don’t understand you/What?” and asking a pointed question of your own;

3) Call on allies to teach (or, um, take other action toward) the person to listen to diverse voices better and be more respectful of language diversity.

What are your strategies when someone you’re communicating with pretends or refuses to understand?