Teaching listening

Teaching Listening

Reasons Why Listening is Neglected in Language Teaching

• Lack of teaching equipment and materials.

• Listening is not included in very important tests.

• Lack of real-life situations where learners need to understand spoken English.

• Lessons tend to test rather than train students' listening skills.

Listening Activities

1. Pre-listening Activities

• Predicting: Engaging students to anticipate content.

• Setting the Scene: Motivating activity to provide context.

• Listening for Gist: Skimming for general understanding.

• Listening for Specific Information: Scanning for details.

• Pre-questions: Allow students to read comprehension questions before listening.

• Using Pictures for Predicting: Visual aids to facilitate predictions.

2. While-listening Activities

• Order of Items: Students mark the sequence of information.

• Listen and Act:

  • Beginners: Stand up, point to items.

  • Intermediate: Pretend actions based on audio.

• Listen and Draw: Illustrating while listening (e.g., drawing a circle).

• Listen and Fill in the Blanks: Completing sentences with function words.

• Listen and Guess: Using clues for engagement.

Advantages of Listening Activities

• Personalization of lessons.

• Integration with other skills, especially speaking.

3. Post-listening Activities

• Assessment: Determine student comprehension through activities.

• Multiple Choice Questions: Evaluation of understanding.

• Answering Questions: Discuss responses to provide clarity.

• Note-taking: Gap-filling summarization.

• Dictation: First listening for meaning, second for details (extensive notes).

• Reconstruction: Students work in pairs/groups to recreate texts.

• Analyzing and Correction: Comparing group versions with the original text.