Listening with Intention (Episode 20260108)

This session focuses on what happens after a Socratic question is asked. Building on the first talk in the series, instructors explore active listening as a core mah jongg teaching skill—one that determines whether a question leads to insight or confusion. Through the practices of giving full attention, showing curiosity, reflecting back, and checking for understanding, instructors learn how to interpret student responses accurately and choose an appropriate teaching response. Active listening is framed as a decision-making tool that protects student autonomy while increasing instructional clarity.

• After asking a strong Socratic question, how confident are you that you truly understood the student’s thinking before responding?
• When a student answers your question, are you listening for understanding—or listening for the mistake you expect to hear?
• How often do you feel the urge to explain or correct before the student has finished articulating their thought?

Talking Points

Active listening is the instructor’s companion skill to Socratic questioning. A Socratic question surfaces what a student is thinking; active listening reveals how that thinking is structured. Giving full attention means setting aside internal scripts—the rule you expect them to cite, the correction you’re ready to deliver, or the next teaching point you’ve already queued up. In mah jongg lessons, divided attention often leads instructors to respond to what they anticipated instead of what was actually said.

Showing curiosity shifts the instructor’s stance from evaluator to investigator. Instead of listening to judge correctness, the instructor listens for patterns: what the student emphasizes, what they skip, and how they reason through uncertainty. Curiosity helps instructors distinguish between confusion, exploration, and emerging insight—states that require very different responses.

Reflecting back is how instructors test their interpretation before acting. Reflection names meaning, not just words, and gives the student a chance to hear their own thinking and refine or redirect it. This step prevents instructors from solving the wrong problem or introducing instruction that isn’t actually needed.

Checking for understanding completes the instructional loop. Rather than assuming alignment, instructors explicitly confirm whether their reflection matches the student’s intent. This step protects learner autonomy and helps instructors decide whether to explain, ask another question, or intentionally step back and let learning unfold.

Socratic questioning invites thinking.
Active listening interprets thinking.
Instructional judgment depends on both.

Listening with intention is what allows instructors to respond to learning as it is, not as they expected it to be.

Activity

Listening Path — Self-Guided Instructor Practice

This activity is designed to help you practice listening as an instructional skill after asking a Socratic question. The focus is not on what to teach, but on how accurately you hear student thinking before responding.

You can complete this activity mentally while watching the recording, or later using a real lesson moment.

Step 1: Prepare the listening lens

Before beginning, bring one recent or common mah jongg teaching moment to mind—such as a discard decision, exposure choice, or belief that a hand is blocked.

Review the four stages of the Listening Path:

• Attention — pause your internal teaching script and listen without planning a response
• Curiosity — listen to understand how the student is thinking, not to evaluate correctness
• Reflection — name what you think the student means, not just what they said
• Confirmation — check that your interpretation matches the student’s intent

This is a listening discipline, not a performance checklist.

Step 2: Replay a Socratic moment

Recall or imagine asking a Socratic question related to that teaching moment.

As you listen to the student’s response—either from memory or during an actual lesson—resist the urge to explain, correct, or redirect.

Your only task is to listen using the Listening Path.

Step 3: Practice reflection internally

Before choosing any teaching response, silently form a reflective statement:

• “I’m hearing that…”
• “It sounds like you’re thinking…”

Do not solve the problem yet. Focus only on naming meaning accurately.

Step 4: Check for alignment

Ask yourself:

• Does this reflection truly match the learner’s intent?
• What evidence supports my interpretation?

If this were a live lesson, this is where you would check for understanding before moving on.

Step 5: Notice the effect

Pause and reflect on these questions:

• Did the learner’s thinking become clearer simply through being reflected back?
• What assumptions did I notice myself making while listening?
• Where did I feel the urge to explain prematurely?

This noticing is the point of the practice.

Step 6: Carry it forward

The next time you teach, intentionally use the Listening Path after one Socratic question.

Listening Path

ATTENTION Pause your response. Listen without planning.

CURIOSITY How is the student thinking? What pattern do I hear?

REFLECTION Name meaning, not words. “I’m hearing that…”

CONFIRMATION Check alignment. “Did I get that right?”

Purpose

This is NOT a pause before explaining.

This is NOT a test of correctness.

This is NOT a performance technique.

This IS a listening discipline.

This IS a clarity check.

This IS instructional support.

Listening with intention clarifies the learning state.

Notice how listening with intention:

• reduces the need to over-explain
• clarifies learning state
• supports student autonomy

Listening is not a pause before teaching. It is the teaching at this stage. The clearer you hear student thinking, the more precise your instructional choices become.

Reflections

• Which part of the listening process do you tend to skip when you’re under time pressure?
• How might more accurate listening change when—and how often—you intervene during a lesson?
• What would it look like to treat listening as an instructional move rather than a courtesy?
• How could active listening increase both student confidence and your own instructional trust?