Images of successful listening

Images of successful
listening
By Inga Jelkinienė
Kaunas, 2010

2010.11.12I. Jelkinienė2
Content
• Listening in general
• Problems for students
• The importance of pre- listening
• While listening activities
• Follow-up tasks
• Other sources of listening
• Sample activities
• The results of a survey in our faculty

Listening is like jogging

Remind to take small steps at
the beginning and increase
difficulty

Summary of J. Scrivener’s ideas on
teaching and learning listening
• effort put into listening and searching
for an answer is crucial
• process vs. product
• listening to a piece more than once
• the importance of task based approach
• success-oriented tasks

Listening
Toughtoteach
andlearn
Practice often
Frustrating for
students
N
o
rules
A receptive skill
Practice
for short periods

Problems for students
• Unfamiliar context.
• Unknown vocabulary.
• Lack of time to process information, lack of
concentration and anxiety about longer texts.
• Too fast. Can’t distinguish separate words.
• Can’t follow the rhythm. Not able to recognise
sense groups, inferred message, mood or
intonation.
• Difficult accents.
• Background noises.

The importance of pre-listening
• prepare students for listening
• facilitate the listening process
• accelerate the acquiring of the skill
• help to to concentrate on listening if you
have little interest in a topic or situation

Types of pre-listening tasks
• Setting the context
• Generating interest
• Acquiring knowledge
• Activating vocabulary / language
• Predicting content
• Checking / understanding the listening
tasks

Pre- listening tasks in detail
• Context
• Activating vocabulary
• Activating the
knowledge
• Interest
• Who the speakers are?
Where is the place?
• Introduce unknown
words, some activities
• Help the unknown with
spider graphs or
brainstorm
• Visuals
• A story from teacher’s
experience

Visuals in detail
• People remember more if their
experience is multi-sensory
• More learning styles can benefit

The usage of visuals aimed at more
learning styles
for instance Fleming’s VAK
(VARK) model
50-85% for
visual learners

It is also claimed that audio visuals
account for 2o-30 %

Visuals in detail
• Pictures
• Posters
• Objects
• Flashcards
• Drawings on the board

Visuals in detail
•Maps

Visuals in detail
• Line graphs
• Bar charts
• Pie charts
• Numbers

and power point presentations

Activating current knowledge
• what do you know about…?
• have the students brainstorm
vocabulary related to the article's topic
with spider graphs
• true or false statements about any topic.

Activating vocabulary
It is important to activate vocabulary by:
• Matching words to definitions
• Synonym matching
• Fill-in-the-blank
• Vocabulary speculation
• Vocabulary selection/sort

While listening activities
…done during or immediately after the time they
are listening
• allow them to read through it before listening;
• keep writing to a minimum during listening;
• from global to details;
• use questions to focus students' attention;
• use predicting to encourage students;
• give immediate feedback whenever possible.

Follow-up tasks
1. Give meaning to the whole listening
2. Students use new knowledge or
vocabulary in a less controlled way.
Examples:
• Role Play
• Discussion: “Have you ever experienced such a situation?”
• Debate: "Do you agree/disagree?"

Feedback and Correction
The warm up and the feedback and correction
stages are the bookends of an effective
lesson!
The following can be covered:
• Correction
• Review
• Feedback and Motivation

Are there any other
sources for
listening?

Other ways to encourage listening
Podcasts
Podcasts help with the most up-to- date
listening:
• released episodically
• can be downloaded easily for free
• can be transferred into a portable
device

Interesting and useful material
online 6 Minute English
Learn and practise useful English language for everyday situations
with the BBC. Your weekly instruction manual for saying or doing
something in English is published every Friday. Each programme is
six minutes long and contains examples and explanations to help
you improve your knowledge of the English language across a wide
range of topics.
Updated: weekly
Subscribe to this podcast
and automatically
receive the latest episodes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/6min

The example of a podcast
• Media Blackout: 5 November 2010
• Fri, 5 Nov 10
• Duration:
7 mins
• Dan and Alice talk about an experiment at
Bournemouth University in England to see how
students react if they don't use any media for 24
hours. The people who volunteered were asked
to unplug their media devices, such as laptops,
phones and TVs for a full day.
Download 3MB (right click and save target as)

Videos
• beneficial
• communicate cultural and 'non verbal' aspects
Activities:
• turning off sound and asking students to
create the dialogue from a scene
• getting one part of the class to watch and
describe to the others then exchange
• use a freeze frame technique – for
prediction

Songs
English songs can be used for a wide variety
of ESL learning and teaching activities:
• Great for teaching listening (fill in the
blanks etc.)
• Start a discussion
• Teach grammar
• Compare accents
• Teach new vocabulary

Sample activities for attentive
listening
• Listening to a personal teacher’s story with
visuals- pictures or slides
• Listening to a story – students ask questions to
the story
• Chain Gang Stories -One student begins with
any portion of a sentence, or full sentence. The
next student repeats the prior sentence and adds
to it
• Dual dictation
• Listen for lies

Sample listening activity- what can a
teacher make of it?
An example how a teacher can employ
various pre-listening and post listening
activities
Advertising Adventure;
• Topic: health/appearance,
• Level: pre-interemediate

Advertising Adventure –
Pre-Listening
• Show visuals: photos of healthy-looking
people; before-and-after photos. Before-
and-after photos showing a hippopotamus
and a spider. Photos of people doing
exercise.

Pre-Listening
A teacher could ask questions while showing
pictures:
• Have you seen photos of before and after?
How do you feel about them? Do you believe
all of the adds like that? What adjectives can
we use for a hippo or a spider? Which way to
loose weight is more effective and longer
lasting?

Pre-Listening
Adjectives can be presented in a spidergraph-
brainstormed together with the students:

Read over the ideas for adverts for a
slimming product. Which one do you
think is the best? Why? Which one is the
most ridiculous?
Be healthier and more confident with
with Adios slimming!!!
Why are you still overweight?
Pre-Listening

Fat to Fit with PHEN 35
Get thin this summer

Advertising Adventure
While- listening
Listening I
• You are going to listen to two people discussing adverts for a slimming
product Slimmer You. Listen once and answer this question: Which
idea do they mention?
• Listening II
• Complete the sentences/questions with the words from listening. Then,
listen again to check your answers.
• 1. …the diet drink that comes in fabulous flavours.
• 2. Market research shows that customers like photos of …
• 3. So, is that why your “before”........... is of a hippopotamus?
• 4. Look, Brian, you cannot use a photograph of a .......
• 5. Well, it’s a South American giant bird-eating ...... to be precise.
• 6. If we did that, we’d get thousands of .........

Advertising Adventure
Follow- up
Discussion
• Have you seen any slimming ads recently?
What images did they use?
• What’s the funniest ad you’ve ever seen?
Why was it funny?
• If you had to create an ad for a slimming
product, what images would it have?

A short survey on listening

Basic level students are positive
about listening
Do you like listening?
read
tasks
very well
28,5
no; 4,8
when I'm
good;
29,2
yes; 46,3

Basic level students usually read
questions
Pre-listening
read
tasks
very well
28,5
look at
pictures;
19,5
read
question
s; 42,8
nothing;
9,5

They are going to practice mostly in
class and at home
Where are you going to practice
listening?
everything
; 4,8
read tasks
very well
28,5
in class/at
home;
60,9
in my car;
24,3
in class;
7,3

The teacher may ask a question
after the first listening
The teacher's own questions after the 1st
listening?
no; 38
yes,
sometimes
; 59

Teachers usually do not use visuals
Visuals
no; 60
yes,
sometimes
; 40

Basic level students would like them
to be used
Visuals more often
no; 23,8
yes; 76,1

It is easier for them to watch videos
and to listen
Is it easier to listen while watching?
no; 15
yes; 85

The results of a short survey in our
faculty
A survey among basic and the second level
students.There are some general trends obvious:
BASIC LEVEL:
• The teacher most likely will repeat the item for students;
• Ss like listening and especially when they are good at it;
• Ss improve their listening skills after listening in class/at
home and on the Internet- never in a car;
• teachers usually ask questions after the first listening and
only sometimes give feedback; sometimes use visuals
• they watch videos and they like listening while watching
them.
• fill- ins and questions are the most difficult tasks for them

The results of a short survey in our
faculty
THE SECOND LEVEL:
No great differences could be noticed between
basic and second level.
• a few more people do not like listening tasks;
• fewer people will rely on the Internet for further
practice
• easier to listen and write at the same time
• teachers do not often use visuals
• they less often watch videos
• filling- in exercises seem to be the most difficult
for them.

To sum up
• creating an
environment, which
encourages listening;
• positive interaction,
actively listening to all
students and
responding in an open
and appropriate
manner;
• various possibilities to
listen.

Images of successful listening

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