Teaching listening

Two main ways of listening 1.casual listening: no particular purpose in mind, often without special concentration (to the radio while studying) → happens in a FL classroom when a teacher conducts the lesson in L2 2.focused listening: for a particular reason, usually to get information (lecture at school, in conversations, instructions, etc.), we usually know what to listen for and that helps us to listen → the main concern in the language classroom: we expect pupils to listen carefully and remember what they heard

Using recorded texts Advantages:  native speaker pronunciation  variety of voices and accents  can be replayed many times Disadvantages:  no visual clues (gestures, lip movement)  technical problems (quality of the recording, bad acoustics)  may not entirely suitable for the pupils (e.g. a song is recorded too fast for the learners to follow it)

Difficulties with listening Do your pupils experience any difficulties when doing listening activities? *

Reducing learners’ worries about listening  play several times and move from global to detailed comprehension (first/main ideas, later/details)  assign tasks to be completed during listening  if possible, suggest suitable strategies for coping with the task (e.g. highlight key words)  arrange for good conditions (use good quality recordings and CD players, stop the recording when necessary…)  make clear to pupils that it’s OK not to understand everything in a listening text

Preparing students for listening Pre-listening strategies  introduce the topic (use cards or pictures, talk about it, ask guiding questions)  ask pupils to predict (what the text will be about, what words could be written in the gaps…)  pre-teach or review the needed vocabulary or structures  clarify the aim of the activity, e.g. Listen carefully and tell me which of the three photos is described

Teacher-made listening activities Listen and respond commands, moving about, miming drawing (picture dictations) true/false statements repeating (songs, Chinese whispers, etc.) Listening for information identifying (riddles, Bingo) filling in missing words predicting making mistakes on purpose

Listening for young learners Listen and respond commands, moving about drawing and colouring (picture dictations) true/false statements (Elephants are green. Today is Monday.) repeating (songs, rhymes, Chinese whispers) Listening for information identifying (Show me your…, Bingo) filling in missing words making mistakes on purpose