Skills for Life Teaching Resources
Developing General Listening Skills
- As long as English is used as the language of instructions, students develop their listening skills in the classroom through listening to and interacting with the teacher and other students. The context and purpose of the interaction is usually clear, and the student can let the speaker know if he or she has not understood what was said.
- Listening skills are also developed more formally through listening to recorded materials via a variety of media. In this case the context and purpose may not be apparent, so students will need training to concentrate on understanding the general meaning of a text and to not be put off by unfamiliar words. They also need to be taught to question such things as who speakers are, and who the intended audience is. Otherwise, they may well lose the thread and miss important details. Specific listening tasks are given at Entry 1-3 first to focus students on gist and then to check their ability to listen for specific details without being distracted by other information in the text. It is good practice for students at Entry 1-3 to listen to authentic texts. Even though they may not understand the whole text they can learn to extract specific details such as prices, times, colours, ages of people and so on, the difficulty depending on their level.
- Teachers should try to find as many opportunities as possible to work on listening in class and to integrate listening with other skills. For example:
- listening can follow or precede a classroom discussion on the same or a similar topic.
- students can read a text and listen to speakers discussing a related theme.
- students can watch short extracts from a television programme and give opinions on it. It does not matter if they do not understand everything. Exposure to language above the level is a good thing, and students gain confidence when they find just how much they can understand in authentic listening texts.
- there are many audio books available. Students can read and listen to stories, etc.
- before listening, the students can work on vocabulary which will appear in the different texts.
- work on understanding intonation and stress can be based around a listening text.
- students could follow up a listening by imagining what might happen next. This is particularly useful at Entry 3 where a certain degree of speculation is required of the students.
Helping with the Test
- Listening is interactive. When we listen to someone speaking, we respond in some way: if we are watching a comedy, we laugh; if someone engages us in conversation, we reply. In phases 1a, 1b and 2b, students will be expected to listen to their partner or to the interlocutor in order to formulate a response, either by extending their partner’s contribution or by asking questions about what their partner has said. For the listening in phase 2a, however, the responses need to be very specific and these responses should be kept short and simple. Students will need to practise all these skills.
- Even when not participating, the most effective listener is active. Listeners should attend fully and be active in constructing the meaning of what they hear. It helps if they have a particular purpose in listening, such as a jigsaw listening where different groups listen to different information in order to report back to each other or present their information to the class as a whole. This is usually more stimulating than doing a great deal of exam practice, and will help students particularly with Phases 1b and 2a of the test .
- Listening is closely related to the other skills, particularly speaking. It is useful to practise all the skills in relation to each other and this is a feature of the Skills for Life Speaking and Listening tests. Give your students the opportunity to discuss the topic of the listening text before and after playing a recording. Encourage students to listen to English outside the classroom. Give them the task of watching e.g. one new item on the television the day before their class and allow class time for them to discuss what they have heard. This can lead to very interesting discussions even at low levels and it can be very motivating for students to share information in this way.
- Listening involves a purpose. For example, we might want to find out information or to build a social relationship. In the test, the purpose is to find out information by listening out for specific details in a recording while ignoring the surrounding detail. Students will need practice in this. Take authentic extracts of English off-air and prepare detail questions about them. Encourage students to write down key words so that they know exactly what they have to listen for but don’t give them the actual question written down. Students will make mistakes and pick out details that were not demanded by the question. When this happens, make sure your students know why they have made a mistake and what the correct answer should be by replaying extracts and pausing the CD or tape recorder frequently. This can be done even at Entry 1. Even though the text may be above the level they can still listen e.g. for one train time and it is encouraging for them to find that they can understand elements of authentic English.
