How can I provide listening practice (with limited or no resources)?
One relatively easy way to do this is called ‘live listening’.
Live listening
Preparation
Let’s say that you have a topic for your
lesson such as ‘talking about your family’. Prepare a short text in which you
talk about your own family graded to suit the level of the class (or slightly
above). Maybe find some photographs or
other visuals to support what you are going to say.
Prepare some listening comprehension
questions or other simple tasks that you can write on the board, for example –
writing names or relationships on a family tree.
Lesson procedure
- Engage students’ interest – maybe show the photos and ask them who they think the people are.
- Set the listening task – write it on the board.
- Tell the students about your family (use your prepared text as a prompt but try not to read aloud as this is not very natural). Try to keep your stress and intonation patterns natural. As the students listen they should write the answers to the questions or other task.
- Check the answers. If students didn’t get them then tell your story again. (You should probably expect to tell it at least twice).
- You could now give the students a photocopied version of your story if you wish.
- Students then plan and prepare to talk about their own families (maybe drawing a family tree).
- Put students in pairs to exchange information about their families. Encourage them to ask questions. Make sure students are not sitting with friends who already know their families.
You can do a live listening at almost any
level and with many topics, such as ‘talking about your free time’, ‘ talking
about your last holiday’, ‘ talking about your best friend’, ‘ talking about
your ambitions’ etc.
Podcasts
There are many free podcasts and vodcasts
written specifically for language learning. You can download these to your
laptop or ipod and connect to speakers for use in the classroom.
Some useful websites are:
This site provides a new Australian-themed video every day.
A weekly
Australian news show for schools.
You can also use YouTube videos on specific topics. If you do this then
you will need to create your own lesson to go with this. Keep these points in
mind:
- You can’t grade the video but you can grade the listening task you use to suit the level of your class. A high level class might answer specific questions; a low level class might listen and tick a list of topics that they hear talked about.
- To provide useful listening practice that guides the learners to a better understanding of the text, they should listen/view at least twice if not more.
- If you set comprehension questions AFTER students have listened then this is a memory test rather than a test of comprehension.
- It is hard to watch a video and write at the same time. Students should be set the task before they watch but then pause throughout to allow them time to do the task(s).
- If students cannot answer the questions even after listening/viewing several times, then guide them to the correct answer. Stop the video / CD etc and focus on the part where the answer is. Maybe it is a specific word or phrase that’s the problem?
A reminder of the
basic procedure for a listening lesson
- Set the scene / Engage the students’ interest.
- Pre-teach vocabulary if necessary.
- Set a simple first listening / viewing task that will encourage the learners to listen for gist and focus all the way to the end
- Play the listening
- Check the task and set another one that requires more detailed comprehension
- Play the listening
- Check the task and play all or parts of the listening again as necessary
- Move to a follow-on task such as students speaking on the same topic
Possible tasks for
listening
Comprehension
questions
‘Where did he go?’
‘Why didn’t he tell anyone about it?’
True /False
statements
Tom was alone when he witnessed the accident. True / False?
Table completion
Fill in the missing information
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Sarah
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Tom
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Kim
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age
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studies
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hopes to be
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Listen and tick (there should be a few different
things talked about so that the task is not too easy): Listen and tick the
topics that you hear the people talk about.
School
Work
Health
Transport
Shopping
Hobbies
The future
Listen and fill in
the gaps
The population of England is currently ___________________. Population
growth is at _______% which means that by the year _____________.......
For older and
higher level learners
- Listen and take notes
- Listen and summarise
- Listen and correct the information in the passage you have been given
For younger
learners
- Listen and circle the things in the picture that hear
- Listen and draw
- Listen and make
- Listen and do
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