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6. Two types of attention

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Question:
Using points and examples from the talk, explain two types of attention presented by the professor.

 

Preparation time: 30 seconds
speaking time: 1 minute

 

Texts

One of the hardest parts of teaching is keeping your students’ attention. Now the key to doing this is understanding the concept of attention. Basically there are two types of attention.
The first type is active. Active attention is voluntary. It’s when you intentionally make yourself focus on something, and since it requires effort, it’s hard to keep up for a long time. Ok, eh, let’s say you are teaching a biology class, and today’s topic is frogs, all right? You are standing in the front of a room and lecturing. “A frog is a type of animal known as an amphibian.” Well, this is unnecessarily going to keep students’ interest, but most of them will force themselves to pay active attention to your lecture. But it’s only a matter of time before they get distracted.
Now the other type of attention is passive attention, when it’s involuntary. Passive attention requires no effort because it happens naturally. If something is really interesting, students don’t have to force themselves to pay attention to it. They do it without even thinking about it. So back to our biology lecture, you start talking about frogs, and you pull a live frog out of your brief case. You’re describing it while you hold it up, show the students how long its legs are, and how they are used for jumping for example. Then maybe you will even let the frog jump around a bit on the desk or the floor. In this case, by doing something unexpected, something more engaging, you can tap into their passive attention and it can last much longer than active attention. As long as the frog is still there, your students will be interested.

 

Explanation

(Summary for the lecture)
There are two types of attention.
The first type is active attention.
This is voluntary and is when people focus on something intentionally.
For example, if you teach students about frogs and you explains frogs are an amphibian and so on, it is hard to keep students’ interests.
Therefore, students cannot help but pay active attention.
The second type of attention is passive attention.
Passive attention is involuntary and does not need any effort.
Back to the biology class example, instead of explaining frogs, if you bring an actual frog, students would have more interest and focus on the class, and active attention is not necessary.
Students will pay passive attention that will last longer.

(Sample answer)
In the lecture, the professor delineates between two types of attention: active and passive.

Active attention is characterized by voluntary focus, wherein individuals intentionally direct their attention towards a specific stimulus. For instance, in a classroom setting, if a teacher discusses frogs without any visual aids or engaging materials, students may need to exert effort to maintain their focus on the subject matter. This intentional effort to concentrate despite the lack of external stimuli represents active attention.

Conversely, passive attention is involuntary and requires minimal effort on the part of the individual. In the same biology class example, if the teacher introduces an actual frog as a teaching aid, students may become naturally more engaged and attentive without needing to consciously exert effort to maintain focus. The presence of the frog captures their interest effortlessly, leading to a form of passive attention where individuals remain engaged without actively intending to do so.