TEACHING LISTENING SKILLS

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• Identify and describe sub skills involved in listening • Outline listening activities for all levels

• Identify challenges that make the listening skill difficult • Outline listening lesson plans for all levels

• Identify the 5 necessary strategies for the listening skill • Activity based methodology activities for all levels

• Listening functions for Pre-elementary level • Teaching contractions for the listening skills

• Listening functions for Elementary level • Teaching sound joining for the listening skills

• Listening functions for Pre-intermediate level • Listening techniques

• Listening functions for Intermediate level • Presentation skills for the listening skill

• Listening functions for Upper-intermediate level • Listening Purposes

• Listening functions for Advanced level

 Identify and describe sub-skills involved in listening
Listening, one of the four language skills, is defined as the ability to receive and interpret messages during
communication in an accurate way. On the contrary to hearing, listening helps with misinterpration and
misunderstanding and is a key to all effective communication. Listening is considered a crucial language skill
in any circumtances and professional fields. If hearing is more about paying attention to the story itself,
listening is actively being aware of both verbal and non-verbal messages including how it is told, the use of
language, voice and tone. It is said that how one perceives and understand the message told defines one’s
effective listening ability. As it is not a passive communication process, active listening is a phrase used to
describe a listening process of full involvement and engagement. Listening skills include:

Listening with purposes - Setting a clear purpose is an important step when it comes to
practice language skills. Especially within a classroom, students should be introduced with
the sufficient information and context they will work with. It seems to be impossible to
actively listen to a conversation or speech without being presented with the context in
advance. Hence, it is necessary to make sure all students are comfortable and aware of
what they will be listening before playing specific recordings, audios or videos. Teachers
should always tell their students about the situation, the speakers, and the tasks they will
be performing. Understanding the purpose of the listening task makes it easier for learners
to gasp the information as well as the lesson.
 Identify and describe sub-skills involved in listening
Listening with attitude - Learning a language is not only about learning vocabularies and
grammar but more of learning the culture, phrasal expression, idioms and metaphor, the tone of
voice, etc. These devices are incredibly significant for language learners to understand the actual
or unspoken messages. Practicing listening with attitudinal work among receptive and productive
skills lessons enables English learners to become familiar with the cultural language which leads
to more effective listening abilities. Idiomatic language is a good example for linguistic marker for
attitude. It helps students interpret all the messages behind one’s speech or saying. Besides,
intonation, gesture, facial expression, paralinguistic cues of stress, etc. can also be included in
listening practice tasks that allow listeners decode while listening.

Some listening sub-skills can be listed are as below:

Listenging for gist – Similar to reading, this extensive listening skill can be defined as skimming, where
students practice by listening for general idea about one specific topic.

Listening for specific information – After skimming, English learners should be able to listen to find one
or more particular pieces of information.

Listening in detail – In contrast to skimming, listening in detail means intensive listening for scanning.
Learners will be asked to listen extra closely and pay full attention to all the words spoken, then, at the
same time, try to understand as much information as possible.
Identify challenges that make the listening skill difficult
Challenges or barriers are inevitable in any learning processes, thus, being able to identify these obstables and
turn the problem on its head within early stages provides a more effective and efficient learning journey.

1. Distraction or being preoccupied

It is obvious that there are many distractions getting in the way during communication and on-going
conversations including objective and subjective factors. Listeners might find it easy to get distracted or
preoccupied after one or two sentences. This could be the results of trying to think about what they want to
reply or starting to think of unrelated things, which lead to an incomplete comprehension of the speaker’s
messages. It is said that “the average speech rates are between 125 to 175 words per minute whereas on
average, a person can process betwween 400 to 800 words a minute.” One assumption from this is that
people tend to use the spare time while listening to think about other things rather than focusing on what the
other are saying. Some of the factors that might cause distractions are:
Identify challenges that make the listening skill difficult
Challenges or barriers are inevitable in any learning processes, thus, being able to identify these obstables and
turn the problem on its head within early stages provides a more effective and efficient learning journey.

1. Distraction or being preoccupied

Clarity of the speaker can affect the way
people listen. It becomes easy to focus when
the speaker picks up well with fluency, clear
accent and appropriate volume level.
Apparently, all information spoken can
become unabsorbent as one speaks too fast or
too slowly, too loudly or too quietly.
Another big disctraction of today’s technology-
driven life are phones and smart devices.
Notifications and news have people hooked on
on daily basis and lower the level of
effectiveness abd productivity of listeing.
Appearance or body language plays a fair role in
one’s focus during the listening process. The way
they look, the way they dress, or the way they move
around can be distracting and draw one’s attention
away from the conversation itself.
Visual materials on slides or videos can affect
one’s concentration on listening the content. It is
important to choose the right graphics or visual
examples for presentation and videos.
One’s emotion changes how much they participate in
the conversation as well. It can be inevitable to lose in
one’s train of thought during a lenghthy speech.
Identify challenges that make the listening skill difficult
Challenges or barriers are inevitable in any learning processes, thus, being able to identify these obstables and
turn the problem on its head within early stages provides a more effective and efficient learning journey.

2. Surroundings and environment

Noisy enviroment or classroom makes it harder for learner to listen properly and effectively during
tasks or lessons. It is a teacher’s job to create an appropriate classroom for students to enjoy and
feel motivated during their listening tasks and assignments.

3. Mindset and personal perspectives

As human beings, we all have different mindsets, perspectives and preconceived

notions, also different biases and prejudice towards the surroundings, people around
us which can be either positive or negative. This gap and difference affect how an
individual thinks, listens and their attitude towards the others during the
conversations. The information and messages sent can be interpreted or decoded
inaccurately based on all the given factors.
Identify challenges that make the listening skill difficult
Challenges or barriers are inevitable in any learning processes, thus, being able to identify these obstables and
turn the problem on its head within early stages provides a more effective and efficient learning journey.

4. Interruptions

Along with distraction, interruptions can be either subjective or objective. Specifically, conversations
can be interrupted by someone or some event happened. Speeches or presentations can be
interrupted by one’s questions or feedback. Communication, in general, can be interrupted due to
other’s responses, concerns or disagreements. Though it does not always lead to uneffective
listening, it does have effect in the listening ability.

5. Physical State

The physical state of a person can also act as one of the top barriers to effective listening as their
body is not in a proper position and capacity to absorb the information and process it in mind to
accomplish the tasks and responsibilities. For instances, being tired or exhausted makes one deviate
from the important conversation or simply lower one’s concentration on the content.
Identify the 5 necessary strategies for the listening skills
Learning and practicing language skills does not mean merely doing tasks and assignments, learners must learn how to use
different strategies that make their learning process more active. It is an educator’s task to introduce and model effective
strategies to students as well as evaluate their performance and applications of these strategies. Being exposed to several
strategies, students have chances to to find the most appropriate for them to use before, during or after their listening lessons.

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Connect and Predict
For better understanding of a listening
assignment, teachers can give students
some time before the tasks to think and get
to know the topic. This enables learners to
make connections between what they know
and what they are about to learn. Students,
at the same time, learn how to connect and
apply their prior knowledge for any new
lessons or topics.
Along with that, students should be asked to
make guesses about what they are going to
listen whether their guesses are right or
not. This brainstorming activity allows
learners to build more engagement and
focus on the task assigned.
Learn new vocabulary
Teachers can make a list of new words from the
tasks and have students go through the
preselected list of vocabulary before the listening.
This is an additional step after making predictions
and connections. For any new words, students
can take some minutes to talk about them and
make predictions of how they will be used in the
listening. It is important to make sure students
understand or have a rough idea of the new
words in the tittles, headlines or in any
introductory matrials. This can be incorporated in
discussion activities where students have a brief
conversation about the listening key words.
Students can also use this set of words after the
listening lesson to broaden their vocabulary and
practice moving forwards.
Identify the 5 necessary strategies for the listening skills
3 4
Listen for answers
Much the same as listening with purposes,
listening with the given questions presents
students the purposes of their listening and
create a more effective listening lesson.
Students will be able to follow along the
tasks and answer-required questions while
listening, which results in more structural
and smoother listening flow.
5 Moreover, teachers can have their students listen
Extensive listening
After the listening tasks, teachers should
provide students with more sources for
more information about the topic. Further
listening or reviewing the old listening
helps with further studying and this can
become students’ prior knowledge for
more listening.
Take notes and re-listen
Jotting down otes while listening helps with
outlining and layering information. There are
many ways of taking notes that teachers can
introduce to their students, including using
shapes, circles, underlines, highlights, symbols or
mind maps. This approach fits with different
learning styles as it incorporates audio/visual
materials and, kinesthics methods. Notes always
helps learners pratice with main ideas and
rephrasing.
to the recording again after the first attempt in
order to double check their notes. This is
additionally helpful for long and lengthy
recordings as students easily get distracted when
the listening is more difficult.
 Listening functions for Pre-elementary level
Among all ages, teaching pre-schoolers requires more effort and tailored activities in order to create a good
foundation for a good learner, especially good listeners. Research shows that good listening skills allow children
to develop more language skills moving forward. Listening skills help kids become more apt to follow directions,
interact respectfully with adults and their peers.

Some of the activities teachers or educators can use to help develop good listening skills for kids over time are:
• Simon says, Red Light, Green Light or I Spy helps kids concentrate on listening and responding
appropriately and practices their agility with words and sounds.
• Interactive reading encourages critical thinking while listening and gauges how much information kids can
retain. Teachers or parents can pause during their reading aloud session and ask checking-up questions.

For younger kids, teaching kids to sit still and concentrate on sounds alone can help with practicing listening
skills. With toddlers, especially, it is important for educators to be a role model and set positive examples.
During conversations with adults and peers, educators can demonstrate active listening when and what children
should respond while listening to others talking. “Using proper eye contact, body language, and voice tone
while conversing will help your child understand how to engage properly in a social setting.”

Through listening lesson and practice, children can also learn new vocabulary, new set of grammar points and
how to expand their sentences. In brief, teaching listening to pre-elementary level students involves teaching
paying attention to environmental sounds, music, conversations and stories.
 Listening functions for Elementary level
Among all language skills as stated, listening is one of the most important skills for primary students to
master in order to develop other according skills. Younger kids can easily develop their listening skills
through songs, movies and stories they get to study at school or at home. On top of that, children’s abilities
to listen partially depend on healthy lifestyles and routines. Especially during this age of growing up, primary
kids should be exposed to plenty of outdoor activities, real-life interactions and limited screen time.

As a teacher, it is essential to be mindful about the activities incorporate in listening lesson, which should be
exciting and fun rather than a threatening experience. Listening sessions ought to be a planned routine for
classroom activity, however, it should not be overpowering and dominant compared to other lesson.

“Studies have shown that in the average classroom the percentage of the day during which
children are expected to engage in listening to great as to exceed any reasonable expectaion of
attention and interest.”

Listening activities should not be mere students listening to their teachers but rather more peer interaction
and through other activities.

Primary students must be taught how to make conncection and create interaction with the surroudings and
the listening lesson they learn as to build and widen their general knowledge. As kids gain efficient prrior
knowledge and engage effectively in listening habit, their listening skills will be easily developed over time.
 Listening functions for Pre-intermediate level
For Pre-intermediate level students, practicing listening skills through common vocabulary and
expressions in short, clear dialogues is considered suitable. Studies show that “pre-intermediate learners
presented serious problems in listening tasks. They misunderstood and misintepreted oral messages and
were unable to recognize the general content and encountered difficulties to refer to the aural materials
or conversations orally.” With that being said, it is crucial to incorporate several activities including
diverse topics through pre-listening, during and post-listening tasks.

The ability to listen is effectively developed by getting exposed to real world assignments where students
can analyze, relate and apply from the materials to actively participate in discussions.

Interactive listening through class discussions or peer interation enables learners to seek and provide
create responses, solutions during their learning process. On the contrary to sheer lecturing like listen and
note down information, interactive and active listening activities allows teachers to promote listening
fluency and helps figure out students’ listening comprehension difficulties. As mentioned, listening
assignments like such give learners the opportunities to broaden their background knowledge, practice
their problem-solving and decision-making skills. Further research also indicated that communicative
skills and reading comprehension can be enhanced through listening practice.
 Listening functions for Intermediate level
At the intermediate level, students are expected to understand information conveyed in simple full sentences
about daily and familiar topics. Face-to-face conversations or routine listening tasks helps learners to
comprehend and improve their skills. At this level, teachers should focus on promoting redundacy,
restatement, paraphrasing and contextual clues throught contextualized messages, straightforward
announcements or simple instructions and directions.It is shown that “intermediate-level listerners are most
accurate in their comprehension when getting meaning from simple, straightforward speech and messages
found in highly familiar everyday contexts. Hence, it is teachers’ task to include lesson and activities with
simple, minimally connected assignments that contain high-frequency vocabulary.

Teachers should be able to assess students with intermediate level some listening skills including:
• Understand short, modified descriptive or narrative monologues and presentations in simple contexts
• Understand short, simple formal and informal social exchanges
• Understand common, sequential instructions and directions related to familiar, everyday situations
 Listening functions for Upper Intermediate level
Similar to Intermediate level students, at this upper-intermediate level, listeners are able to
understand with ease and confidence. With adequate vocabulary, they can apprehend simple
sentence-length speech in basic personal and social contexts. Though there might be some gaps due
to lack of vocabulary and grammar structures of spoken language compared to advanced learners,
Upper-intermediate level students can derive substantial meaning from some connected texts.

Some of the listening strategies that can be helpful for this group of learners are listening for
discrete items, listening for specific information, listeing for specific pronunciation elements,
writing from dictation, transcribe speech or filling the gaps activities.

Teachers can evaluate and assess some the skills including:

• Identify factual details, main ideas and supporting details
• Make inferences
• Identify rhetorical discourse markers and patterns of chronological order and sequence,
comparison and contrast, and cause and effect
• Identify facts and opinions
• Interpret factual information, explanations and opinions
 Listening functions for Advanced level
“At the Advanced Level, listeners can understand the main ideas and most supporting details in connected
discourse on a variety of general interest topics, such as news stories, explanation, instructions,
anecdotes, or travelogue descriptions. Listeners are able to compenstate for limitations in their lexical and
structural control of the language by using real-world knowledge and contextual clues.” Exceptionally,
some students find several topics and context familiar are able to understand and comprehend connected
and deeper of meaning of the given information.

Common listening lesson for advanced students incorporates authentic speeches, lexically and structurally
complicate dialogues, etc. With their sufficient prior knowledge of language, vocabulary and grammar
strutures, they manage to understand topics with basic time-frame references.

Advanced level students can follow and comprehend:

• Conventional narrative and descriptive texts
• Complex factual materials (summaries or reports)
• Argumentative speech
• Meaning from oral texts with unfamiliar topics or situations
• Facts presented in oral discourse
• Speaker-intended inferences
 Outline listening lesson plans for all levels
Having good listening skills enables students to become independent learners as they get to refine
understanding of grammar and develop their own vobucabulary by themselves. Listening lessons
include meaningful activities that allows learners to practice skills effective to a basic framework
including three main stages (pre-listening, during listening and post-listening), specifically:
• Pre-listening tasks help students prepare to listen
• During listening tasks help them to focus and pay attention on the listening text, as well as guide
students to develop their understanding
• Post-listening tasks help listeners integrate the information learned into existing knowledge

1
Pre-listening tasks are necessary to activate students’ knowledge and focus. Students are asked
clarify and discuss about the tasks beforehand while following the provided instructions. Along with
embarking learners’ ability, it is crucial to present students the main idea and have them make
inferences about the message and information of the tasks, specifically the audios, conversations or
dialogues. Some goals that this stage is directed to are creating motivation, contextualizing and
preparing for the listening.
This is an important phase as it is considered as “the first journey into meaningful oral task travel, and
as such, all the necessary information needed to do the tasks had to be provided.” At this stage,
students can use their prior knowledge to predict and make connections to the tasks assigned.
 Outline listening lesson plans for all levels
2
During listening tasks come second after the mentioned fundamental step, pre-listening. As
listening within daily basis, students, too, must be presented a purpose to listen in order to shift their
attention to the right information. Depending on the English level, the listening tasks should be
replayed more than once to avoid confusion and misunderstanding. The listening tasks, ideally,
should be tailored to guide student through the audio, conversation, etc.After the first time listening,
learners are asked to comprehend a greater and more detailed understanding the next time they
listen to the recordings. The following-along tasks should not be to complicated or demand too much
of a responses as it might be distracting and bewildering. Long response-required tasks are more
suitble for advanced students as they need a separate skill to excel. Tasks answers must be checked
after listening so as to assess students intepreation and comprehension of the task.

3
Post-listening tasks include reaction/reflection to content of the text or analysis of the linguistic
features uded to express the content. Reaction to the text focuses on the content itself as the task
requires listeing with purposes. Teachers can apply this into group discussion, peer ask and answer,
information reuses for another tasks, etc. Analysis of the linguistic features, on the other hand,
requires more focus on the grammar and structure used. This helps develop students’ knowledge of
language. Students can enhance their vocabulary and listening skills through analysis of verb forms,
grammar points used to express meaning in the listening.
 Outline listening activities for all levels
The three stages of listening lesson are the pre-listening stage, the during/while listening stage and the
post-listening stage. Following adequately to this framework, teachers are able to deliever an effective
listening lesson to students of all level.

1
Pre-Listening
This is a preparing stage that helps students get familiiar with the listening tasks. Students might
find the listening itself challenging as there are some slangs, colloquialism, or some advanced level
vocabulary. Teachers can prepare a set of question to provoke brainstorming and give students time
to ponder. For examples: What is the situation? What different accents do you hear? How many
peple are speaking? What is the topic? What grammar/tense are they using during the conversation?
Pre-listening tasks give them a bit of information, for intances, the title, the topic, or some short
sentences that help them with their predictation and inferences. According to Steven Brown, there
are two types of pre-listening tasks that can be incorporated, including bottom-up and top-down.
• Bottom-up listening tasks focus on grammar and vocabulary centel to the listening tracks
• Top-down listening tasks require more background knowledge in order to under the listeing
text structure

The pre-listening stage should be brief, correspondingly about 10 to 15 minutes, which followed by a
one to two minutes listening track. It is also important that all students should be on the same page
before moving on to the main listenign tasks.
 Outline listening activities for all levels
2
During/while Listening
The main listening tasks should be assigned during this stage, where students can be enabled to focus
and develop important strategies for language learning. Some main purposes of listening tasks include
listening for gist, listening for main ideas, making inferences and summarizing.

3
Post-Listening
This stage acts as an important springboard for further language practice. Some examples of post-
listening activity are:
• Mining the transcript – After completing the main tasks, teachers can hand out the listening script so
students are able to look over some difficult points contained in the listening track, some
misuderstanding words and phrases. This can be another way for learners to notice and differentiate
spoken and written languages.
• Detecting problems – Teachers can learn about their stuggles and strengths through group or class
discussions.
• Inserting personal opinions – As self-explanatory as it is, students can be asked to express their
opinions, whether they agree or disagree to the speaker’s point of view and give reasons.

Though these are the three reliable listening format, it is not a problem to break from this
format and make the lesson more fun and different accordingly to the students’ learning
styles and needs.
 Activity based methodology activites for all levels
As opposed to asking students to simply be outside observants, listen and jot down notes, activity-based
methodology kindles kids to be active participants with practical activities that teach problem-solving
skills and independent learning by stimulating their senses, such as sight, smell, vision or feeling, and
getting them involved in the subject.

As its self-explanatory name, activity-based teaching method means learning by doing and can be
applied in all subjects and for all skills. It helps students to have better understanding of a lesson,
inspires them to apply their own creative ideas and knowledge in different ways, gives more
opportunities to work independtly as well as in groups. Nevertheless, teachers should be well aware of
different learning styles within classroom so as to adapt a proper procedure and lesson plan.

Learners will be able to memorize and retain information better

through physical and mental involvement in the learning process.
Some other essential skills that students can benefit for their
later social life include teamwork, critical thinking.
Additionally, kids learn how to take responsibilities for their own
learning experiences with hand-ons materials, realistic problems
and scenariors.

Students reading skill can be improved as the reading activities

engaged them actively.
“Students can acquire compentence in language skills if they are
exposed to meaningful language learning activities”
 Teaching contractions for the listening skills
“A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group,
created by omission of internal letters and sounds.” “In most contractions, an apostrophe represents the
missing letters. The most common contractions are made up of verbs, auxiliaries, or modals attached to
other words.” For examples, he would is he’d; I have is I’ve.

Having learned about contractions, most of the time, students expect some words to be pronounced in
some specific ways, such as the pronunciation of they’re to be a shortening of they are, whereas it is a
completely different word that is pronounced exactly the same as there and their.
Further learning of this is to practice production and comprehension of more detailed language points such
as homophones or rhyming words. It is also important for students to understand that many contractions
sound the same as other words and that can lead to questions how it is possible to identify whether a
contraction or its homophone is being said. One way to incorporate this into the listening lesson is ask
students to guess which homophone is meant from the given contexts.

Native speakers produce contractions all the time, especially in daily conversation, without understanding
the importance of these small words, students will not be able to recognize or use them them on daily
basis. A step to master these unique blending of individual words to become more skillful in using these
words regularly and by understand their origins. “Contractions are their own words; they have their
own unique pronunciation. They are not the same as elisions or linking together of words in
English.” Students should understand that contractions are not merely reductions.
 Teaching sound joining for the listening skills
Sound joining is when sounds are joined together or when a sound is inserted between two
others to make them easier to say. For examples, in spoken language, when people say,
“I did it”, the /d/ and /it/ produce the sound /I didit/.

There are four major ways that sounds join in English language, including linking, sound dropping,
sound changing, and extra lettering. Some learners find it confusing when spoken English sounds
sometimes become nearly the same due to continuous streams of sounds or unclear-cut borderlines
between words and make the meaning misunderstood. In fact, during real-life conversation, certain
spoken words are lost, and certain phonemes might be linked together as the messages are attemped
to send across. The closer speakers get to the idea of linking words, as known as joining sounds, the
more natural the speech will sound.

“Native speakers have various devices for dealing with indistinct utterances caused by sound joining.”
Hence, words tend to be heard and assumed within familiar contexts. Native speakers or advanced
English learners can actively predictions about which syntactic formas and lexical items are likely to
occur in some given situation.

Students can learn how to distinguish how words are linked by counting words they can catch during
the listening track playing. Learners who are instructed to focus on accuracy suffer “a devastating
diminuation of phonetic information at the segmental level when they encounter normal speech.”
(Brown 1990)
 Listening techniques
Aside from listening strategies with teacher’s help and listening purpose to keep the learning going, students
should acquire some listening techniques in order to enhance their language skills. Students should not only
practice listening by hearing the words but also try to build habit of let the meaning soak in while listening.
Some of the techniques that might be helpful for students of all level:

1
Improve listening skills from good model
As kids learn how to speak by listening, observing and imitating people around them, students acquire
their listening skills through lots of practices. Depending on students’ English level, teachers should
adapt their graded language when talking to their students and ask them to listen to every word. It is
also more helpful when teachers spend more time to restate their words with students with lower level.
As listeners learn from good model, they enhace their own listening skills.

2
Practice interaction with others
Research shows that people tend to listen more closely to someone whom they know on a more
personal level. Similarly, the more students take time to get to know their peers and teachers, their
hobbies, and so on, the more encouragement they would have for ehancing their listening skills.
Extra time during or after class can be utilized for peer practices, check-ins as to clarify what they
studied and heared from teachers in class.
 Listening techniques
3
Pay attention to body language and hand signal
Another way to sharpen students’ listening skills is to ask them to pay more attention to teachers’ gestures,
body languages, and hand signals. For younger learners, using signals for agreements, disagreements,
commands as non-verbal practices can also be helpful. This approach requires full participation of students
and it easily let teachers know if students don’t pay attention.

4 5
Speak more
More teacher talking time doesn’t mean more
productive listneing lesson and that cannot
ensure if students are actually learning.
Students should be encouraged to spend the
majority of their time to speak up more or talk
to their peers during group or class discussions.
Ultilize Technology
”Listening to others speak is just as informative as
listening to yourself speak.” Teachers can suggest
some useful and educational sites, programs with
movies, documentaries or applications for students to
practice outside of classroom. This can be a good
alternative to exercise listening skills.

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Do extended listening tasks
Another great way to get motivated is to practice more
listening tasks. It can be following up task of the main
listening lessons. Teachers can also encourage students to
build their listening habit with leisure watching or hearing.
Learn vocabulary and grammar
Students should be assigned to learn more
vocabulary and practice grammar points
after each listening sesson as to enhance
their prior knowledge for further learning.
 Presentation skills for the listening skills
This presentation skills refers to brief and up to the point information. This means
that information delivered are generally stick to the facts and avoid complicated
details. The presentation should be organized from most information topic to least.

Mastering some presentation skills can help educators as well as learners to enhance their
reading comprehension as communicative skills involves several languahe skills.
Here are some presentation skills that are useful for everyone:
• Audibility • Energy and Enthusiasm
• Pace • Eye Contact
• Pitch • Gesture and Movement
• Articulation • Stance
• Emphasis • Confidence
• Pause • Use of notes
 Listening purposes
Practicing listening with purposes enables learners with more concentration and better outcomes.
As with other language skills learning process, some listening purposes include:
1 2
Listneing for the main idea Listening for detail
With the objective of grasping the main points and The aim is to guide students to obtain the detailed
general information presented in the audio, information, details that are specific, relevant,
listening for the main idea requires more language important or necessary. Teachers tend to
skills such as skimming and scanning. One big incorporate biographies into this purpose as they
challenge of this listening purpose is that students content lots of great details. For more detailed
sometimes get stuck on some specific details, new guided listenning, a short list of questions should
words or phrases. Some students find it is not be prepared in advance, thus, students will be able
easy to focus on a big picture but mostly pay to listen for these required details and report their
more attention to the new concepts and details. answers after the listening.
Short audio tracks with clearly presented an easily
summarized information, such as news or reports
will best fit for this purpose. 4
Listening for specific vocabulary
3 Listening activitties offer great opportunities to
Listening for a sequence obtain new words and review previously taught
This listening purpose pratices listening orders, vocabularies. Teachers often ask learners to
steps that need to act on. Students learn how to identify and memorize a specific list of words,
get the order right, understand the sequence usually words that are easily categorized.
correctly and follow what each step entails.
 Listening purposes
5
Listening for cultural interest
The more academic the lesson is the more carefully selected the listening activity need to be. With this
practice, students are exposed to more cultural aspect through well-chosen listening tracks, suchs as
listening about special holidays or tradition. Learning about different cultures is an important part of learning
language in general as it enables learners to grasp on more in-depth and academic level. Besides, this
purpose gives learners opportunities to enhace their background knowledge for further learning.

6 7
Listening for attittude and opinions Listening for functional language
As with communication, sometimes it’s The purpose is to present students with useful expression
not easy to interpret what other means in daily conversations. Students learn what to say to
from what they say. “Attitudes, opiniions accept or decline invitations, give suggestions or advice,
and feelings can all be conveyed in etc. Teachers can also pause the listening track and ask
varying degrees from strong students to predict what speakers are going to say during
disagreement to mild criticism. the on-going conversation or situation.
Advanced students should be able to
discern different attitudes and positions,
as well as identify how the speaker feels.”
Some activities that can be incorporated
with this listening purpose include group
discussion, stating agreement or
disagreement and give reasons, etc.
5 activities for teaching listening

1. Simon Says
When it comes to listening lesson, Simon Says
is the most typical listening activity that
practices Totally Physical Response.
• Materials: extra materials are optional
• Prepare: Students can sit in a circle or in
their own seats
• How: Teacher or one of the students can
stand up to be the one who gives direction.
Others will have to follow some simple
commands given and move their bodies in
the way the chosen person direct them to
do, only when the instructor says “simon
says”. Given commands can be some easy
actions or interactions.
This is a good game for practicing and
reviewing vocabulary or grammar structures.
5 activities for teaching listening

2. Back-to-back Interviews
Students can simultaneously practice both listening
and speaking skills with this activity.
• Materials: list of interview questions, blank
papers
• Prepare: Lists of questions related to the lesson
• How: Have two students sit back-to-back in
order to avoid the visual clues from their
conversation. Assign a role as a famous person
to one of the two students and have the other
person ask 5-10 interview questions. Teachers
can help note down the answers that their
partner gives. The goal of this activity is to
guess who the famous person is. Students can
switch roles after one round with a different
famous person.
5 activities for teaching listening

3. What is the Truth?

This can be a great ice breaking activity for getting
to know each others.
• Materials: Blank papers for notting details
• Prepare: Give students some time before each
round to think about their personal stories.
• How: First and foremost, let students get to
know each other by telling their own stories.
Teachers, then, instruct students to include two
or more lies in each story and ask students to
work in pairs to tell each other their personal,
revised stories. Students must listen to their
partner’s story and notice the lies. Students are
awarded with points for any lie they can identify.
Students are encouraged to ask questions for
clues to detect lies in their partner’s story.
5 activities for teaching listening

4. Cloze Lyrics
Another go-to listening game for any age groups and
levels is cloze lyrics, where songs and audio materials
are incorporated.
• Materials: speakers or laptops, printed lyrics with
blanks
• Prepare: a list of level-appropriate songs
• How: A great cloze exercise can be benefited from
songs. Teachers’ job is to get the lyrics of the chosen
song and replace each 5-10 words (depending on the
students’ level) with a blank. Teachers can target
specific words they want their students to listen and
focus on. Then, students will have to fill in the blanks
in the lyrics. For lower-level students, teachers can
play the song more than once.
5 activities for teaching listening

5. TED Talks
TED Talks has always been a great resource for
English learners with all language skills as the
videos are short and considerd interesting.
• Materials: TED Talks video
• Prepare: Review and pick appropriate videos
• How: Play a TED Talks for students (this activity
are more suitable for intermediate and advanced
students). Students must be asked to listen for
main idea within the first time listening through.
Depending on time limit and students’ English
levels, ask them to listen for specific
comprehension questions for the second time
through. Finally, have students listen for opinions
and facts within the third time.
 45-minute lesson plan
Topic: Birthdays

Level: Pre-intermediate Age: 9 – 11 years old

Length: 45 minutes

Language Skills: Listening for details, listening for

Resources: list of vocabulary, key words
specific information, Adverbs of Frequency, Going to cards, guided cards, blank papers, recordings.
TESOL Methodology: Direct Method, Audio-Lingual
Method, Structural Approach, Natural Approach,
Task-based Approach

Lesson Objectives: By the end of the lesson the students will be able to …

Practice listening with Listen for specific information depending on each task.
different purposes (for Spot specific adverbs during the recording.
details and for specific Use different adverbs of frequency and “going to” in sentences.
information). Ask and answer questions using learned grammar point.
 45-minute lesson plan
Stage Activity Description Resource Timing

Teacher can lead the first 5-10 rounds in order to set the actions
aligned with the topic.
Teacher stands in front of the class, students can either sit down or List of
stand up, in their seats or make a circle, as long as teacher can actions:
gather all their attention. • Clap your
hands
Teacher says the action and students will have to follow the
• Shake
command, only when it has “Simon Says”.
others’
Simon Says

For examples, when teacher says, “Simon Says clap your hands”, hands
Warm up

student must follow. Whoever doesn’t do the action, got called out. • Stomp 7
When teacher say ”Shake hands with the one next to you”, students your feet minutes
must do nothing, whoever follows the direction got called out. • Pretend to
When more than 5 students got called out, ask the others to come blow
up with a punishment (chicken dance, jumping jacks, etc.) candles
• Sing happy
Teacher should use commands that are related to the topic, so as
birthday
students can get the idea of what they are going to learn.
In case the game goes on faster than planned, teacher can ask
students to be an instructor to give command.
Introduce the topic: Birthdays
 45-minute lesson plan
Stage Activity Description Resource Timing
Talk about birthdays
Pre-task / Lead in

Introduce the topic: Birthdays

Ask students to ask and answer the following questions:
2
• What’s birthday?
minutes
• When is your birthday?
• How do you celebrate your birthday?

Have students learn a new set of vocabulary before listening to

the recordings.
• Festive
Vocabulary

• Invitation
Teaching 1

List of
• Celebration vocabulary 8
• Anniversary minutes
• Confetti Flashcard

Show each picture and have students guess what the word is.
Read out loud the words and ask students to repeat.
Randomly ask some students for checkup.
 45-minute lesson plan

Stage Activity Description Resource Timing

A 3-minute
Explain to students that they are going to listen to Tom, recording of 4
Sarah, Mike and Alex talking about their birthdays. Write people talking
these names on the the board and write down the following about their
questions that students will have to answer after their birthdays
for details
Listening

listening:
Task 1

7
1. Who usually celebrate their birthday with their friends? List of questions
minutes
2. Who usually celebrate their birthday with their family?
Answers:
3. Who doesn’t usually celebrate their birthday with friends? 1. Sarah
4. Who doesn’t celebrate their birthday at all? 2. Mike
Have students check answers with their partners. 3. Alex
4. Tom
 45-minute lesson plan

Stage Activity Description Resource Timing

Write down the following sentences on the board:

• I always brush my teeth in the morning.
• I usually walk my dog to the park with my sister.
Adverbs of frequency

• I never go to school late.

Grammar point:
Teaching 2

Ask the students if they notice any adverbs used in these sentences. Recordings
8
Introduce the concept of adverbs of frequency: describes how often minutes
Blank papers
an action happens and ask them to write down as many adverbs as
they can.
Go through the usage and location of adverbs.
Have students listen to the recording one more time and note down
how many adverbs of frequency are there, then compare their
answers.
 45-minute lesson plan
Stage Activity Description Resource Timing

for specific information

Explain to the students that they are going to listen to the
recording one more time for specific given informations. Recording
Listening

Put students into pairs and give each pair a set of Key Words
Task 2

Key Word 7
Cards (make sure to mix them up). Play the recording.
Cards minutes
Ask students to match the key words cards with the person who
says them from memory, then ask them to check with their Answer key
partners.

Give students guided cards with examples of questions and

Ask and Answer

asnswers, for examples:

Key Word
Follow up

When’s Alex’s birthday? – His birthday is on April 27th.

Cards 4
Where did Sarah celebrate her birthday with her friends? – minutes
She celebrated her birthday at home. Guided Cards
Ask students to ask and answer questions in pairs using the key
word cards and the given guided cards.
 45-minute lesson plan

Stage Activity
Homework Description Resource Timing
Extended
Practice

Handout worksheet as homework for students to pratice more 2

Homework
grammar: adverbs of frequency minutes

Tell students that they are going to listen again and focus on
grammar.
*Backup activity

Students must say “Stop!” whenever they hear an adverb during

Spot it!

the recordings playing. Blank papers

7
Ask them to note down how many time each adverb used in the minutes
Recording
recordings and have them compare their answers with their
partners.
Play the recording one more time to check up the answers.
Attached Materials
• 3-minute recording • Q&A Guided Cards

When’s Alex’s birthday?

– His birthday is on April 27th.

Where did Sarah celebrate her birthday?

– She celebrated her birthday at home.

Where does Mike come from?

– He comes from Australia.

• Key Word Cards

Mike never siblings family Japan

restaurant sometimes usually Sarah coffee shop

always Alex France usually Autralia

friends at home Tom Africa always

 60-minute lesson plan
Topic: News

Level: Advanced Age: 15 – 18 years old

Length: 60 minutes
Language Skills: Listening for gist, Listening for specific
information, Past tenses, Reported Speech
TESOL Methodology: Whole Language Approach, Natural
Approach, Task-based Approach, Audio-Visual Approach,
Communicative Approach
Resources: List of words, Blank papers,
Markers, Suggested questions, K-W-L
Worksheet, Recordings, Examples of mind
map, A mind map with blanks, Reported
Speech note, Sticky notes.

Lesson Objectives: By the end of the lesson the students will be able to …

Practice listening for gist and reading for Develop the sub-skills of listening for gist and listening for specific
specific information; Use past tense in information.
reporting news; Practice reported Practice past tense and reported speech and apply grammar
speech; Report news points in reporting news.
 60-minute lesson plan

Stage Activity Description Resource Timing

Draw what you hear

Prepare a list of words (can be vocabulary from previous lesson or

relevant to news) – radio, television, newspaper, reporter,
List of
& Whisper

audience, etc.
Warm up

words
Have students make 2-3 lines. The person at one end of the line 7
Blank
will receive a word, then whisper to the person in front of them. minutes
papers
Students in line will have to pass along the word and the last one
will have to draw whatever they hear. Markers
Team with the closest answer will get a point.

Present the topic: News

Ask students the following questions:
Discussion

• How often do catch up on news?

Lead in

Suggested 3
• What means of media do you use to get news updates? questions minutes
• What kinds of information are you interested in?
Have studentst ask and answer in pairs then pick some to
volunteer to report.
 60-minute lesson plan
Stage Activity Description Resource Timing

List of words:
Prepare several pictures of different news as examples for
news areas.
• Arts
Vocabuary
Teaching 1

• Business
Show each news on the the projector, give them some time to • Entertainment 10
guess and ask students which area of news it is. • Politics minutes
Read a word and have students repeat to that words. • Science
Then ask them to give one or two examples for each area. • Technology
• Sport

Explain to students what K-W-L stands for (What I Know –

What I Wonder – What I Learned).
Hand out the K-W-L Worksheet and ask students to fill in the
Pre-listening:

first 2 column as much as they can, and compare their input

K-W-L
Task 1

with their peers. K-W-L 7

For the ‘What I Know’ column, ask students to write down Worksheet minutes
different means of news and different kinds of information
they know.
For the ‘What I Wonder’ column, students can note down
whatever they wonder before listening to the recording.
 60-minute lesson plan
Stage Activity Description Resource Timing
ing for details Main ideas and supporting details

Introduce a mind map example and ask students which

information in the map is main idea and which information are
facts and details. Mind map
Teaching 2

examples
8
Explain to students thay they are going to listen to 4 recordings minutes
contents different news with different pieces of information and 4 news
areas. recordings
Play one recording at a time, pause and ask students to identify
main ideas, topic sentences and area of each news.

Let the students know that they are going to listen to these Recordings
recordings one more time. This time they will have to use the
Task 2

7
mind map to note down facts and supporting details of each
Mind map minutes
news.
 60-minute lesson plan
Stage Activity Description Resource Timing
Reported Speech

Quickly review a learned grammar point from previous lesson – Examples of

Reported Speech reported
Teaching 3

speech
Ask students the following questions 8
• Explain how/when reported speech is used minutes
Reported
• Why we must use reported speech
speech
Have students finish a review Reported Speech worksheet. worksheet

Students can team up in 2-3 people, choose one news from the
recording. Use information gathered in mind map to re-write the
news using their own word.
News report

Remind students to include reported speech in their news. They A0 Papers

can decorate and add inllustrations as they want.
Task 3

Color 7
Some required criteria for their news: pencil/markers minutes
• When/Where the event happened Mind maps
• What is the event?
• Area of the events
• At least 2 reported speeches
 60-minute lesson plan

Stage Activity Description Resource Timing

Vote and feedback Display and homework
Follow up

Have students display their works on the wall. Students’ 3

Handout homework to pratice more reported speech. works minutes
*Backup activities

Ask students to go around to vote for the news posters

they like best. 7
Sticky notes
Use sticky notes to write down 2 things they like and 1 minutes
feedback they have for their peers’ work.
Attached Materials
• 4.30-minute recording • K-W-L Worksheet

• Reported Speech notes

• Example of mind map