Listening Activities

Simon Mumford, Turkey

Biodata: Simon Mumford teaches at the University of Economics, Izmir, Turkey, where he also works in the Academic Writing Centre. He enjoys designing language learning activities. Email: simon.mumford@ieu.edu.tr

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Introduction
Listening for the gist drills
Switching between channels
Reading students' texts aloud
Listening for sibilants
Picture dictation drill
Listening for punctuation
Listening for repeated words
Simultaneous jigsaw listening
Dictogloss as a pre-reading activity
What did I just say?
Conclusion

Introduction

Listening is often associated with tape recorders, videos, DVDs, with the back-up of gist questions, comprehension questions and scripts. However, listening takes place all the time in the classroom whether students listen to recorded speech, the teacher or each other, and there are many ways of exploiting this. Student themselves are perhaps one of the best sources of listening material, of course, but may be reluctant to listen to each other unless given a specific task which is challenging and purposeful.

These activities do not rely on technology, but exploit teacher-student and especially student-student listening and employ a range of features to produce activities that are enjoyable and effective.

Listening for the gist drills

Unless students are given a particular task, drilling may only involve listening to the sounds, not the meaning of language. In this drill, students have to identify and repeat the most important part of the message, guaranteeing careful listening. Tell the students that only the essential information should be repeated, and they may need to listen several times before they are ready to do this. Examples:

T. I've decided that most probably I'm going to cancel the French trip, unfortunately.
Ss. I'm going to cancel the French trip.

T. Under the circumstances, I feel it would be better not to tell John.
Ss. It would be better not to tell John.

T. We are going to play tennis at 3 o'clock, as arranged, in spite of the rain.
Ss. We are going to play tennis at 3 o'clock.

T. Rather than lose time, we should start work now, without waiting for the others.
Ss. We should start work now.

Switching between channels

Put the students in groups of three, one listener and two speakers. The listener listens to two different stories on the same subject, eg My first day at school, given by the speakers. The listener switches between the two simply by pointing, as if switching between channels on TV with the remote control, whenever he/she feels like changing, so at any one time one speaker is speaking, the other is silent. Therefore, it is the job of the speakers to keep the listener's interest for as long as possible by making their story interesting. When channels change, the new speaker picks up his/her story from the last interruption.

Reading students' texts aloud

Here is a way to encourage students to listen to each other's written texts being read aloud. After the class have finished writing, divide the class into teams A and B. Take one person's text from team A, making sure they are happy to have their text read out to the class. The person whose text is chosen comes to the board and writes the score. Read the text, stopping in different places, say 10 times, and ask the members of team B to predict the next word. Since the scorer is also the author, he/she can awards points as follows: two for the correct answer and one for a good guess. When the text is finished, choose a text from team B and let team A predict the words.

Listening for sibilants

Write the following sentences on the board and practise them.

1. There are several spoons in the sideboard.
2. My sister sometimes smokes sixty cigarettes.
3. If it rains, I'll stay at home instead.
4. Several sleeply slugs crawled up the wall.
5. My mother and father live in the States.

Now whisper the sentences in random order so that only the sibilants, i.e. 's' sounds, which are louder and have a higher pitch than other sounds, can be heard clearly. Putting a hand over your mouth can prevent lip reading and so focus attention on the sounds. Students should be able to work out which sentence you are saying by the number and distribution of the 's' sounds. Let them practise in pairs.

Picture dictation drill

In this variation of a picture dictation, students repeat the instructions as they are drawing. Encourage them to lengthen the words, so that the repetition takes as long as the completion of each stage of the drawing. This reflects the way people often repeat instructions as they are carrying them out. They can finish each stage with a discourse marker: uh-huh, right, OK, there, fine, yes to show completion. Example:

T. Draw a man with a hat.
Ss. (Drawing) Draw a mannnnnn wiiiiiiiith a haaaaaaat. OK.
T. Draw a woman standing next to him.
Ss. (Drawing) Draw a woooooooman standinggggggggg next to himmmmmmm. There.
T. Put a child between the man and the woman.
Ss. (Drawing) Put a chilllllllllldddd between the maaaaaaan and the woooooman. Right.

Put students in pairs for their own picture dictation drills.

Listening for punctuation

In this activity, students listen to a passage and punctuate it according to the way it is read, demonstrating how non-verbal signals in spoken language can be reflected in punctuation.

Write the following on the board:

cough, er, um = comma
laugh, sigh = exclamation mark
decrease/increase volume = open/close brackets
rise in intonation = question mark
repetition = beginning of sentence (since hesitation and repetition are more likely to occur at the beginning of sentences/utterences)

Read the text as follows:

Teacher's version
While...while I was at school (um) I played tennis I...I wasn't very good a tennis (laugh) one...one day I lost a match 6-0 6-0 6-0 (er) (decrease volume) no-one was watching fortunately (increase volume) my...my favourite sport was (intonation rises) football I... I think anyway... anyway (cough) sport was not my strong point (er) but I loved drawing I spent...I spent many happy hours sitting in the art room with my pad and pencil (um) just drawing what... what fun I had there (sigh)

Student's version

Solution
While I was at school, I played tennis. I wasn't very good at tennis! One day I lost a match 6-0 6-0 6-0, (no-one was watching fortunately). My favourite sport was football? I think. Anyway, sport was not my strong point, but I loved drawing. I spent many happy hours sitting in the art room with my pad and pencil, just drawing. What fun I had there!

Follow up: students use their final version to recreate the teacher's reading.

Listening for repeated words

Put students in groups and give one in each a copy of a text to read aloud. The others listen, and try to identify words that have already occured. Students who find one score a point, take the text and continue the reading until the next word is identified. They proceed in this way until the text is finished, ignoring very common words such as the, a, he, she, it, in, on, at, to. At the end of the reading, the student with the most points is the winner. For each group appoint one student as a judge/score keeper, who also has a copy of the text.

Simultaneous jigsaw listening

This exercise involves students reading one text while listening to another and trying to ignore a third at the same time. As this is a demanding task the texts should not be too difficult. It develops the skill of concentrating on more than one task at the same time. Put students in groups of three, facing each other, and give each an equally long part of a story or text. They read their parts aloud simultaneously, while trying to listen to just one of the other texts, for example, student A listens to B, B listens to C and C listens to A. When they have finished, without looking at the texts, they should decide on the order and give a summary of the part that they have just listened to.

Dictogloss as a pre-reading activity

Before students see the reading text, give a copy to one student and ask him/her to read several sentences at random, at normal speed, and ask other students to note as much as possible of what they hear. Put students in groups to pool notes and reconstruct the sentences. Then, give them all a copy of the text and ask them to find the original sentences and compare their versions. This acts as a prediction and scanning exercise.

What did I just say?

Put students in groups and give one in each a text to be read aloud, while the others listen. From time to time, the reader asks people to repeat what has just been said, What did I just say, (Mary)? The named students should try to repeat the last sentence to show he/she was listening, and if unable to do so takes over the reading and asking.

Conclusion

In my experience, students tend to resist listening to each other, perhaps because they feel that this is not as valuable as listening to a recording or the teacher. However, by designing activities with specific points to listen for this reluctance may be overcome, and by giving students a clear purpose, we can ensure attentive listening, whatever the source.

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Secondary Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Pronunciation course at Pilgrims website.