Teaching Listening Skills in ESL: Strategies and Activities
Teaching Listening
Reasons for Listening
There are several reasons to incorporate listening activities in ESL classes:
- Spoken language often differs significantly from written language.
- Listening benefits students’ pronunciation by exposing them to appropriate pitch and intonation.
- Listening texts serve as excellent pronunciation models.
- Regular listening practice leads to improvement.
- Exposure to various English accents is beneficial, but teachers should curate the variety presented.
Different Kinds of Listening
A distinction can be made between intensive and extensive listening:
Intensive Listening
Intensive listening involves a detailed analysis of language or listening for specific information. This type of listening helps students develop listening skills and study spoken English patterns.
Extensive Listening
Extensive listening focuses on gaining a general understanding from a recording. Students prioritize meaning over form and engage with longer texts. The goal is to provide ample target language input.
Listening Resources
Two primary listening resources are available: recorded extracts and live listening. Live listening, involving real-time interactions, offers a more dynamic and engaging experience compared to recorded extracts.
Listening Principles
- Encourage frequent and extensive listening: The more students listen, the better their listening skills become. Integrate listening into lessons as much as possible.
- Prepare students for listening: Use visuals, pre-listening discussions, and other activities to set the context and activate prior knowledge.
- Allow for multiple listenings: Students benefit from hearing the audio multiple times to grasp missed information.
- Encourage responses beyond language: Guide students to interpret meaning, identify intentions, and share their impressions of the listening material.
- Tailor tasks to listening stages: Initial listenings may involve general comprehension, while subsequent listenings can focus on specific details, language use, or pronunciation.
- Maximize the use of listening texts: Utilize the same audio for various purposes, such as vocabulary building, grammar practice, or pronunciation exercises.
Listening Levels and Skills
Expose students to diverse listening materials in various genres. Consider using authentic English (language spoken by native speakers) as much as possible. Students need to develop skills such as:
- Recognizing paralinguistic cues (intonation, tone) to understand mood and meaning.
- Listening for specific information.
- Understanding the gist of a message.
Listening Activity Ideas
Jigsaw Listening
Divide students into groups and provide each group with a different recording on the same topic. Students listen to their assigned recordings and then share information to complete a task or answer questions.
Message-Taking
Students listen to a phone message or announcement and write down the key information.
Music and Sound Effects
Use songs or instrumental music for activities like gap-fills, mood identification, or predicting storylines.
News and Radio Broadcasts
Have students listen to news segments and identify topics, sequence events, or summarize the main points.
Poetry
Students can listen to poems and discuss the mood, themes, or imagery evoked.
Stories
Use storytelling for activities like predicting endings, sequencing events, or character analysis.
Monologues
Engage students with interviews, speeches, or presentations. They can identify opinions, summarize arguments, or analyze persuasive techniques.
Audio and Video
Video provides visual support and can enhance listening comprehension. However, ensure the chosen material is appropriate for students’ level and interests. Consider these techniques:
- Playing the video without sound: Students predict the dialogue based on visuals before listening to the audio.
- Playing the audio without the picture: Students visualize the scene based on the audio before watching the video.
- Freeze frame: Pause the video at key moments and ask students to predict what will happen next.
- Dividing the class: One group faces the screen while the other group has their backs turned. The”scree” group describes the visuals to the”wal” group.