Below you will find ideas that you can use with lower level and higher level learners to develop their interactive listening skills and, as a result, their ability to interact in everyday situations.
Lower levels
1. Choose any dialogue, for example, a dialogue involving someone checking into a hotel. You can use your course book for this or any other listening skills book.
2. Tell learners that they are going to hear part of a conversation in a hotel, or whatever other situation you have chosen.
3. Ask them to predict what they think they will hear.
4. Tell learners that they will only hear one side of the conversation. Tell them that you are the receptionist, for example, and that you will be speaking to them. They have to write down what you say.
5. Dictate each line of the receptionist's side of the conversation. Do this more than once if necessary.
6. After dictating all of the receptionist's part, then elicit it from the learners or, alternatively, ask them to write it on the board. Check correct use of language.
7. Learners then formulate their responses to the receptionist's side of the dialogue. Check these with the whole class and write them on the board.
8. Leave the dialogue on the board and act out the conversation with the whole class. You are one side of the dialogue, the learners the other side.
9. Remove the dialogue from the board (fully or partially, depending on the level of your learners) and repeat step 8. Learners can then act out the dialogue in pairs.
10. At a later date, for example at the beginning or end of a subsequent lesson, re-enact the conversation to see how well learners are able to respond.
Higher levels
At higher levels you can do the same as outlined above, but using a variety of text types. Alternatively you can do the following:
1. Tell learners you are going to dictate utterances from a variety of situations. For example, 'I was wondering if I could change my holiday dates'. (Employee to boss).
2. Give them the different situations in a random order. Then dictate each utterance. Learners have to match the utterances with the situations.
3. Check with the whole class. Then dictate the utterances again. This time learners have to write down the whole utterance. Check the utterances with the class.
4. Learners then formulate possible responses to the utterances.
5. Check these with the class.
6. Learners then take it in turns, in pairs/groups, to say and respond to the different utterances.
7. You then address different utterances to individual learners and they have to respond as quickly as they can.
8. A further stage is to ask learners to build up a 30-second interaction using one or more of the different utterances.
As learners realise that they are getting more proficient at responding appropriately in a variety of situations, then their self-confidence will also increase.
I like your idea of using authentic-like context in teaching listening and speaking. The fact that you devised your technique and categorized it according to learners' levels helps to implement it more efficiently. The use of drilling and constant feedback, together with the encouragement of creativity in class, is unique and application-worthy. I agree with you that the majority of listening activities cannot prepare students for real-life situations, and I believe that provided technique is a great first step in tackling this issue. I would recommend you to add more visual materials, especially for lower level students, to enhance their creativity and participation. It could be a video of native speakers discussing the topic or pictures related to the theme. Overall, your idea is remarkable, and I hope it will be noticed by educators and implemented in many English learning classrooms.