Why do students get bored when listening to a text-based recording?

Three reasons that I think makes listening tasks boring:

1. It may largely be because listening itself is a rather passive activity meaning students have to
keep quiet and do nothing.
2. Secondly, if listening is being done only for the sake of listening, it is bound to get boring as
students don’t have any clear objectives in their minds.
3. If it’s a text-based listening and students listen as they read the text, they tend not to pay
attention because they don’t have to when what they are listening to is already before their
eyes.

How to make listening activities interesting?

- Add element of surprise: When students do not know what they are going to be listening about,
they try to listen with interest.
- Set objectives: When students know that they have to listen carefully in order to be able to
understand or do something, they pay more attention.

Interesting listening activities for classroom

1. Chinese Whispers

Description: Conduct the game among a group of people with a moderator to supervise. The game starts
when the first person whispers the message to the next person and the latter does the same till the last
person receives the message and reads it aloud. It is the moderator’s responsibility to note down the
message to see how it got distorted which is the main purpose of this game. One misheard word can
change the meaning of the entire sentence.

2. Paraphrasing/ Interpreting information:

In this game, the participants have to listen to a short passage or story read by the moderator. After a 5-
10 minutes break, the participants write down the summary of the story. The moderator checks each
paraphrased version in terms of relevance to the story and informs the participants where they went
wrong. It’s a good way to perceive how to focus on keywords of what you are listening.

Web materials for suggestions on how to improve listening

https://realenglishconversations.com/improve-english-listening-skills-go-deeper/