SECTION A MINI-LECTUREDirections: In this section you sill hear a mini-lecture. You will h

SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

Directions: In this section you sill hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture. When the lecture is over, you will be given two minutes to check your notes, and another ten minutes to complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE. Use the blank sheet for note-taking.

听力原文： Techniques for Group Discussion

Like writing, discussion is a learned activity. Learning how to participate in group discussion could be one of the most important skills you can acquire in college. It will be an asset in nearly every course and make youngsters prepared for a professional career. To be adept at any kind of serious group discussion you must develop a variety of skills-in speaking, listening, thinking, and reading. The following will help you improve your discussion techniques:

1. Be willing to speak in public. Good discussion depends on the lively participation of all group members, not (as so often happens)on the participation of a vocal few. Many students, however, do not join discussions because they are afraid to speak extemporaneously in a group. This fear is quite common--so common, in fact, that according to a leading communication consultant, Michael T. Motley, psychological surveys "show that what Americans fear most--more than snakes, heights, disease, financial problems, or even death--is speaking before a group." To take an active role in your education you must learn to overcome "speech anxiety." Professor Motley offers the following advice to those who are terrified of speaking before a group: Stop thinking of public speaking as a performance and start thinking of it as communication. He believes that people choke up or feel butterflies in their stomachs when starting to speak because they worry more about how people will respond than about what they themselves have to

say. "Most audiences," he reminds us, "are more interested in hearing what we have to say than in evaluating our speech skills."

2. Be willing to listen. No one can participate in group discussion who doesn't listen attentively. Attentive listening, however, is not passive hearing, the sort of one-way receptivity we habitually experience when we tune in to our radios, cassette players, and television sets. A good listener knows it is important not only to attend closely to what someone is saying but to understand why he or she is saying it. Attentive listening also requires that we understand a statement's connection to previous statements and its relation to the discussion as a whole. Perhaps the most valuable result of attentive listening is that it leads to the one element that open and lively group discussion depends on: good questions. An expert on group dynamics claims that most ineffective discussions "are characterized by a large number of answers looking for questions." When the interesting questions start popping up, group discussion has truly begun.

3. Be willing to examine all sides of a topic. Good discussion techniques require that we be patient with complexity. Difficult problems rarely have obvious solutions that can be conveniently summarized in popular slogans. Complex topics are multifaceted; they demand to be turned over in our minds so that we can see them from a variety of angles. Group discussion, because it provokes a number of divergent viewpoints, is an excellent way to broaden our perspectives and deepen our insight into complex ideas and issues.

4. Be willing to suspend judgment. Class discussion is best conducted in an open minded and tolerant spirit. To explore ideas and issues in a free and open manner, you will need to develop a recepti