Dear Auntie Lucy,
I always think that the listening activities I do in class are disconnected from the rest of the lesson.
Have you any ideas about how I can integrate them?
Thank you
Trang
How can I do listening activities with students?
Moderator: Joe
How can I do listening activities in class?
Dear Trang,
If you want to integrate listening into your lessons, you need to make more of an "event" of the activities. Instead of including listening as just another task, you can "milk the topic". This means linking it into the lesson so it doesn't just stand alone.
First of all, think about how you prepare students for what they are about to listen. You can do a prediction activity by presenting the focus of the cassette and asking students what they think might happen. This is a good point to present any unfamiliar vocabulary.
Students should listen to the cassette two or three times. Once is not enough and more than three times is overdoing it. The first time they listen, the focus should be general to help students get the gist of what is going on. This could be: what is the relationship between the speakers? do they know each other well? where are they? what's the general tone? are they arguing or agreeing? You could also give them three or four pictures, they decide which one best matches the conversation they hear.
The second time the students listen, you can give them questions so they are listening for specific information. Allow them time to read through the questions. They might have some of the answers from the first listening, so give them time to write that down too. You might feel a third listening is necessary to finish off the answers to the questions or to do a language focus. Alternatively, you might feel it's time to move onto something else.
You can finish off the task with some related work. If the topic was ordering food in a restaurant, students can role play a waiter and customer scene. If they listened to people discussing environmental issues, students can voice their opinions too. Make sure the final task is related to what the students have just heard.
If you follow the above steps, listening will become a lesson in itself.
If you want to integrate listening into your lessons, you need to make more of an "event" of the activities. Instead of including listening as just another task, you can "milk the topic". This means linking it into the lesson so it doesn't just stand alone.
First of all, think about how you prepare students for what they are about to listen. You can do a prediction activity by presenting the focus of the cassette and asking students what they think might happen. This is a good point to present any unfamiliar vocabulary.
Students should listen to the cassette two or three times. Once is not enough and more than three times is overdoing it. The first time they listen, the focus should be general to help students get the gist of what is going on. This could be: what is the relationship between the speakers? do they know each other well? where are they? what's the general tone? are they arguing or agreeing? You could also give them three or four pictures, they decide which one best matches the conversation they hear.
The second time the students listen, you can give them questions so they are listening for specific information. Allow them time to read through the questions. They might have some of the answers from the first listening, so give them time to write that down too. You might feel a third listening is necessary to finish off the answers to the questions or to do a language focus. Alternatively, you might feel it's time to move onto something else.
You can finish off the task with some related work. If the topic was ordering food in a restaurant, students can role play a waiter and customer scene. If they listened to people discussing environmental issues, students can voice their opinions too. Make sure the final task is related to what the students have just heard.
If you follow the above steps, listening will become a lesson in itself.
Lucy is the author of Lucy Pollard's Guide to Teaching English