Listening Processes
Listen and take notes.
Then compare your notes with my notes.
How are you doing with your listening skills?
Listening
Improvement of student listening skills:
Combination of extensive and intensive listening
material and procedures.
Opportunity to hear voices other than the
teacher’s enables students to acquire good
speaking habits as a result of the spoken
English they absorb, and helps to improve their
pronunciation
Listening
Extensive listening can have a dramatic effect
to a student’s language learning
Extensive listening:
Outside the classroom
At home
Car
On personal stereos as they travel from one place to
another
Motivation
increases when students make their own
choices about what they are going to listen to
Listening
Extensive listening sources
Simplified
readers with audio
Own copies of course audio DVDs / iPod / tapes
Audio DVDs / iPod / tapes of authentic material
On personal stereos as they travel from one place to
another
Motivation
increases when students make their own
choices about what they are going to listen to
Listening
Extensive listening sources
For Extensive listening to work effectively
Collection of appropriate material clearly marked for level,
topic and genre.
Kept like simplified readers in a permanent location
Keep a record of which students have borrowed which
tapes; Involve students in the tasks of record-keeping
Listening
Encourage extensive listening:
have students perform a number of tasks
Record
their responses to what they have heard in a
personal journal
Fill in prepared report forms: list the topic, assess the
level of difficulty, and summarise the contents of the tape
Comments box
Listening poster
Website comments
Share their information with colleagues
Listening
Intensive listening: using taped material /
material on audio CD/DVD
Advantages:
Allow students to hear a variety of different voices apart
from just their own teacher’s
Range of different characters, especially when real
people are talking.
Variety of situations
Audio material: portable and readily available, cheap,
relatively inexpensive
Listening
Intensive listening: using taped material /
material on audio CD/DVD
Disadvantages:
In big classrooms, poor acoustics
Everyone has to listen at the same speed, a speed
dictated by the tape, not by the listeners
Not natural
Listening
Intensive listening: using taped material /
material on audio CD/DVD
Potential problems:
Check audio source and machine quality before using
them in class
Position of the playback machine – sound quality
 have a number of machines for students to listen at their
own speed or language lab
Listening
How often to play the audio segment for
students to listen?
In
real life, it is not ‘replayed’
In face-to-face conversation – chance to ask for
clarification and repetition
Maximum benefit
Replay two or more times
Listening
Listening tasks
First Listening
Prediction task
Gist tasks
Return for
Detailed comprehension
Text interpretation
Language analysis
Listening
‘Live’ Listening
Teacher
reading aloud
Story telling
Interviews
Conversations
Visitors / guest speakers
Listening
Intensive Listening – the role of the teacher
– tell students exactly what their listening
purpose is, give them clear instructions
Machine operator: try material before taking it into class;
playback; stop and start the machine according to
students’ needs
Feedback organiser: compare their answers in pairs and
then ask for answers from the class in general or from
pairs in particular; be supportive
Prompter: have students listen again to notice a variety
of language and spoken features; offer script dictations
Organiser
Listening
Listening lesson sequences
Listening can occur at a number of points in a
teaching sequence
Jumping of point for activities which follow
 First stage of a ‘listening and acting out’ sequence
where students role-play the situation they have heard
on the tape
 Live listening may be a prelude to a piece of writing
which is the main focus of a lesson
 Listening training is the central focus of a lesson
Be flexible

Listening
Listening lesson sequences
Most listening sequences involve a mixture of language
skills, though one, in particular, is often the main focus
of the sequence
 For gist on first hearing before moving on to different
task skills;
 Listen for specific information straight away
Listening
Examples
The sound of music – powerful, speaks to our
emotions
Play a film music and get students to say what kind of
film they think it comes from
 Write stories based on the mood of the music they hear
Activity: Ironic

Listening
Examples
The sound of music – powerful, speaks to our
emotions
Song lyrics:
 Have students bring their own favourite songs to class
 Use older songs
 Use songs you like
 Songs appropriate in terms of topic and subject matter
Listening
Activity Examples
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Interviewing a stranger: page 233
Sorry I’m late: page 233
Telephone messages: page 235
UFO: page 237
We had a nice time, but… : page 238
At the post office: page 241
Ironic: page 242
Listening using the Internet
English Listening Skills and Activities-Effective Listening Practice
http://esl.about.com/od/englishlistening/
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab http://www.esl-lab.com/
Listening Skill Practice http://esl.about.com/cs/listening/
English Listening Room http://www.manythings.org/el/
English Language Listening Lab Online http://www.elllo.org/
http://www.elllo.org/music/coffee/coffee.htm
ESL: Listening http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Listening/
ESL Independent Study Lab - Listening 1
http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/listening.html
Listening Quizzes
http://esl.about.com/library/quiz/bllisteningquiz.htm
English Pronunciation / Listening
http://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation/