How to Stay Focused On A Conversation In English In A Noisy Environment, and what to do when you fail!

As far as I know, there are two ways to listen to anything happening around you. You can listen passively or you can listen actively. If you're listening passively to something or to someone, you're aware of the general idea of what they are saying. And maybe the overall message of a song, for example. But if someone were to ask you for

details about what you were hearing, you'd likely struggle to come up with very many. Active listening is the opposite to passive. When you're listening actively to something or to someone, you are trying your very best to follow the details of what you hear. This kind of listening often, not always, happens when you're talking with someone or are in a class that you're really

interested in, for example. You're trying to understand every single word you hear. And to be clear, both kinds of listening, active and passive, are important and helpful for you as you work on your English skills. But they lead to very different outcomes, don't they?

Passive listening is great for building a general understanding of something while active listening is great for helping you to pay attention to details. I've found that the most challenging of the two is active listening because it doesn't take very much for a distraction to happen and then you've lost something important in

what you've been trying to listen to. And that can affect you a lot as you're practicing your English or working to get ready for this help. And today, that's what we're going to talk about. What you can do when you're trying your best to stay focused on something or someone you're trying to listen to, but keep getting pulled off target by something

happening around you. Well, hello there and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast. This is the podcast for motivated English learners who want to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips, strategies to conquer the self-exam.

I also love to feature encouraging interviews with regular people, people just like you who are working towards becoming fluent in English, so we can learn from their experiences together. My name is Aaron Nelson,

and I've been an English teacher for over 17 years, and I'm a certified self-hip trainer. And I now help students prepare for the self-hip exam through online classes.

Yesterday at work, I was helping out with a meal that we were serving to celebrate those who were having a birthday this month. The room was packed with people, and as you can imagine at a birthday event, there were

lots of conversations happening all at once. The room where we were was noisy. I sat beside two people I wanted to try and connect a little bit more with, and as we ate, my conversation with the lady next to me took off.

We were having a great visit together, and she seemed to have a lot she wanted to chat about. Have you ever had this happen to you? You're trying your best to stay focused on a conversation, but you suddenly become very aware of another conversation happening right next to you.

Like you somehow start to follow that conversation they are having instead of the one you're actively participating in? Well, that was me yesterday. During a small pause in the conversation I was having with the lady I just told you about, I heard a fragment of what the people on the other side of me were saying. And suddenly it was like someone snuck an invisible hook into my brain

and began constantly pulling my attention their way. And it wasn't because I was being nosy. The conversation and happening was loud enough that other people were also joining in, So it would have been totally fine for me as well. But I was with someone else and their conversation right now,

or at least I was supposed to be. Have you ever been in a situation like that before where you are involved in a conversation with someone and you suddenly get distracted by something or someone else nearby?

It can feel like you're being pulled in half, right? You want to pay attention to the person you're talking with, but at the same time the other conversation begins to pull at you so much, your attention kind of falls apart.

Have you experienced that or is it just me? Well, that's what happened to me yesterday, as I was telling you. And I hate to admit it, but for a few minutes I struggled to remain focused with the lady I had been speaking with.

She'd be telling me something, but all of a sudden I'd find myself mentally catching more words from what was happening on the other side of me, and I lose track of what my friend was trying to tell me. Realizing what happened, I tried to pull my attention back to the lady I was talking

with. I'm sorry, what did you say? I stammered. She just asked me a question.

Oh gosh, how embarrassing. I missed what she was asking me. I apologized and asked, could you repeat that part again? I couldn't hear what you said.

And to be fair, my friend is terribly shy and speaks very softly. So it can be tough to hear her at the best of times, but up to that point we had been talking together just fine simply because I was completely focused on what she was saying. Everything got tricky for me when I heard the conversation happening on the other side

of me. My friend happily repeated what she had said and our talk got going again, but only for a few seconds I'm afraid. Before once again, I somehow heard a word or two of the conversation happening beside

me. Ugh, I got disconnected again. I felt so bad. I wasn't trying to stop listening to my friend, but it was almost like I couldn't

stop myself from following the talk happening nearby. I tried moving a bit closer to my friend and apologized once more. I'm so sorry. I'm having a hard time hearing you now.

She repeated herself again. And again, I had a hard time hearing her because of that loud conversation happening next to me. Oh man, I remember saying to myself, I've got a focus here.

Thankfully, my friend turned her voice up a little. That helped. And thankfully, we managed to get on to a conversation topic where it was more back and forth instead of me just listening.