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In the most recent edition of the Languages Today magazine I describe a few listening strategies designed to make this least popular of language learning activities less test-like, more learner-friendly and hopefully more fun. I’m sure most if not all ideas are familiar ones but it always seems helpful to me to have a focus on one particular aspect of language learning and ‘gather ’ some useful strategies into one place to reflect on what we do with particular classes that might be struggling. Anyway, that was the impetus for a renewed focus on listening.
To a certain extent, the listening ideas in the Languages Today article don’t need example resources as they’re just strategies that can be applied to any listening activity from the text book and of course I can’t share commercial audio material on the blog anyway! But where there can be examples (home-made when there’s audio I’m afraid!), I’m uploading a few here.
1 Pair-up pupils
Download Ecoutez bien 1 Family listening syllables
This listening activity includes words from the topic of family and some from previous topic areas – the objective though is listening for detail and improving sound/spelling knowledge. Students have to put the words into the correct boxes depending on no. of syllables and obviously try to spell them out. Play each of the sound files from left to right row 1 and then row 2. Answers are animated to appear in the table also left to right - students should have filled them in in this order too if you play the sound files in the order indicated. Following on from this activity, practise sentence building – either they can do this independently or in pairs/groups or you could dictate sentences in English for them to write on whiteboards etc.. – I have put a further 10 words in for extension sentences at the bottom of the slide. Words as they are in sound bites from left to right.
|
hermana |
tengo |
un |
fenomenal |
hermano |
mi |
cumpleaños |
irlandesa |
una |
cuatro |
|
Alemania |
tu |
hay |
prima |
abuelo |
en |
cuantas |
Inglaterra |
personas |
familia |
Now the ‘pairing up’ bit. If this were a class with weaker listening skills, I might be tempted to differentiate by putting in a few of the answers already to give them an anchor. An alternative might be though to have them listening in pairs, one for the ‘green’ answers and one for the ‘blue’. Then they’ll share the answers with each other before the whole class feedback, where they can say: “Pensamos que el número uno es…” “En nuestra opinión, el número dos es…”. The benefit I think is that it feels more like a collaboration than a test and I’ve found that the default interpretation of any listening activity is that it is a test so it works well to set things up differently!
2 Give the answers first
Download Ecoutez bien 2 Give the answers
This works really well! And one obvious advantage is that it reinforces the link between speaking and listening and avoids compartmentalizing the skills too much. So, in this example, students look at the answers and have to anticipate the dialogues that they will hear – they work in pairs to practise the conversations they think will be on the sound track. And then they listen to see if they’re right. Again, the notion that the listening is a test disappears when you give the answers in advance – make sure you mention that you’re doing exactly that, explicit is always good! This example is a really simple one – if you click on the number 1 on the slide you’ll hear me giving one example. Another advantage of this is also that they realize there can be variations on the theme that are still correct – this is helpful as they can get too rigid in their expectations otherwise and easily confused when the wording is slightly different. Hearing different suggestions from the students that are all correct will help in this respect.
3 Use cards for comprehension
Download Ecoutez bien 3 cards ordering (11-20)
Download Ecoutez bien 3 number cards 11-20
The simplest of examples here. Practising speeding up comprehension of the numbers 11-20 by placing them in the order on the table according to how they are called. To make this slick, (I used to do this on an OHP – the one activity an OHP is better than PowerPoint or IWB for!), the students will need a visual answer slide so make up however many ‘rounds’ you want to do (they will want to do this activity more than 3 times!) on PowerPoint or flip chart so that you can reveal the answers and move quickly on to the next round. Here is the template for the cards (usually make a set per pair on assorted colours so that it’s easier to get complete sets back in!) and 3 rounds of answers on PowerPoint. One tip – you obviously need to either ‘mute’ the screen and refer to your computer when calling out OR print the answer slides out ahead of the lesson. Students also like to be the teacher for this activity. This can be used at sentence and text level really effectively for tense recognition too and ordering pictures in a story/narrative of course.
4 & 5 – nothing usefully uploadable here!
6 Make it musical
Download Ecoutez bien 6 Spanish Songs module_noaudio
There are some great songs out there for this and YouTube IS our best friend. This idea won’t be new to anybody but It’s always nice to share our favourites so here are a few lovely songs (audio not included but available on itunes – another best friend)
8 Use speaking to practise listening
Remembering that if students are responding to messages they don’t know are coming (i.e. spontaneous speaking activities) they will need to be listening very carefully so our favourite speaking activities are also always listening activities. One idea adapted from one that colleagues in my department came up with through our focus on unplanned speaking is to get students (Year 9?) to come up with questions to which the answer can be ‘vielleicht’ (perhaps). Their sense of humour will make this a very creative, fun activity and students want to listen to understand the questions so that they know what they’re answering ‘perhaps’ to, and to share in the joke.
Hope there’s something useful in here to enthuse students about listening. Enjoy the rest of the new edition of Languages Today – it’s a really excellent magazine for languages teachers produced by The Association for Language Learning (ALL), and if you’re not already a member, visit the website and become a member today!
Rachel
