This document discusses strategies for teaching and assessing listening skills. It emphasizes that listening is an integrated skill that requires attention to strategies and practice. Some key points discussed include: - Listening in real life involves comprehending for a purpose with visual and environmental clues. The classroom should strive to incorporate real-life elements. - A variety of exercises can be used to develop listening at the word, sentence and comprehension levels, including recordings, tasks, and responses. - Assessment of listening is preferable to testing and should be ongoing through activities that evaluate students' understanding. The goal is successful accomplishment rather than high-stakes evaluation.

1. Listening andListening and
assessmentassessment
More than just, “Do you understand?”

2. General ConsiderationsGeneral Considerations
Listening is not an isolated skill, but part
of an integrated set needed for
comprehension and overall learning.
However, listening can be developed by
attention to strategies and practise.
Motivation has a high corollary effect in
listening.

3. Listening in Real LifeListening in Real Life
We listen for a
purpose and with
expectations.
Most listening in
real life requires a
response.
Visual clues usually
accompany verbal
messages.
Environmental clues
assist
comprehension, in
classroom this is
usually visual aids
Most discourse
occurs in chunks
Informality –
colloquialisms,
spontaneity, etc

4. Point is…..Point is…..
We must strive to incorporate the real life
into the classroom.
Recorded texts with multiple choice
response isn’t real life
10x and 10,000 hours
Our job is to provide venue and exposure

5. General thoughts…..General thoughts…..
Sounds – phonetic awareness is necessary
for reading, spelling, speaking and listening.
e.g. /θ/, /ð/
Intonation – in English has a few set
patterns, but varies wildly. Focus on
exposure, rather than teaching specifically
Noise – it is not necessary to understand
every iota of speech to be a successful
listener.
Predicting – activate schemata and listening
comprehension will go up
Visual clues – do not stress perfection

6. ExercisesExercises
Recordings (pro) –
◦ Native speaker
◦ Repeatable
◦ Students can focus on the sounds
Recordings (con) –
◦ Lacks real life visual clues
◦ Lacks real life spontaneity – pauses,
corrections, responses, deliberations
◦ Often technical quality is bad
Recommend that recordings be part of a
listening exercise unit

7. ExercisesExercises
Part of a lesson, frequent, over time
Set up around tasks – note taking (lecture
type long speech), responses
(agreement/disagreement), information
gap (with ability to negotiate for info)
Activate schemata

8. Listening for perceptionListening for perception
Word level –
◦ Games involving phonemes (flyswatter game,
categorise ā/ă)
◦ Which language is this?
◦ Repetition
◦ Tongue twisters (Fox in Socks)
◦ Rhyming play – goes well with reading
◦ How many times did I say X?
◦ Minimal pairs exercises

9. Sentence level –
◦ Repetition
◦ How many words did I way?
◦ Mark the stress
◦ Mark the intonation
◦ Dictation – spelling is not graded!!!
◦ Dictogloss -

10. Listening for comprehensionListening for comprehension
Listening – no response
◦ Follow along in the text – use a finger, best
paired with reading exercises
◦ Listen to a description of picture/person, while
students view the picture
◦ Storyboards
◦ Read to them
◦ Show a movie/tv show

11. Listening – short response
◦ TPR
◦ Yes/no questions
◦ Brick stacking – colored bricks made into a pattern
that needs to be reproduced by each student
◦ Classify – students hear a list and mark one or the
other category
◦ Gap-fill – map exercise,
 Gordon Lightfoot – this is also a way to link culture into
the classroom i.e. Popular music and poetry
◦ Sports Scores
◦ Family trees

12. Listening – longer response
◦ Long gap fills (whole lines)
◦ Paraphrasing/summarising
◦ Predictions
 Phrase: “If I had a nickel…..”
 Intonation: “She didn’t wear a RED dress….”
◦ Comprehension questions

13. Listening for StudyListening for Study
Problem-solving
Jigsaw listening
◦ Maybe conflicting versions
Interpretive listening –
◦ Half of a phone conversation
Stylistic listening and analysis
◦ Interview
◦ Comedy
◦ Poetry
◦ Advertising
Integrated listenging – listen to one point of
view, read a text of the other, and compare
and contrast the points of view

14. AssessmentAssessment
Can you test listening?
Assessment is the better term; we should
assess how well our students understand
spoken English, rather than test.
In this case, any activity that we have
mentioned could be used as an assessment
tool – the student succeeds when he or she
successfully accomplishes the goal.
Assessment should be on-going,
it would be very easy to make one task high
stakes without the children even knowing
about it.

15. Questions or CommentsQuestions or Comments