Developing Listening

Listening facilitates language acquisition. It helps in picking up chunks of language, building one’s
vocabulary

“Listening looks easy, but it’s not simple. Every head is a world”

Listening plays an important role in acquiring language, whether it is first, second, or third language. It
forms the foundation on which language acquisition takes place. Speaking develops through listening.

As mentioned above listening facilitates language acquisition. It helps in picking up chunks of language,
building one’s vocabulary, improving pronunciation, and developing one’s knowledge about the
language. However, it has been the most neglected skill in the second-language classrooms and in the
school curricula. Students do not get sufficient opportunities to develop their listening skills. In
classrooms, students only listen to their teacher – explanations and instructions given by the teacher. If
you look at the contexts outside the classroom, we listen to many different people for many different
purposes. Also, we do not just listen but we do respond and react to what they say. It is, therefore,
important for teachers to create authentic listening situations in the classroom so that students can
develop their listening comprehension skills.

Create exercises on listening classroom language

Listen and repeat

Listen and summarise

Sub-skills of Listening
1. Ability to retain chunks of language of different lengths for short periods;
2. Ability to discriminate between the distinctive sounds of the target language
3. Ability to recognize the stress patterns of the words
4. Ability to recognize the rhythmic structure of English
5. Ability to recognize the functions of stress and intonation to signal the information structure of
utterances
6. Ability to identify words in stressed and unstressed situations
7. Ability to recognize reduced forms of words
8. Ability to distinguish word boundaries
9. Ability to recognize typical word-order patterns in the target language
10. Ability to recognize vocabulary used in core conversational topics
11. Ability to guess the meaning of words from the contexts in which they appear
12. Ability to detect key words (i.e. those which identify topics and propositions)
13. Ability to recognize grammatical word classes
14. Ability to recognize cohesive devices in spoken language
15. Ability to recognize elliptical forms of grammatical units and sentences
16. Ability to detect sentence constituents
17. Ability to distinguish between major and minor constituents
18. Ability to detect meaning expressed in different grammatical forms/ sentence types
19. Ability to recognize the communicative function of utterances, according to situations,
participants and goals
20. Ability to reconstruct or infer situations, goals, participants and procedures
21. Ability to use real-world knowledge and experience to work out purpose, goals, settings, and
procedures
22. Ability to predict outcomes from events described
23. Ability to infer links and connections between events
24. Ability to detect causes and effects from events
25. Ability to distinguish between literal and implied meanings
26. Ability to identify and reconstruct topics and coherent structure from ongoing discourse
involving two or more speakers
27. Ability to recognize coherence in discourse, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting
idea, given information, new information, generalization and exemplification
28. Ability to process speech at different rates
29. Ability to process speech containing pauses, errors, and corrections
30. Ability to make use of facial, paralinguistic, and other clues to work out meaning
31. Ability to adjust listening strategies to different kinds of listeners, purposes, or goals and
32. Ability to signal comprehension or lack of comprehension, verbally and non-verbally
Types of Listening Activities

Type of activity Example

Listen and identify Listen and identify the objects in the classroom
Listen and identify the objects children bring to the
classroom (pencils, erasers, chocolates etc.)
Listen and identify the pictures children draw
Listen and do (TPR) Teacher may give instructions which the students
follow
Clap your hands/ close your eyes/ jump like a frog/
fly like a plane
Simon says game
Listen and perform Miming a morning routine like brushing your
teeth, washing your hands, combing your hair, etc
Listen and respond Clap once if it is true ( I am a teacher)
Clap twice if it is wrong ( I am a driver)
Listen and repeat Rhymes, chants, sounds and words
Listen and colour , listen and draw, listen and Draw pictures, color the objects etc
make

Format for a listening Lesson

Pre-listening

 Establish context
 Create motivation for listening
 Pre-teach only critical vocabulary

While listening

 General questions on context and attitude of speakers

 Pre-set questions
 Intensive listening
 Checking answers to questions

Post-listening

 Functional language in listening passage

 Learners infer the meaning of unknown words from the sentences in which they appear
 Final play; learners look at transcript
Developing Speaking: Some simple activities
Activity: 1 (Pair Work) Each teacher should say what he/she can do and what he/she can’t do

Activity: 2 (Pair Work with a new partner) Interview each other

Sit in pairs, ask questions to each other and answer them. Once you complete, you can swap
your turns
1. If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why?
2. If you could talk to any one person in the world who would it be and why?
3. If you were an animal, what would you be and why?
4. Which is your favourite movie and why?
5. What is the funniest/ silliest thing you have ever done?
6. If you could ask God to solve one problem in the world today what would it be and why?
7. What was the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about the new
textbook?
8. Tell me one thing that you really like about yourself
9. If you had to give up one of your senses (hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting) which would it
be and why?
If I give you Rs 50,000 how will you spend it?

Activity: 3 (Mingle Activity) Ask questions to get the following as answers

1. I’m fine, thank you.

2. Mr. Chandrababu Naidu
3. Talking with you right now
4. Amaravathi
5. No, I don’t
6. A great cricketer
7. 4th June
8. 15th August 1947
9. Jawaharlal Nehru
10. In the Auditorium