You must have experienced that in any learning situation, students need some kind of help and support other than mere transmission of  knowledge. They want to know about dates of examination, about topics they have not understood, about reference books and journals, about ways to study, about career options available to them and so on. Basically, these activities can be divided into one of the three categories :

• Giving appropriate and correct information to the students

• Suggesting appropriate course of action and

• Helping students to clarify their needs, feelings and motivations.

These 3 groups constitute, what is called ' Counselling ' and includes information, advise and counselling as its components (you may have noticed that counselling appears twice - this is something like Russia, which described a union of states, one of which was independently called Russia). Let us take a more closer look at these terms.

Information is about knowledge, which is largely independent of the student. Rules, regulations, and similar things need to be informed. You need appropriate knowledge and communicating ability to be able to inform.

Counselling is letting the student decide for himself as to what is best for him regarding choice of courses, career, and other points which need one path to choose out of many available. This an entirely student dependent activity.

Advising is a mixture of the two - after clarifying the need, you offer several options, but recommend only one, specially for that particular student.

• At the beginning of a course.

• Deciding about books.

• Before class tests.

• Before tutorials.

• Before Professional examinations.

• Knowing ways to study better.

• Making notes in the class.

Many more situations can be added to this list. These activities can be broadly classified as developmental and problem solving.

You may also have noticed that many a time, students may be approaching you with personal problems (failed love affair, for instance) and in such a case, you may have to refer that problem to someone better skilled.

Two other practical tips may be of use to you. If students come with problems stating that they do not remember or they do not understand, you must check whether they are using appropriate study skills. If yes, then it may be basically anxiety which is interfering with learning or understanding. For your convenience, we have added an appendix on study skills at the end of the book.

Secondly, if they come with time related problems e. g. not getting enough time or staying behind schedule, then they may be suffering from lack of motivation. Management of time is an important aspect of study skills. After going through the appendix, you will be in a position to teach time management to your students also.

• Warmth or making the students feel welcome and valued as individuals. Simply stated it means saying,;Hello, how can I help you ?' rather than 'I am busy, so come straight to the point.'

• Acceptance of students and their feelings without criticising them. If a student is poor in spoken English, criticising him for that is not going to improve the situation.

• Genuineness means being naturally yourself, open, friendly and undefensive, you have to be honest with yourself about your own feelings.

• Empathy is the ability to sense the feelings of your students.

However, it is different from sympathy, in which you take over the feelings, yourself.

Most of you would already possess these qualities to a high degree.  At times, we fail to demonstrate them. Can you think of some reasons ? You are right - they are overwork, tiredness, status consciousness and own feeling of inadequacy. Being aware of these is the first step to overcome them. Once you recognise the importance of these interpersonal qualities, you can give yourself permission to express them professionally.

Let us now come to actually conducting a counselling session. Obviously, we have to classify the request ( information, advice or counselling), make the student comfortable and let him talk about the problem with the intention of solving it. This basic process can be sequentially represented as follows :

(a)   Selecting : It is deciding the part of counselling to which the request belongs. It is important to decide whether it is an information, advice or counselling request as giving information, when actually counselling may be needed, is not conducive to a satisfactory session.

(b) Listing : You would recall that one of the qualities of a counsellor is to be a good listener. In fact, intelligent active listing is the key to a counselling session. here are some ways to be an active listener :

• Open ended questions encourage the student to talk about his problem rather than saying just yes or no to a query.

• Acknowledgement by nodding or saying ah - ah, maintaining eye contact and using positive body language.

• Reflecting or saying back to the student something which he has already said with a view to clarify it. As far as possible, the sentence used by the student should be rephrased. (After listening to a statement, this is just like saying. 'You mean to say that....')

• Silence in itself can promote speaking from the other party.

• This gives the student space to think about his next sentence.

(c) Structuring is to know the right moment to stop counselling and give advice. To do this, you may have to go through the following sequence of activities :

• Clarification of the basic problem or issue by having a dialogue with the student.

• Checking by going back to the student to ensure that the issue is now completely clear. If not so, you may need a few more clarifications.

• Consequences is the final yet most important part of counselling interview. It is mutually agreeing to what the student will do as a result of this interaction.

We have presented the philosophy and process of counselling in a very simplified format. Next time a student approaches you for help, try to figure out the spectrum of counselling you are using. Once you are clear about it, you will be able to structure your responses more effectively.