Purposes and Strategies for Listening
Purposes and Strategies
Read the textbook activity and listen to the audio. Think about how students listen.
Purposes for Listening
The purpose for listening determines how people listen. There are two general ways of listening: extensive and intensive listening. Students need to practice both types of listening to become better listeners.
In extensive listening, people listen for pleasure. The things they listen to are often longer. The purpose is general understanding or enjoyment. Students might use extensive listening for:
news reports
audio books
movies
television programs
podcasts
popular music
Sometimes listeners are trying to follow directions or get specific information. They listen intensively, paying attention to every word. Intensive listening texts are usually short. Listeners pay closer attention to language than when they are listening extensively. They want to be more aware of how language works or how the language expresses specific information. Many listening activities in textbooks focus on intensive listening. Students use intensive listening for:
taking notes on specific details
noticing grammar
checking words or sounds they hear
Look at the textbook activity and listen again. Did you use extensive or intensive listening? This activity asks students to listen very carefully to determine who buys a coat. This is intensive listening. They need a specific piece of information to complete the task.
Listeners sometimes use both intensive and extensive listening during a listening activity. If someone is listening to the news, for example, they probably begin by listening extensively. They may want to understand the general ideas that they hear. However, when a news story that they are particularly interested in starts, they may want to understand the details of the report. They will probably start to listen intensively. It is natural for listeners to switch back and forth between intensive and extensive listening. Therefore, it is important for students to practice both types of listening.
[17/05, 00:44] Ms. Ema: Topic 2: Purposes and Stragegies
Listen to the excerpt from a conversation. Think about the relationship of the speakers. Then read the text. When you are finished, click Submit.
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Listening Strategies
What is important in the conversation you heard—the actual words or the relationship between the speakers? How could you use this conversation in a classroom?
The purpose for listening also affects the listening strategies the listener uses. Strategies are ways to manage the process of listening. Strategies also help students deal with problems. This leads to better communication.
When students listen intensively, they are likely to use bottom-up processing skills. The following are strategies that can help them. Teaching students how to use these strategies will strengthen their listening skills:
listening for specific details
recognizing word-order patterns
recognizing language chunks
listening for stress and intonation (such as rising intonation at the end of questions)
Extensive listening often requires top-down processing skills. Teaching students to use these strategies will help them become better listeners.
Predicting
Using background knowledge
Making inferences
Guessing meaning from context
Listening for the main idea
Many of these strategies will help students with both one-way and two-way listening. When students are able to interact with the speaker as they do in two-way listening, there are additional strategies that can help them. These include:
asking the speaker to repeat key information
asking for clarification
restating information to confirm understanding
noticing the other speaker's emotions
paying attention to visual cues (when available)
Students need to learn and practice strategies to become better listeners. Listen to the audio again. Then answer the questions below. Think about the processing you use to answer each question.
Are the speakers friends?
Do the speakers see or talk to each other often?
What is one of the speakers going to do tonight?
This is a common type of listening activity. Students practice top-down listening to answer questions 1 and 2. They predict or infer the answers. Then they use bottom-up listening to answer question 3. They have to listen for specific details (about the basketball game) to get the answer.
[17/05, 00:45] Ms. Ema: Topic 2: Supplementing Materials
Listen to the audio. Think about how you could use it as a listening activity in your class. Then read the text.
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Realia and Authentic Materials in the Classroom
In addition to the textbook, you can bring in realia and authentic materials to practice listening. The weather report you just listened to is a good example of a kind of authentic material for listening. You can find recordings of weather reports easily on the Internet. You can also record one from the radio or TV. Provide students with a weather map from a newspaper or a map without symbols. Then you can have them listen and draw the correct symbols in the correct locations as they listen.
Some realia and authentic materials may have important but unfamiliar vocabulary. You can put these words on the board with definitions or drawings to help students understand the material. If there are too many new words in an authentic listening, it is probably best not to use it.
[17/05, 00:45] Ms. Ema: Topic 2: Supplementing Materials
Read the text. Refer to screens 4-9as you read.
Expanding Textbook Activities
It is easy to supplement the textbook with activities that give your students added practice. The following are a few ideas. Refer to screens 4-9 (from Topic 1) as you read.
Dialogs For listen-and-repeat conversations, as in Activity 1 on screen 4, lead students in choral repetition. Divide the class in half. One side repeats Speaker A’s lines. The other half repeats Speaker B’s lines. Then they can practice in pairs.
Retelling/rewriting Have students retell or rewrite a story from their textbook. They can do it from memory, or use a graphic organizer such as the one in Activity 8 on screen 8.
Manipulatives In Activity 5 on screen 6, students put details in order. One way to supplement this kind of activity is to use manipulatives, such as sentence strips. You can photocopy the audioscript, or type out sentences. Then cut the script into strips with one line of dialogue per strip. Mix up the strips. Students can work in pairs or groups to reorder the strips.
Critical thinking Add challenge by asking students to make inferences or think critically. For example, in Activity 6 on screen 6, ask: What is an advantage of the winter “sleep”? What is a disadvantage? Thinking critically about the ideas can help students understand and remember more. In the weather report example, you could provide students with a list of words to help them develop an emergency plan for bad weather.
[17/05, 00:45] Ms. Ema: Topic 2: Supplementing Materials
Read the text. When you are finished, click Submit.
More Techniques and Activities to Improve Listening Skills
There are a variety of techniques to practice listening skills in and outside of the classroom.
Listen and draw Students can work in pairs to listen to one another and complete a task. For example, have students draw people that their partner describes (including details about clothing, hair length, glasses, height, and more). Or one partner can describe the location of furniture in a room or buildings on a street as the other listens and draws on picture or map.
Songs Bring in age-appropriate recordings of songs. Provide students with cloze worksheets so they can listen and fill in the blanks. Then have students sing along. Also, there are many music videos with lyrics (in karaoke format) on the Internet. Students can listen and read once and then listen again and sing along.
Games Divide students into two groups and have them listen to different parts of a story. Then put them together in pairs to tell each other the parts of the story, to answer comprehension questions, or to solve a riddle.
Go online There are many sites online with listening activities for EFL students. In a search engine, type something like EFL listening activities plus a topic. You can find videos that tell viewers how to do things such as tie a tie, bake a cake, or write a poem. Have students watch and write the down the steps.
Extensive listening Remember that students often enjoy doing extensive listening outside the classroom. Suggest they keep a listening log about their listening. They can include one or two things that they liked (or did not like) about the songs, podcasts, audio books, movies, or television shows they listened to. They can recommend extensive listening texts or activities to their classmates.
