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Articles from Giang Day Truc Tuyen - Teaching Online

#17. Papa Was A Rolling Stone (Strong/Whitfield) 1969-12-31 17:59:59 Download- Artist(Band): The TemptationsIt was the third of September.That day I'll always remember, yes I will.'Cause that was the day that my daddy died.I never got a chance to see him.Never heard nothing but bad things about him.Mama, I'm depending on you to tell me the truth.And Mama just hung her head and said,"Son, Papa was a rolling stone.Wherever he laid his hat was his home.(And when he died) All he left us was ALONE.""Papa was a rolling stone, my son.Wherever he laid his hat was his home.(And when he died) All he left us was ALONE."Well, well.Hey Mama, is it true what they say,that Papa never worked a day in his life?And Mama, some bad talk going around townsaying that Papa had three outside children and another wife.And that ain't right.Hey, talk about Papa doing some store front preaching.Talked about saving souls and all the time leeching.Dealing in debt and stealing in the name of the Lord.Mama just hung her head and said,"Papa was a rolling stone, my son.Wherever he l ...

Teflon Listening 1969-12-31 17:59:59 "It it looks like listening, if it acts like listening, if it sounds like listening, why then, it must be listening." That ain't necessarily so.Pretending to Listen A listener can be looking at the speaker, nodding from time to time, and uttering well-timed ?uh-huhs? during the talk, all this ? but no real listening is happening. That is, no real taking in and considering what was said. Instead, the words are being gracefully deflected, just like a Teflon surface, by an adept management of appearances.In my conversation seminars, I often give participants the following exercise: I ask person ?A? in each trio to step outside the room and recall a thrilling travel experience so that they can present it in a lively way to the other two persons in their trio. When ?A's? are gone, I instruct persons ?B? to appear to be very involved ? leaning forward, being attentive, nodding, etc. I tell them that while they are doing this, think of something else, perhaps a grocery list or a planned act ...

The Wisdom of the Dumb 1969-12-31 17:59:59 Why is it that so many persons feel compelled to show off how much they know?Because they have been rewarded during a dozen school years for wagging their hands to provide the right answer?Because our society is individualistic and competitive such that the brightest climb higher on the success ladder?Because winning an argument is emotionally gratifying?Certainly, there are many good times to assertively advance your best ideas, to show what you know, to demonstrate your grasp of the subject at hand. However, not all times are good times. There are also good conversational opportunities to be ?dumb,? opportunities to be just plain curious about the ideas of others ? no matter how apparently naïve you think those ideas are.An example from corporate America :Management has regularly trumpeted the need to ?think outside of the box? and consider fresh, even quirky, ideas. To make this happen, meetings sometimes make use of outside facilitators who can create safe opportunities for partici ...

Conversation Cafes 1969-12-31 17:59:59 Is there a best way to practice new conversational skills, talking and listening and learning while meeting interesting people? Yes, for the cost of a cup of coffee.Recently I participated in a Conversation Café in Alameda, California in the Bay Area. I had known about these events but had not been in a locale thathad any meetings scheduled. While in San Francisco on professional business, I traveled across the Bay Bridge to a coffee house for my first participation, and I was pleased with my experience.As we collected ourselves at a table, the host greeted us and announced the topic for the evening, 90 minutes to consider how to ?Take Back Your Time.?Each of us received a small card with agreements and ground rules for the time together:Agreements:Acceptance: Suspend judgment as best you can.Listening: . . . with respect.Curiosity: See to understand rather than persuade.Diversity: Invite and honor all points of view.Sincerity: Speak what has personal heart and meaning.Brevity: Go for ...

Mastermind Group Conversation 1969-12-31 17:59:59 "Nobody is as smart as everybody."A powerful method for meeting and talking has re-emerged in the past two decades. Many successful people (including, I am told, the editors of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" publishing empire) say that their achievements were co-created through "masterminding."The concept of Mastermind Alliances has generally been attributed to Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich. He, in turn, gave credit to Andrew Carnegie, tycoon in steel and philanthropist, whom he knew personally and whose business methods he studied. Skipping back two centuries, we could locate the seeds of this concept in Benjamin Franklin's "Junto" group of tradesmen that met weekly for many years.As Hill described the basic concept, the Master Mind is "coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose." The coordination multiplies the brain power of an individual, and the harmony creates positive and opt ...

Better Group Conversations: Some Guidelines 1969-12-31 17:59:59 Many families and groups of friends come together during holidays and for reunions, yet they have only superficial conversations. With a few working agreements and some questions as conversation-starters, they can have a much richer and more enjoyable time of sharing their life experiences.Five Factors Degrading Group Conversation I observe five main factors that get in the way of quality of group conversation:1. Most get-togethers don't set aside the time required for sharing meaningful life experiences, telling stories, and respectful listening.2. Most groups don't understand that some basic agreements are necessary to support quality conversation, and they don't spell out those agreements.3. We are immersed in a ?culture of critique? (linguist Deborah Tannen's term) in which people routinely interrupt, correct, and argue with one another. This makes conversation risky.4. During table conversations in the American culture, children tend to be the performers and the adults the spe ...

Ben Franklin's Brilliant Conversation Group 1969-12-31 17:59:59 In the fall of 1727 Ben Franklin organized a group of men into a club whose primary purpose was inquiry into a variety of questions. This club thrived for nearly four decades and was known as the Junto, also as ?the leather apron club.? (This group eventually evolved into the American Philosophical Society.) With few exceptions, the members of the group, like Franklin, were practical men: entrepreneurs, tradesmen, merchants. Only a few had much formal education.What they did bring to the group was curiosity, a variety of backgrounds and interests, and the willingness to help one another and the community.To become a member, initiates had to answer four questions:?Do you have disrespect for any current member?? (No)?Do you love mankind in general regardless of religion or profession?? (Yes). ?Do you feel people should ever be punished because of their opinions or mode of worship?? (No)?Do you love and pursue truth for its own sake?? (Yes)Franklin set an earnest and yet convivial tone fo ...

Change One Habit at a Time 1969-12-31 17:59:59 Habits of any kind are notoriously difficult to change or eliminate. Each new year, many people make mighty resolutions to lose weight, save more money, and exercise more. Alas, within a short time, most of these resolutions fail, and for good psychological reasons. Many readers of my articles have written to me that they seek ways to improve their conversational skills. Therefore, this article is devoted to helping you do just that by eliminating one troublesome habit at a time. Focusing on only one greatly increases the possibility of success.A simple step-by-step procedure changing habits:1. Identify a short list of your troublesome habits of talk. Some of these you are already aware of. Others are blind to you, and you'll need feedback from friends to notice them. Here are some very common habits that cause difficulty during conversation:a. `Take-aways` that pull the conversation`s focus back to you. Example: The speaker begins to describe a movie she saw, and you abruptly jump in ...

Workplace Conversations 1969-12-31 17:59:59 The ability to create relationships of trust and sharing, so valued in family life, has taken on new importance in the workplace. As our economy is based more on knowledge, the single most important asset in many organizations is the knowledge worker who has the ability to learn from others, create new knowledge, and transfer what is known to co-workers.In organizations where informal conversation is seen as time-wasting, the rule has been to "Stop talking and get to work." This rule may have been appropriate to the assembly lines of the industrial age, but it is not helpful in the workplace of the information age. The life-blood of the knowledge economy is conversation. Through all kinds of talk in the cafeteria and hallway, in bull-sessions around the water-cooler, phone visits, shop-talk over coffee, knowledge workers are often sharing critical business knowledge. Perhaps they'll sketch a new idea on a napkin or ask a challenging question that will change another's thinking so tha ...

Powerful Listening 1969-12-31 17:59:59 How could listening be powerful? It is usually thought of as a passive sensory activity, a parallel to what ?watching? or ?viewing? are with the eyes. It is often regarded as a poor relation in the family of conversation activities where most emphasis is placed upon the words spoken, the grammar, the sound of the voice. How listening created a turning point in my life.At the end of the first term of my junior year at a huge state university, I was called in for an appointment with the academic counseling services. I had transferred from a small state college and I was performing marginally in my academic work.The counselor described my record, then asked me what had been going on with me. Then he listened as I talked, building my case against the injustices of the professors and the uncaring university that did not recognize or appreciate my talent, then sharing my decision to leave the university and not return, and to seek my fortune elsewhere, maybe New York.He listened carefully an ...

The Wisdom of the Dumb 1969-12-31 17:59:59 Why is it that so many persons feel compelled to show off how much they know?Because they have been rewarded during a dozen school years for wagging their hands to provide the right answer?Because our society is individualistic and competitive such that the brightest climb higher on the success ladder?Because winning an argument is emotionally gratifying?Certainly, there are many good times to assertively advance your best ideas, to show what you know, to demonstrate your grasp of the subject at hand. However, not all times are good times. There are also good conversational opportunities to be ?dumb,? opportunities to be just plain curious about the ideas of others ? no matter how apparently naïve you think those ideas are.An example from corporate America :Management has regularly trumpeted the need to ?think outside of the box? and consider fresh, even quirky, ideas. To make this happen, meetings sometimes make use of outside facilitators who can create safe opportunities for partici ...

Velcro Listening 1969-12-31 17:59:59 People hear and forget. People hear and misunderstand.It's not merely lack of attentiveness that causes listeners to forget or mis-remember what was said. It is also their lack of the particular context in which to think about and fit what was said.By context, I mean the fabric of ideas, facts, terms and meanings surrounding the information we listen to. Another term for context could be "background." For example, what is the listener's background of Latin American history, or alternative medicine, or economics? Or, of more homespun backgrounds such as overhauling car engines, or canning cling peaches?We have all had the experience of listening to a topic for which we had little or no background. Such was my experience earlier this year when listening to a guide describe aspects of Mayan religion. Although I understood the general sense of what I heard, I don't remember much because I had no background into which to fit what I was hearing. And, although I was interested in the subje ...

Your Most Enchanted Listener 1969-12-31 17:59:59 Seven decades ago Dale Carnegie offered his classic advice: When talking with others, it is much easier to create good human relations and make friends by being interested in them rather than trying to make them interested in you. Over the years, I have found this advice to be true for nearly every situation. As I was traveling this summer, I was thinking about and observing conversation patterns of friends, professional associates, and former classmates attending a reunion. Here's what I observed: Many of the dozens of people I talked with seemed eager to tell their own personal stories, but they were much less interested in others' stories. It was as if they had a ?talk-hunger? and needed a listener, and when they found one, they talked on and on. The late Professor Wendell Johnson entitled one of his books ?Your Most Enchanted Listener,? by which he meant that many people love to hear themselves talk, that they themselves become ?enchanted? when they get to tell their own storie ...

Changing Conversational Habits 1969-12-31 17:59:59 At a recent seminar presented by a national expert on human learning, Dr. Jack Wolf, I heard the statement: ?94% of adult behavior is habit.? A striking assertion, that! Although we may think of ourselves as wonderfully flexible and adaptable (and many of us can be so, under certain circumstances), much of the time we are operating on automatic pilot. With respect to language and interpersonal behavior, this habit-bound patterning also appears to hold true.You probably speak with a distinctive regional dialect. Your inflections may even sound like those of your parents or your siblings. Your everyday vocabulary changes little, and you probably share the jargon of workplace colleagues, acquired over years. A skilled linguistic geographer?asking a few questions and listening to you for a few minutes, could probably identify your home city or region, your level of education, and perhaps your job or profession. Speech habits are largely unconscious, and they reveal a lot. Let's say that f ...

W. A. I. T. - Why Am I Talking? 1969-12-31 17:59:59 How would you answer the question ?Why am I talking??1. Because everyone else is talking.2. I have an urge to talk.3. I want attention.4. In order to communicate with a purpose5. I don't know.In our society, a lot of talk seems routine and automatic. By contrast, in Finland (ironically, the cellphone capital of the world) people speak with few words, apparently having done some thinking before verbalizing. Or, as one anthropologist has suggested, due to a certain cultural shyness.Most of the talk I witness does not seem to be mindful. A lot of talk seems empty of real value except for the quite Useful purpose of bonding people. That's the function of small talk. However, even that bonding purpose seems bankrupt if a person needs to make ten phone calls a day to the same friend, spouse, or relative.Most Behavior is Out-of-AwarenessMany of our behaviors are habitual. We can drive a car, ride a bike, type a sentence, or walk into the next room without thinking about what we're doing. W ...