In this article I intend to outline a framework that can be used to design a listening lesson that will develop your students' listening skills and look at some of the issues involved.
- The basic framework
- Pre-listening
- While listening
- Post-listening
- Applying the framework to a song
- Some conclusions
The basic framework
The basic framework on which you can construct a listening lesson can be divided into three main stages.
- Pre-listening, during which we help our students prepare to listen.
- While listening, during which we help to focus their attention on the listening text and guide the development of their understanding of it.
- Post-listening, during which we help our students integrate what they have learnt from the text into their existing knowledge.
Pre-listening
There are certain goals that should be achieved before students attempt to listen to any text. These are motivation, contextualisation, and preparation.
- Motivation
It is enormously important that before listening students are motivated to listen, so you should try to select a text that they will find interesting and then design tasks that will arouse your students' interest and curiosity.
- Contextualisation
When we listen in our everyday lives we hear language within its natural environment, and that environment gives us a huge amount of information about the linguistic content we are likely to hear. Listening to a tape recording in a classroom is a very unnatural process. The text has been taken from its original environment and we need to design tasks that will help students to contextualise the listening and access their existing knowledge and expectations to help them understand the text.
- Preparation
To do the task we set students while they listen there could be specific vocabulary or expressions that students will need. It's vital that we cover this before they start to listen as we want the challenge within the lesson to be an act of listening not of understanding what they have to do.
While listening
When we listen to something in our everyday lives we do so for a reason. Students too need a reason to listen that will focus their attention. For our students to really develop their listening skills they will need to listen a number of times - three or four usually works quite well - as I've found that the first time many students listen to a text they are nervous and have to tune in to accents and the speed at which the people are speaking.
Ideally the listening tasks we design for them should guide them through the text and should be graded so that the first listening task they do is quite easy and helps them to get a general understanding of the text. Sometimes a single question at this stage will be enough, not putting the students under too much pressure.
The second task for the second time students listen should demand a greater and more detailed understanding of the text. Make sure though that the task doesn't demand too much of a response. Writing long responses as they listen can be very demanding and is a separate skill in itself, so keep the tasks to single words, ticking or some sort of graphical response.
The third listening task could just be a matter of checking their own answers from the second task or could lead students towards some more subtle interpretations of the text.
Listening to a foreign language is a very intensive and demanding activity and for this reason I think it's very important that students should have 'breathing' or 'thinking' space between listenings. I usually get my students to compare their answers between listenings as this gives them the chance not only to have a break from the listening, but also to check their understanding with a peer and so reconsider before listening again.
Post-listening
There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take. These are reactions to the content of the text, and analysis of the linguistic features used to express the content.
- Reaction to the text
Of these two I find that tasks that focus students reaction to the content are most important. Again this is something that we naturally do in our everyday lives. Because we listen for a reason, there is generally a following reaction. This could be discussion as a response to what we've heard - do they agree or disagree or even believe what they have heard? - or it could be some kind of reuse of the information they have heard.
- Analysis of language
The second of these two post-listening task types involves focusing students on linguistic features of the text. This is important in terms of developing their knowledge of language, but less so in terms of developing students' listening skills. It could take the form of an analysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or vocabulary or collocation work. This is a good time to do form focused work as the students have already developed an understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meanings much easier.
Applying the framework to a song
Here is an example of how you could use this framework to exploit a song:
- Pre-listening
- Students brainstorm kinds of songs
- Students describe one of their favourite songs and what they like about it
- Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a love song
- While listening
- Students listen and decide if the song is happy or sad
- Students listen again and order the lines or verses of the song
- Students listen again to check their answers or read a summary of the song with errors in and correct them.
- Post-listening
- Focus on content
- Discuss what they liked / didn't like about the song
- Decide whether they would buy it / who they would buy it for
- Write a review of the song for a newspaper or website
- Write another verse for the song
- Focus on form
- Students look at the lyrics from the song and identify the verb forms
- Students find new words in the song and find out what they mean
- Students make notes of common collocations within the song
- Focus on content
Conclusion
Within this article I have tried to describe a framework for listening development that could be applied to any listening text. This isn't the only way to develop our students listening or to structure a listening lesson, but it is a way that I have found to be effective and motivating for my students.
Comments
A framework for planning a listening skills lesson
A very useful structure of the framework you have given to planning a listening sills lesson. Thank you very much.
Thank for the sharing
I enjoyed my listening class after I used your suggestions.
Listening activities
Hi Djaffar,
This is to give you a framework for the listening which you can apply to different types of listenings. You can find lyrics to songs online easily - so the idea would be to try some of the ideas suggested - for example, cutting up the different lines of the song and asking students to re-order them, or blanking out some words for the them to listen to. Most coursebooks have tapescripts at the back, and you can use these in the ways suggested.
Hope you can use some of these ideas with your students,
Best wishes,
Cath
TE Team
It is so effective
Different strategies in listening activities
Thanks alot
Loved how it explained the process in such a compact article
Thank you for your useful information
It is great
It is great
listening
It is great
It is great
It is great
Thanks for your suggestions
different strategies in listening activities
being an active listener
So efficient
More pre listening activities
PRACTICAL TECHNIQUES
This article was a great one
WONDERFUL IDEAS
brief but practical
fabulous tips
I really like this article
Listening skills are core
it's really effective to the
I am very happy
I am very happy to have such a plan. I will apply this in my teaching. Thank you team.
Thank you very much your suggestion
I found it very useful to the children while teaching Listening skills. Each and every student paid attention and tried to understand.
more pre-listening activities
Thank you for sharing these wonderful ideas. The issue I am facing difficulty with is often times the topic of the listening is already determined by the text book. I can't change it to something else that is more interesting. How can I motiviate students and generate discussion? Additionally, during a short period of the time listening and reading are combined. I know some students are struggling with listening and I would like to help them. If you could elaborate more on the pre-listening activities, then that would be great.
Quite interesting..
emmmmm quite interesting..
thank you so much for this article.
yes! it is the wide used steps to teach listening... and it is really efficient.
I want to add sth ; but I don't know if it is allowed to me:)
sth that really annoys me while listening sessions: is that the multimedia (of course in our context which is EFl context)is being a problem for teaching or learning listening interactivelly.
when the session of listening is performed by a native speaker... I think it is quite easier fo the learners to interact; negotite with the speaker... but when litening through media.. it is quite difficult..
New ideas for practising listening comprehension in English
In order to have good skills in listening comprehension and in speaking in English, a learner should practise listening to audio and video aids in English (dialogues, thematic texts and narrative stories). It is preferable to have English transcripts of audio and video material. I suggest that learners practise listening comprehension with subsequent speaking on a variety of topics and with materials for all levels on a regular long-term basis in the following sequence:
1. Listen to each sentence several times. At the same time see each sentence in the transcript.
2. Make sure you understand everything clearly in each sentence in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.
3. Without looking into the transcript, try to repeat each sentence (say it aloud) exactly as you have heard it. Being able to repeat a sentence means that a learner has remembered its content.
4. Listen to that particular conversation or text (story) in short paragraphs or chunks, say each paragraph aloud, and compare to the transcript.
5. Listen to the whole conversation or story without interruption several times, and try to tell the content of the whole conversation or text (story) you've heard. You can write key words and phrases, or main ideas as a plan, or questions on that particular dialogue or text to make easier for you to convey the content in English. It is important to compare what you've said to the transcript.
When practising listening comprehension in English, it is expedient to record one's speech on audio to compare it with the original audio/video recording containing listening material.
I believe that for practising listening comprehension and speaking in English it is a good idea to include various practical topics for potential needs of learners with comprehensive vocabulary on each topic. As you know the content of materials matters a great deal.
Thematic dialogues, questions and answers on conversation topics, thematic texts (informative texts and narrative stories), grammatical usage sentences and sentences with difficult vocabulary on various topics, especially with fixed phrases and idioms can be used in practising listening comprehension in English.
It's effective to practise English listening comprehension and speaking using transcripts, books, audio and video aids even on one's own as I described above to provide additional solid practice and to accelerate mastering of English.
A framework for planning a listening skills lesson
This article is very useful.
It's a well planned listening skill lesson. Congratulation!
In fact, I believe in the fact that if you fail to plan you plan to fail. However, planning any lesson in such a way is, with no doubt, going not only to motivate students, but to engage them as well. all what students need is something new. When you teach then through songs, games, storytelling, etc they really like it because it's something that attracts them.
Regads
Mustapha Boughoulid from Morocco
Thank you very much
Thank you very much for this article. I took part in the trainings where "listening"workshop was involved, but I never fully understand it. I am kinesthetic learner and also I like to learn everything organised, otherwise I can't understand or learn. I appreciate a lot that at the end of your article you summarised your ideas and put it in a framework that I think teahers can carry this information with themselves until they acquire it deeply. Could you also put here one of your listening lesson plan according to this framework as a example where you show the steps of the framework? I don't mean to post lesson plan to the Lesson plan section of this site, just here as a continuation of your article. Hope to hear back from you soon.
Applying
I actually used your example of "applying the framework to a song" in one of my classes where quite a few of the teens have a tendency to do other things instead of paying attention. Following the steps you listed, I was able to use the framework based around some pop music. I used the pre/during/post listening techniques and was astonished that the kids who tended to "do other things" actually paid attention and even joined in. Kudos on this excellent article!
-Samantha
thanks