Teaching Listening

Using Textbook Listening Activities
The greatest challenges with textbook tape programs are integrating the listening experiences into classroom instruction and keeping up student interest and motivation. These challenges arise from the fact that most textbook listening programs emphasize product (right or wrong answer) over process (how to get meaning from the selection) and from the fact that the listening activities are usually carried out as an add-on, away from the classroom.
You can use the guidelines for developing listening activities given here as starting points for evaluating and adapting textbook listening programs. At the beginning of the teaching term, orient students to the tape program by completing the exercises in class and discussing the different strategies they use to answer the questions. It is a good idea to periodically complete some of the lab exercises in class to maintain the link to the regular instructional program and to check on the effectiveness of the exercises themselves.
Integrating Listening Strategies With Textbook Audio and Video
Students can use this outline for both in-class and out-of-class listening/viewing activities. Model and practice the use of the outline at least once in class before you ask students to use it independently.
1. Plan for listening/viewing
• Review the vocabulary list, if you have one
• Review the worksheet, if you have one
• Review any information you have about the content of the tape/video
2. Preview the tape/video
• (tape) Use fast forward to play segments of the tape; (video) view the video without sound
• Identify the kind of program (news, documentary, interview, drama)
• Make a list of predictions about the content
• Decide how to divide the tape/video into sections for intensive listening/viewing
3. Listen/view intensively section by section. For each section:
• Jot down key words you understand
• Answer the worksheet questions pertaining to the section
• If you don't have a worksheet, write a short summary of the section
4. Monitor your comprehension
• Does it fit with the predictions you made?
• Does your summary for each section make sense in relation to the other sections?
5. Evaluate your listening comprehension progress
Teaching Listening
Assessing Listening Proficiency
You can use post-listening activities to check comprehension, evaluate listening skills and use of listening strategies, and extend the knowledge gained to other contexts. A post-listening activity may relate to a pre-listening activity, such as predicting; may expand on the topic or the language of the listening text; or may transfer what has been learned to reading, speaking, or writing activities.
In order to provide authentic assessment of students' listening proficiency, a post-listening activity must reflect the real-life uses to which students might put information they have gained through listening.
• It must have a purpose other than assessment
• It must require students to demonstrate their level of listening comprehension by completing some task.
To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the type of response that listening to a particular selection would elicit in a non-classroom situation. For example, after listening to a weather report one might decide what to wear the next day; after listening to a set of instructions, one might repeat them to someone else; after watching and listening to a play or video, one might discuss the story line with friends.
Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate post-listening tasks. You can then develop a checklist or rubric that will allow you to evaluate each student's comprehension of specific parts of the aural text. (See Assessing Learning for more on checklists and rubrics.)
For example, for listening practice you have students listen to a weather report. Their purpose for listening is to be able to advise a friend what to wear the next day. As a post-listening activity, you ask students to select appropriate items of clothing from a collection you have assembled, or write a note telling the friend what to wear, or provide oral advice to another student (who has not heard the weather report). To evaluate listening comprehension, you use a checklist containing specific features of the forecast, marking those that are reflected in the student's clothing recommendations.