5/12/2021 25 ESL Listening Activities for Every Learning Style

By SUSANVERNER

25 ESL Listening Activities for

Seven Learning Styles—from
Kinesthetic to Mathematical
What’s your style?

Do you like to move and groove? Do you just listen to the music? Do you like
to partner up?

No, I’m not talking about party personalities. I’m talking about learning
styles.

Intentionally planning ESL activities to reach different learning styles is key

for your ESL students’ success. When you do your part in giving them
activities that meet their learning personalities, they will do their part and
flourish in class.

Sometimes reaching certain learning styles can be easier than others.

Listening activities in particular might be difficult when you are trying to
hit all seven styles.

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But do not fear. You can boogie down with these 25 listening activities
that let your students express themselves (and get valuable language
experience) while hitting the seven major styles of learning.

25 ESL Listening Activities for

Every Learning Style

Kinesthetic
Kinesthetic students learn best when they move and groove—that is, when
they get their bodies involved in the activity. Here are some listening
activities you can do that will get students up and moving in class.

1. Simon Says
Simon Says is a great go-to listening game. It’s practically perfect for
teaching with Total Physical Response. When your students play Simon Says,
they will have to follow simple commands and move their bodies in the way
you direct them.

This game is also great for reviewing vocabulary or grammar structures if

you make a point of including them in your verbal directions.

2. Listen and Draw

If you have kinesthetic students who struggle to express themselves in
English, Listen and Draw isolates listening from speaking. Simply have your
students take out a blank piece of paper and give them instructions on what
to draw.

For example, you might say the following:

Draw a square in the center of your paper.

Draw a triangle on top of the square.
Draw a small rectangle inside the square, at the bottom.
Draw two small squares inside the square near the top.

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If your students listen correctly, they will have drawn a house (or something
like it), and you will be able to tell with one glance whether they understood
your directions.

Of course, you can make Listen and Draw as complicated as you like
depending on the skill level of your students. This activity is particularly
useful for reviewing vocabulary of colors, shapes and prepositions of
location.

3. Running for the Mouth

Running for the Mouth gets your students racing around your classroom to
complete a dictation assignment. Have students work with partners or in
groups, and make sure you have one available copy of a recording for each
group (tape player, computer, CD player–anything will work, just work with
what you have). The recordings are positioned around the edges of your
room.

On your go, one student from each group runs to their recording and listens
to part of it. The student must remember what they heard then run back to
their group and dictate it to them. Another group member writes it down and
then runs to the recording to memorize the next bit, later running back and
dictating it to the group.

Play continues this way, rotating roles, until each group has written down the
entire transcript of the listening material. Time your groups and give a ten-
second penalty for each error in the transcript and see who came up with the
best time. If you aren’t sure what to use for your listening material, try a
dialogue from your listening textbook, a FluentU clip, a short YouTube video
or a brief news segment available online.

FluentU is a great way to amp up your classroom in general.

If you're looking for creative ways to teach English, then you'll love using
FluentU in your classroom! FluentU takes real-world videos—like
music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns
them into personalized language learning lessons.

It's got a huge collection of authentic English videos that people in the
English-speaking world actually watch regularly. There are tons of great
choices there when you're looking for songs for in-class activities.

You'll find music videos, musical numbers from cinema and theater, kids'
singalongs, commercial jingles and much, much more.

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teach-english-with-interactive-videos

On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully
annotated for students.

Words come with example sentences and definitions. Students will be able to
add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used
in other videos.

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For example, if a student taps on the word "searching," they'll see this:

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practice-english-with-captioned-
dialogue

Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and
active learning tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun
games like "fill in the blank."

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practice-english-with-adaptive-quizzes

It’s perfect for in-class activities, group projects and solo homework
assignments. Not to mention, it's guaranteed to get your students
excited about learning English!

Sign up for a free trial and bring FluentU to your classroom today.

4. Map It
In Map It, students listen to your directions and find their way along a map
to a secret location. Start by making copies of a map for each of your
students. It can be a real place, like this campus, or a simple diagram you put
together yourself. Just make sure the streets are labeled and that you have
several buildings marked on the map.

Give your students directions from a starting point, but don’t tell them where
you are directing them. They should run their fingers along the map

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according to your directions. Once you are finished, ask students where they
ended up. Hopefully they are at the destination you were leading them to.

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Verbal/Aural
Verbal/aural students do best when they hear or speak what you want them
to learn. You can try these next activities for students who learn best by
listening.

5. Hearing is Believing
Before listening to a dialogue, play some background noise that matches the
location of your scene and have students make predictions about what will
be in the dialogue.

For example, play a movie clip (without visual or dialogue) that occurs in a
restaurant (like this one) before playing a dialogue of people ordering food.

6. Back-to-back Interviews
In Back-to-back Interviews, have two students sit back to back to remove the
visual clues from their conversation. Give one student a famous person to
role play and have the other person ask ten interview questions, noting the
answers that their partner gives.

Can the interviewer guess who the interviewee is? After the interview have
students switch roles and give the interviewee a different celebrity to role
play.

7. Not Quite Identical

Have students work with a partner to pinpoint differences in nearly
identical sentences. To prepare this activity, write up a list of ten sentences:

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list A. Then rewrite those sentences making slight changes—two or three

changes for each sentence such as word choice or verb tense. This is list B.

Give list A to one student and list B to their partner, having the two work
together to find the differences. During the activity, students are not
permitted to look at one another’s papers—so they must speak and listen.

8. Did You Overhear That?

If you can take your students on a mini field trip, have them sit quietly and
listen to sounds at a café, restaurant or other public place. Have students
write about what they are hearing—especially if they manage to overhear any
conversations.

Visual
Visual learners learn though what they see. It’s possible to have listening
activities tailored for visual learners—try some of the following.

9. Movie Vocabulary
Have students listen for specific vocabulary in a favorite movie clip. Before
class choose a movie clip (FluentU or YouTube have tons to choose from)
and prewatch it, noting any interesting or unusual vocabulary. Type up the
words in list form. Keep them in order for an easier listening activity and
randomize them for a more challenging activity.

In class give your students copies of the vocabulary list. Review the
pronunciation with students and then play the movie clip for them. Have
students mark off the words as they hear them. After watching the clip, see
who heard the most words and discuss the meaning of any words your
students don’t already know.

10. Sound Vocabulary

If you are doing a vocabulary unit on animals, modes of transportation or
anything else that leads itself to specific noises, try having your students
match sounds to words. Give them vocabulary words on index cards or in a
numbered list.

Play sounds associated with each word, such as sounds that the item makes,
sounds you might hear at that place, or conversations that might happen in

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association with the words. Then have students match each sound clip to the
appropriate vocabulary word.

11. TED Talk

TED Talks are a great resource for ESL teachers and students. They are
short, interesting and versatile. Play a TED Talk for your intermediate or
advanced students.

The first time through, ask students to listen for the main idea. The second
time through, have them listen for specific comprehension questions. The
third time through have them listen for opinions versus facts.

Interpersonal
Interpersonal students learn from interacting with other people, a perfect
setup for many listening activities.

12. Not Quite the Truth

Let your students get to know each other by telling personal stories. But mix
things up by instructing students to include two or three lies in each story.
Students work with a partner and listen for what they think are the lies in the
story.

If they are able to guess the lies, award them points for each lie they are able
to identify. Then have students switch roles. See which person was better
able to locate the lies in their partner’s story.

13. Reported Interviews

Put students in pairs to interview each other. Have students quote their
interviewees. After the interviews are complete, have students change their
quoted speech notes into reported speech and write a paragraph about the
person they interviewed.

Here are some interview questions to get you started.

14. Unusual You

If your students aren’t at the level for reported speech, have them introduce
their partner to the rest of the class after their interviews instead.

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This works even with students who have been together for a significant
amount of time. Just encourage your students to find the most unusual and
interesting information they can about their partners during the interview.

Solitary
Solitary learners prefer to work on their own. These learners will enjoy the
following listening activities that make room for that independence.

15. Listening Walk

Have students go for a listening walk. As they walk, have them make notes
about what they hear. Then come back together and work with a partner.
Have students discuss what they heard. Did their partner hear the same
things that they did?

16. Picture Book Sequence

Choose a picture book that you’ll read to your class—something simple like
“The Little Red Hen” is a good one to start with. Before class make a list of
the major events in the story, then randomize them.

Then read the book aloud to your class. After listening to the story, have
students put the events from the story in sequence by cutting apart your list
and arranging the slips of paper on a desk or table.

17. Audiobook Reports

You don’t have to read a book on the page to write a book report. Have
students listen to an audiobook or story. Then have them write a book report
based on what they heard, or give a summary of the book to the class in a
presentation.

Musical
Musical learners love to listen to music, and it actually helps them learn and
retain information. Try these activities to really connect with musical
learners.

18. Music to My Lexicon

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Choose a song to play for your class. Anything will work, so try and match
your song to the personality of your class. Before class, make a list of
interesting vocabulary words that appear in the song.

Give the list to your students and review the pronunciation of each word.
Then play the song for them and let them cross off the words on the list as
they hear them.

19. Cloze Lyrics

You can also use a song for a great cloze exercise. Get the lyrics to the song
you want to play and replace each fifth word with a blank. Or you can target
specific words you want your students to listen for.

As they listen to the song, students will have to fill in the blanks in the lyrics.

20. Sing Your Woes

Musicians write songs for a reason, and most of them have a story to tell
even if the story is subtle. While listening to a song, have your students try to
pick out the problem that singer is singing about—such as a break up, death,
unrequited love, etc.

You might try “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hello” or, if your class has a good sense
of humor, “White and Nerdy.”

After listening to the song, ask students to discuss why the musician wrote
the song and what emotions they were feeling. Then have students come up
with some advice for the person’s problem.

21. Musicals Rule

Musical learners could be fans of opera and musicals. Take advantage of that
by playing a clip from your favorite musical. After watching the clip, ask
students to give the main idea of the scene.

Then watch again and ask them to take notes on the details of the characters’
interactions.

Mathematical/Logical
Do you like to do the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper? Your
mathematical/logical learners probably do. They like to use logic to puzzle

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out solutions to problems. You can get them engaged in your listening
lessons with these final four activities.

22. Minimal Pair Bingo

Come up with several minimal pairs you want your students to listen for—
two words that differ in only one sound, such as pin/pine and big/fig. (You
will need at least twenty-four pairs.)

Have students fill in the blank spaces of a bingo board using those words—
with one word in each box. Then call out the words as you play the game,
with students marking the words they hear. The first person with five spaces
in a row shouts out “Bingo!” to win.

23. Tongue Twister Telephone

The classic game of telephone is good for logical listeners, especially when
you start the telephone chain with a tongue twister.

Students will have to puzzle out what their classmates are saying with only
one chance to hear the tongue twister as it’s passed down the line from
student to student in whispers.

24. Lecture Me
Taking notes from a lecture is a good way to practice listening, and it’s even
better for mathematical/logical learners when you give them an outline to
complete that lines up with the lecture.

Many libraries have lectures you can borrow, or you can find others on
YouTube. (For more advanced students, for example, here are 5-minute
lectures from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.) Choose something you
think might be of interest or use to your students.

25. My Favorite Infomercial

Mathematical/logical students like to measure and evaluate. Let them do so
by watching two commercials or infomercials for similar products, while
listening for details about the products.

Then have your students compare and contrast the products and make a
recommendation on which is better.

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No matter what their party personalities are, your ESL students have
learning personalities, too. You can make sure everyone has a blast by
connecting with each learning style through these different listening
activities.

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best
way to teach English with real-world videos.

Bring English immersion to your classroom!

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