How can we really motivate our students to listen?

Listening activities are quite often challenging for our students. So, we need to motivate them.    

Here you can find lesson procedure and listening techniques as well

In classroom we need to recreate the motivation.

Giving students a choice about which piece of information they would like to listen to from any given listening task is a way of creating an effective reason for listening. So, for example, you could ask your learners to find answers to their own questions.

In order to motivate students to do listening activities, I suppose they should be first of all well aware of the aim. There will be no motivation if they think that it is just an exercise. They need to understand the importance of learning to listen and to get the necessary information.

What’s more, they need the purpose. Why is this information important? What can we do with it? So, explaining the task, the results of it and what it leads to is really necessary.

Then, giving audios or videos with native speakers’ acting can also motivate students. They will see that these are English people and will look up to them.

Giving relevant to the topic audios is also crucial. I believe that students will also be interested in the audios which raise topical issues and which are focused on the issues they enjoy. 

Lesson procedure:

•             Brainstorm the content of the listening from the topic ;

•             Elicit a list of possible vocabulary and content, writing the ideas on the board ;

•             Divide the learners into groups, with one person nominated as "chairperson". Each group writes 5 questions they have for the speaker ;

•             Students listen and see if they can find the answer to their question ;

•             The chairperson presents their information to the class.

Listening techniques:

•             Always have a lead-in to interest students in the topic ;

•             Make a link between the topic and the students' own lives and experiences. Make the task personalised ; 

•             Have a pre-listening task which helps students to focus on the task that you require them to do when they listen.