Listening problems in class

Sometimes teachers have questions about "how to do listening tasks". Here are some common questions and answers to them

How to convince my students that listening is important?

To convince them that it is important to do listening tasks can be done by explaining why it is important. Perhaps, it will be a good idea to create a Britain-like atmosphere in the classroom so that students could feel that if they fail to understand the audio/video the communication will not happen. 

Ask them a bewildering question. If students have different opinions on the topic of the audio, doing listening will be more interesting and exciting, as it will clinch an argument.

Can we teach other aspect of the language through listening? 

Doing listening activities is a good way of learning grammar and vocabulary in context.

So, perhaps it’s advisable to give new material in pre-listening activities. At this point, a teacher can also start drilling it. Ask students questions, which will enable them to use new words or new grammar constructions.

After listening students can also use this material while retelling what they’ve heard and then while sharing their opinion. 

What about dictation?

Dictation can help improve listening skills but it should be done in a proper way. 

Pre-listening activities are important as they well give students an idea of what they’re going to listen to. What’s more, this is the stage when students will become familiar with new vocabulary and grammar that will be in the audio.

After listening to the audio, a teacher can organise a discussion to make the audio clearer to the students.

During the listening, students should take notes: it will simplify their task.

Then, a teacher plays audio again but this time a teacher divides it into sentences and students write a dictation.

This task can also improve their spelling. 

Can we listen to songs? 

I suppose that songs are a good means of teaching listening. It is fun, enjoyable and what’s more, students can learn better the culture of the English speaking country.

There are a lot of activities that can be done with songs. In addition, it is a good way of developing listening skills as words in a song can be sometimes hard to distinguish and these tasks will help them to be better at doing it.

So, there are a lot of advantages in listening to songs in the classroom as a listening task. 

Can we play the recording again and again? 

Usually the recording is played twice but if there are some problems you can play it for the 3rd time but divide it into parts.

I think it’s a good way of doing listening activities if students have problems. First of all you give two chances to listen to it and to try to get the idea. If it’s still difficult, you play a small part of the audio (perhaps 3 sentences) and analyse it. After such 3rd playing, students will definitively know the context of the audio and they will be able to discuss it.

So, if students need the recording to be played for several times, a teacher should know how to do it in a proper way.