How to work with Listenings

Two processes are involved in listening. Top-down listening uses background

knowledge and contextualise words to help understanding. Bottom-up
listening uses sounds, words, and other small units to create meaning. These
processes are complementary; listening for only the big picture but not the details
is as ineffective as trying to understand every single word your listening.

Top-down listening strategies

• Before lecture, review and predict lecture topics

 Review assigned material

 Consider how new information will relate to previous lectures

• During lecture, identify the organization pattern (i.e., problem/solution,
literature review)

 Note the number of main topics being covered and how they are
related

 Listen for phrases that introduce, summarize, or shift topics

• After lecture, continue to engage with the topic

 Review your notes for any information that is incomplete

 Go to friends or go to office hours with questions about information

you missed
Bottom-up listening strategies
• Focus on stressed words

 Listen for longer, louder words (usually nouns, verbs, adjectives,

and adverbs). These words carry the most important information.
• Pay attention to repeated terms and pauses

 Take these as cues for possible key points in the lecture

• Keep going

 Avoid trying to understand every word. In spoken language, not all

words are important nor are they always grammatical

Listening with a Purpose

A student puts on a pair of headphones and hits “play” on the computer screen. He/she
is sitting down to watch a movie – in English – in order to improve his/her listening
skills. What’s the purpose of this exercise? While “improve listening comprehension”
sounds like a good purpose, it’s not. Students need specific exercises, each with a
specific purpose that goes beyond just “listening”. They can listen to a podcast with the
purpose of identifying three future online shopping trends. They can listen to a
conversation with the purpose of identifying the speaker’s vacation plans. But there
should always be a purpose to the listening exercise. Be sure to communicate what it
is.

From Passive to Active

In the above situation where the student sits back and just listens, there is a
misconception that he/she will passively improve his/her listening skills – just by
listening. Students must be active in their listening exercises. They must be thinking of
answers, options or ideas.

Give them questions to answer or information to find out, and have them report back
their findings. Separate them into groups and have one group listen for one set of
information and the other group for another, and then get together and share. Just
make sure they are not simply “sitting and listening”!

Clear Instructions
Do they have to complete a True/False exercise after the listening? Fill in blanks as
they listen? Write down the answers to the questions, or raise their hands and say
them out loud? Students must be absolutely clear on what is expected of them.

Use Variety
Do you always give your class song lyrics with gaps they must complete? Add some
spice to your listening exercises and mix it up! What if you give two different groups two
different sets of worksheets where the gaps are different? Students in Group A must
then work with students in Group B and ask each other questions to find out the
missing information. The class listens to the song at the end to confirm that the
answers are right.

Keep it Real
We’re all more than familiar with the handy little audio CDs that come with our course
book. You should absolutely take advantage of the amount of listening material you
have available there, but don’t forget to use some real audio from time to time.
Now, movies, TV shows and songs are what usually come to mind, but what about TV
commercials, weather reports or podcasts? There are many more sources of real
audio out there, most of which are not too hard for students if they are approached
correctly.

Do the Work
If students are really committed to improving their listening, they must understand this
one crucial fact: they got to do the work. This usually involves doing at least one short
listening exercise, several times a week – even every day. They can watch a short
video on YouTube or CNN.com every morning. Or listen to an audio book for 10
minutes every day. In class, be sure to give them listening comprehension
exercises every day, maybe even several in one class. The more work they do, the
faster they’ll improve.

Teach Them to Check

Just as essential as understanding when they listen is the checking for
comprehension or asking for clarification. If students learn to ask someone to clarify a
point, they’ll increase their odds of improved communication – what they didn’t get at
first, they may understand the second time around. Be sure to teach them to:

o Check for meaning: He said he was feeling blue. Does that mean he
was feeling sad?

o Ask for clarification: What did he mean when he said he was feeling

blue?

o Re-phrase: He said he was feeling unhappy and sad, right?

These are strategies that go a long way towards improving listening comprehension.
Teach them these skills, and you’ll be teaching your students to be active and take
their listening comprehension into their own hands.

Students often believe that to improve their listening they must simply exercise their
“ear”. But it’s important for students to understand that it’s not as simple as that – the
ear is not a simple muscle to train; listening comprehension is a lot more complex than
that. Merely sitting and listening to something for hours won’t do the trick; they can
learn a lot more from a focused 15-minute listening exercise.

What are the steps in a listening lesson? 

The teacher can facilitate the development of listening ability by creating listening
lessons that guide the learner through three stages: pre-listening, the listening task,
and post-listening.

Engage the learners in a pre-listening activity. 

This activity should establish the purpose of the listening activity and activate the brains
by encouraging the learners to think about and discuss what they already know about
the content of the listening text. This activity can also provide the background needed
for them to understand the text, and it can focus attention on what to listen for.

Do the listening task itself. 

The task should involve the listener in getting information and in immediately doing
something with it. 

Engage in a post-listening activity. 

This activity should help the listener to evaluate success in carrying out the task and to
integrate listening with the other language skills. The teacher should encourage
practice outside of the classroom whenever possible

Listening Lesson Example

Do a pre-listening activity: 
Ask the learners questions about what happens at the weekly meetings. Ask
specifically about schedule changes. Show any form or the weekly calendar.
 Discuss its use and demonstrate how to fill it out if necessary. 

Describe the task: 

Tell the learners they will be listening to a tape of a meeting. On the
form/calendar they are to write down the schedule they hear. Demonstrate.

Have the learners do the task: 

Play the tape while they fill out the form.

Do a post-listening activity: 
Ask the learners how they thought they did. Was it easy or difficult? Why? They
may listen again if they want to. Have them compare their forms with a partner
or check the information by filling a form out as a whole class. 

Then have the learner be the boss and write a script with schedule changes.
Have them practice in pairs or small groups giving and recording schedule
changes.

 
Additional strategies for in-class listening practice:

 Use an interactive approach:  Activate knowledge using the

both top-down and bottom-up title
processing  Predict what the listening will
 Engage in pair work and/or be about.
group work  Use prior knowledge relating
 Motivate yourself to listen new information to prior
 Listen to a variety of different knowledge making associations
kinds of listening texts between what you already
 Listen to things you enjoy, you know and what you hear.
are interested in  Predict what language will
 Lower anxiety about listening come next.
 Try to understand the reason  Predict the purpose by the
for a particular message context
 Plan what you’re going to listen  Make inferences when
for information is not stated or
 Decide what the main purpose missed.
of listening is.  Guess the meaning of unknown
 Preview vocabulary. words.
 Use visual clues (pictures, body  Verify hypotheses.
language, slides).
  Take notes of information to
remember.
 Provide a personal response to
the information or ideas
presented in the listening.
 Translate into your native
language
 Ask questions for clarification
 Ask the speaker to repeat
 Use intonation and pausing to
segment words and phrases
 Recognize tones/intonation
features
 Recognize discourse markers
 Identify stressed words
 Listen for the gist: Guess the
overall meaning
 Listen for structures
 Listen for transition
words/organization markers
(i.e. cause and effect, compare
and contrast)
 Listen for content words.
 Listen for details.
 Listen for linking words.
 Listen for new keywords.
 Listen for phrases.
 Listen for specific vocabulary
words.
 Listen for pronunciation of
vocabulary words.
 Listen for tone, intonation,
stress
 Listen to a variety of different
accents.
 Paraphrase what you hear
 Act out what you hear
 Self-monitor
 Check how well you
understood
 Identify listening problems and
plan how to improve them

What kinds of listening tasks are appropriate? 

There are numerous activities to choose from for developing listening skills. Lund
(1990) has categorized them according to nine responses that can be observed as
comprehension checks:

1. Doing: the listener responds physically such as in Total Physical Response

(TPR);
2. Choosing: the listener selects from alternatives such as pictures, objects, texts,
or actions;
3. Transferring: the listener transforms the message such as drawing a route on
map, or filling in a chart;
4. Answering: the listener answers questions about the text;
5. Condensing: the listener takes notes or makes an outline;
6. Extending: the listener goes beyond the text by continuing the story or solving
a problem;
7. Duplicating: the listener simply repeats or translates the message;
8. Modeling: the listener performs a similar task, e.g. gives instructions to a
coworker after listening to a model;
9. Conversing: the listener is an active participant in a face-to-face conversation.

Listening Strategies and Applications

4.1 Pre-listening

4.1.1 Mixed-Up Charades

4.1.2 What was the message: “Who ate the cookies”

4.1.3 Film watching: Hearing ears

4.1.4 Jeopardy

4.1.5 Vocabulary competition

4.2 During Listening

4.2.1 Note taking skills

4.2.2 Make predictions: Hearing between lines

4.3 After Listening

4.3.1 Review notes: Oral summary

4.3.2 Act upon the message_ short dialogue

4.3.3 Stating a Preference and Giving Reasons

4.3.5 Twist the ending