Teaching Listening Skills Effectively

Muhammad Younis Farid

Spelt Academic Session – April 2015

Listening

• Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning and responding to spoken messages.

• We spend 42% to 60% of our time listening in daily life, depending on our profession.

• Should listening be taught in the classroom?

Yes, it must be taught, because:• It is not automatically learnt.• It is Important for educational success.• It is immensely important for effective

communication.• It helps us develop and manage relationships

in our life.

Types of Listening

• Intensive Listening• Critical Listening• Empathetic Listening• Appreciative Listening

Principles for Teaching Listening

• Both authentic and prepared listening material be used.• The listening text should not be longer than 2 minutes.• The listening lesson should be structured into 3 parts:

Pre-listening, While-listening and Post-listening. • Listening tape should be played twice or thrice, if needed.• Students should be trained to use listening strategies, i.e.

anticipating what the speaker will say, listening for the main idea, listening for details or inferences etc.

• Ask students to read the questions before they listen to the text. They should answer them while listening.

Pre-Listening Activities

The purpose is to activate the background knowledge and to prepare students for the listening tasks.

Three Types of activities can be done:1 – Brainstorming (Activating students prior knowledge by giving them the main topic/theme of the text to brainstorm related ideas)2 – Vocabulary (Pre-teaching difficult vocabulary appearing on the listening text)3 – Prediction (Asking students to predict what the listening text is about. It could be done by giving some hints or showing a related visual)

While-Listening Activities1 - Global Listening: aims to understand the main idea/theme/general meaning of the text.

Example Tasks:• Students may compare their predictions with the text to

see if they guess the content correctly.• Some questions which may be asked:What type of text is it? Who the main characters? What are they talking about?Where is the conversation taking place?

While-Listening Activities

2 - Intensive Listening:• Listening for specific details• Listening for inferences• Identifying correct order of eventsExample Tasks:Fill in the blanks, True/False questions, Multiple-choice Questions, Completing Cloze passage, Short question/answers (maximum 3 word answers), labelling a diagram, completing a flow chart etc.

Post-Listening Activity

• Discussion and feedback on the answers of while-listening tasks.

• Integration of listening with Speaking or Writing by designing tasks based on the content/ideas/information of the listening text.

Example Tasks:• Group discussion, Role-play, Presentation,

Writing a paragraph or a letter about the content/theme of the listening text.

A Listening Lesson

A Listening Lesson

• Analysis & Discussion

Free Resources for Teaching Listening

• Breaking News English: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ • http://www.listenaminute.com/• BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml • Voice Of America: http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/index.cfm • English Listening Online: http://www.elllo.org/ • Nursery Rhymes: http://www.eaglesweb.com/Mother_Goose.htm • Podcasts (narration): http://www.eslpod.com/ • Podcasts (jokes): http://www.manythings.org/jokes/ • Podcasts (links): http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Listening/Podcasts/

(Source: Planning a listening Activity. By Sarah Saharhttp://www.tesol.org/docs/default-source/new-resource-library/-planning-a-listening-

activity.pdf?sfvrsn=0)

Please provide your valuable feedback for today’s session.

Thank you!