Reasons for Listening
Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner.
It´s good for our student’s pronunciation. (In that the more they hear and understand English being spoken, the more they absorb appropriate pitch and intonation, stress and the sounds of both individual words and those which blend together in connected speech)
Successful spoken communication depends not just on our ability to speak, but also on the effectiveness of the way we listen. Listening provides interaction.
Different Kinds of Listening
Listening skills Students need to be able to listen to a variety of things in a number of different ways. In the first place, they need to be able to recognize paralinguistic clues such as intonation in order to understand mood and meaning. They also need to be able to listen for specific information (such as times, platform numbers, etc). Most students are perfectly capable of listening to different things in different ways in their own language.
Listening principles Principle 1: Encourage students to listen as often and as much as possible. The more students listen, the better they get at listening - and the better they get at understanding pronunciation and at using it appropriately themselves. One of our main tasks, therefore, will be to use as much listening in class as possible, and to encourage students to listen to as much English as they can (via the Internet, podcasts, CDs, tapes,etc).
Principle 2: Help students prepare to listen. Students need to be made ready to listen. This means that they will need to look at pictures, discuss the topic, or read the questions first, for example, in order to be in a position to predict what is coming.
Principle 3: Once may not be enough. In the case of live listening, students should be encouraged to ask for repetition and clarification when they need it. The first listening to a text is often used just to give students an idea of what the speakers sound like, and what the general topic so that subsequent listening is easier for them. We may stop the audio track at various points, or only play extracts from it.
Principle 4: Encourage students to respond to the content of a listening, not just to the language. Questions such as: “Do you agree with what they say?” “Did you find the listening interesting? Why?” “What language did she use to invite him?” However, any listening material is also useful for studying language use and a range of pronunciation issues.
Principle 5: Different listening stages demand different listening tasks. Because there are different things we want to do with a listening text, we need to set different tasks for different listening stages. This means that, for a first listening, the task(s) may need to be fairly straightforward and general. It will be the teacher’s job to help students to focus in on what they are listening for.
Principle 6: Good teachers exploit listening texts to the full. The teacher can play a track again for various kinds of study before using the subject matter, situation or audioscript for a new activity. The listening then becomes an important event in a teaching sequence rather than just an exercise by itself.
Listening sequence As with all other skill-based sequences, they will often lead into work on other skills or present opportunities for language study and further activation of some kind. Example I: live interview (beginner onwards) Example 2: buying tickets (pre-intermediate)
Differences between hearing and listening
https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/aptis/research/projects/assessment-literacy/listening
Hearing is simple a sense. Hear sounds through the ear.
Listening is making sense of what we hear. Understanding of an overall message. Receptive skill.
Listening suggestions.
Jigsaw listening: students in groups listen all of them the same theme, but different parts, at the end all the students share their parts so they understand the complete story or theme. Message-taking: students listen to a phone message being given. They have to write down the message on a message pad. (1:49)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkIe41StoGI
Music and sound effects: Students can fill in blanks in song lyrics, rearrange lines or verses, or listen the song and say the message of it. News and other radio genres: students can listen to the last news from hat morning and analyze and/or discuss them with the class. https://www.youtube.com/user/ABCNews
Poetry: students can listen to a poem and choose an appropriate title, or listen to it and reorganize the verses. They are useful also to practice pronunciation.
Stories: some activities when students listen stories can be to order pictures according to the order in which the story is told, or stop the story in some places and ask the students to make predictions.
How to take advantage of audios and video. Play the video without the sound: in this way, teachers and students can discuss about the video, after the discussion, students can enjoy the video
Play the audio without the picture: while the students listen, they can draw what they imagine is happening in the video, then, students can enjoy the video.
Freeze frame: Students watch the video and in a specific moment the teacher freeze the scene and ask the student what is going to happen next.
Dividing the class in half: Half of the class face the screen. The other half sit with their backs to it. The screen half describe the visual images to the wall half.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBPymoyCjjc
How to evaluate listening?
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/assess-listening-speaking-skills-ousd
A.
Correct textbook/workbook comprehension questions.
B. Discussed comprehension problems after a listening activity and the strategies used to solve comprehension breakdowns C.Discussed the content of the text (what students understood) with the class D. Recorded the mark in the grade book E. Practiced how to listen to an oral text