A framework for planning a listening skills lesson

In this article I intend to outline a framework that can be used to design a listening lesson that will develop your
students' listening skills and look at some of the issues involved.

 The basic framework

 Pre-listening

 While listening

 Post-listening

 Applying the framework to a song

 Some conclusions

The basic framework

The basic framework on which you can construct a listening lesson can be divided into three main stages.

 Pre-listening, during which we help our students prepare to listen.

 While listening, during which we help to focus their attention on the listening text and guide the development of
their understanding of it.

 Post-listening, during which we help our students integrate what they have learnt from the text into their existing
knowledge.

Pre-listening
There are certain goals that should be achieved before students attempt to listen to any text. These are
motivation, contextualisation, and preparation.

 Motivation
It is enormously important that before listening students are motivated to listen, so you should try to select a text
that they will find interesting and then design tasks that will arouse your students' interest and curiosity.

 Contextualisation
When we listen in our everyday lives we hear language within its natural environment, and that environment gives us
a huge amount of information about the linguistic content we are likely to hear. Listening to a tape recording in a
classroom is a very unnatural process. The text has been taken from its original environment and we need to design
tasks that will help students to contextualise the listening and access their existing knowledge and expectations to
help them understand the text.

 Preparation
To do the task we set students while they listen there could be specific vocabulary or expressions that students
will need. It's vital that we cover this before they start to listen as we want the challenge within the lesson to be
an act of listening not of understanding what they have to do.
 While listening
When we listen to something in our everyday lives we do so for a reason. Students too need a reason to listen that
will focus their attention. For our students to really develop their listening skills they will need to listen a number
of times - three or four usually works quite well - as I've found that the first time many students listen to a text
they are nervous and have to tune in to accents and the speed at which the people are speaking.

Ideally the listening tasks we design for them should guide them through the text and should be graded so that
the first listening task they do is quite easy and helps them to get a general understanding of the text. Sometimes
a single question at this stage will be enough, not putting the students under too much pressure.

The second task for the second time students listen should demand a greater and more detailed understanding of
the text. Make sure though that the task doesn't demand too much of a response. Writing long responses as they
listen can be very demanding and is a separate skill in itself, so keep the tasks to single words, ticking or some sort
of graphical response.

The third listening task could just be a matter of checking their own answers from the second task or could lead
students towards some more subtle interpretations of the text.

Listening to a foreign language is a very intensive and demanding activity and for this reason I think it's very
important that students should have 'breathing' or 'thinking' space between listenings. I usually get my students
to compare their answers between listenings as this gives them the chance not only to have a break from the
listening, but also to check their understanding with a peer and so reconsider before listening again.

Post-listening
There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take. These are reactions to the content of the text,
and analysis of the linguistic features used to express the content.

 Reaction to the text

Of these two I find that tasks that focus students reaction to the content are most important. Again this is
something that we naturally do in our everyday lives. Because we listen for a reason, there is generally a following
reaction. This could be discussion as a response to what we've heard - do they agree or disagree or even believe
what they have heard? - or it could be some kind of reuse of the information they have heard.

 Analysis of language
The second of these two post-listening task types involves focusing students on linguistic features of the text.
This is important in terms of developing their knowledge of language, but less so in terms of developing students'
listening skills. It could take the form of an analysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or vocabulary
or collocation work. This is a good time to do form focused work as the students have already developed an
understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meanings much easier.

Applying the framework to a song

Here is an example of how you could use this framework to exploit a song:

 Pre-listening
o Students brainstorm kinds of songs
o Students describe one of their favourite songs and what they like about it
o Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a love song

 While listening
o Students listen and decide if the song is happy or sad
o Students listen again and order the lines or verses of the song
o Students listen again to check their answers or read a summary of the song with errors in and correct them.

 Post-listening
o Focus on content
 Discuss what they liked / didn't like about the song
 Decide whether they would buy it / who they would buy it for
 Write a review of the song for a newspaper or website
 Write another verse for the song
o Focus on form
 Students look at the lyrics from the song and identify the verb forms
 Students find new words in the song and find out what they mean
 Students make notes of common collocations within the song

Conclusion
Within this article I have tried to describe a framework for listening development that could be applied to any
listening text. This isn't the only way to develop our students listening or to structure a listening lesson, but it is a
way that I have found to be effective and motivating for my students.

Teaching Listening: The Lesson Plan

Objectives:

 to use RA in the second language classroom to develop listening skills alongside conversation skills

 to raise awareness of stories and histories that they might otherwise not be hearing through conventional
media sources

 to create a lesson plan that is fluid and flexible and responds to students’ needs and interests (vs
exclusively privileging the interests of the teacher). Create opportunities to scuba dive the content (that
is, an opportunity to stop and dig deeper) vs just snorkeling through in order to complete the task by a
certain date.

 for each student to find a balance between the use of the aural text and the written text while growing
their ability to listen to increasingly longer and more complex stories.

 to create further connections between listening and speaking and writing and reading

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Introduction, pre-listening activities: (1 class period + homework)

 Set the context and create motivation for the students using images, audio, music, big questions, etc
 Brainstorming activities to help students pull together vocabulary and other knowledge they have as a way
to anticipate content.

Strategy building: what activities can be done in class to intentionally develop listening skills?
Listening activities: (1-2 class periods + homework)

Think about different pathways that students can pursue as a way to develop listening strategies and
proficiency. Find a balance for this episode between activities that promote extensive listening (that is, listening
to large chunks and asking general questions about context, attitude, tone etc) and intensive listening (shorter
segments with questions that require a greater focus on detail).

 What parts of the listening should be done in class? What parts should be assigned outside of class?
 What questions/tasks will be asked of the students and how will that change if it is in class vs outside of
class?
 What can students do together as a small group/pairs vs on their own?

Strategy building: How do we encourage global listening comprehension vs the panic of not understanding every
single word?

Post-listening: (1-2 class periods + homework)

Making connections to the world and building conversational skills:

 What additional resources are available that would give us an additional perspective on this story?
 What larger questions can we talk about after having listened to this story?

Strategy building: Creating ways for students to circle back and check in about their listening skills: what
worked? what didn’t? how do you know? how do you need to adapt your listening for the next episode?

Extension activities:

Create a small follow up project that involves writing and speaking as a way to synthesize what was learned.
Assignments will vary based upon the topic of the story. Examples:

 Write or record a Public Service Announcement in Spanish

 Create a radio show with music, readings, interviews that further develops questions/ideas raised in the RA
crónica
 Create a debate in which students take sides on a certain issue and develop those points of view more fully

An ESL Listening Lesson Plan Template

I Had no Idea, too

I’m always surprised when I get reader questions or talk to people preparing for their upcoming job interviews that
they don’t know how to make a basic lesson plan. But, it’s not so crazy and I actually had no system of any sort until
I took the CELTA course a few years back. After that course, I could recite the basic lesson plan in my sleep!
Thank you CELTA! (If anyone is interested in doing the CELTA course in Korea, you’ll need to see this post: Is it
possible to do the CELTA in Korea?)
The ESL listening lesson plan that I’m going to share with you today is modelled after that and it can provide you a
solid foundation upon which to expand and adjust to suit the needs of your own class. There are five basic ESL
lesson plan steps and one optional step for a class focused on listening that I’ll describe below.

Without Further Ado, Here’s the ESL Listening Plan Template

Step #1: Set the Context

It’s really difficult for our students if we start the class off by getting straight into the task. Think of a car on a
cold, cold winter day (I’m from Canada!). First of all, all sensible people will plug their car in overnight in order to
keep a bit of current running through the engine. Then, you put on your cold-weather gear for a little sprint out to
the car and cross your fingers, hoping it’ll start. Once it does, you go back into the house for a few minutes to give
it some time to get the juices flowing and ready to go. If you neglect warming up your car, it may start but you’ll
cause more wear and tear than if you gave it a few minutes to get going which is going to cost you in the long-run.

What I’m saying is that you need to help your students ease into the lesson by letting them get used to speaking
English again. They also come into your classes with plenty of prior knowledge so it can be really useful if you take
advantage of this so that later on in the lesson, students can connect the old with the new.

During one of my CELTA lessons, I was given a listening exercise dealing with medical dilemmas. I started off the
class by asking students to talk with their partner for a couple of minutes about any medical dilemmas that they’ve
seen or heard in the news the past few years.

Step #2: Pre-Listening Task

In the pre-listening task, you move from the more general of step #1 into the more specific as you now begin to
focus on the actual listening exercise that your students are going to do. I often like to do prediction exercises
where I reveal a little bit of information and then students have to make a guess about something. Then, in the
next step they’ll have to listen to see if their guess was correct. It’s the perfect way to give your students a
reason to listen.

However, in the case of this medical dilemma lesson, the vocabulary was quite difficult and I was sure that most of
the students in the class wouldn’t be familiar with a lot of it. I gave the students a little worksheet to do with
their partner to help familiarize themselves with the key words and then I asked some “CCQ’s” (concept checking
questions) in order to make sure they really understood the words.

Step #3: Gist Listening Task

Students will listen to the passage twice. The first time is to get the big picture and then the second is to get the
finer details. If they get everything the first time, it’s too easy. If they need more than two times, it’s too
difficult.

You should always give your students a reason to listen or read something so be sure to set a task. But, make it
pretty easy such as a few True/False questions dealing with the big picture stuff, or they can see if their
prediction from the previous stage was true.

Students compare answers and then you can quickly check. But, don’t get into the nitty-gritty details at this stage-
that come’s next.
Step #4: Main Listening Task

In this stage, the students will listen a second time to the passage. Give them a task such as short answer or fill-
in-the-blanks questions. They can be a bit trickier and focused on some of the nuances at this point.

Have students again compare answers with a partner and then check as a class. You can go into the finer details if
necessary.

Step #5: Post-Listening Task

I usually like to have students give their opinion about something that they heard in the listening. For the medical
dilemma one, the woman in the story wanted the doctor to help her commit suicide but it was illegal in her country.
The question was whether or not doctors should be able to help patients do this.

(Optional) Step #6: Speaking Task

I often like to throw in a speaking task at the end of a listening or reading lesson because it can lighten up the
mood a little bit and lots of speaking is often what students expect in our classes! For the previous example, I had
students switch partners and then I gave them a new medical dilemma. They had to assign for/against roles and
then have a mini 5-minute debate. They switched partners again and this time changed roles.

TOP 10 LISTENING ACTIVITIES (WITHOUT A CD)

08JAN2013

Listening practice activities to use in your ESL Kids Classes which do not require CDs.

Listening is a really important skill and there are lots of activities we can do in class to help
develop this ability which do not require a formal listening practice set up (CDs, videos, etc.). Of course, having
regular listenings in class is great but we can also combine this with listening to the teacher and fellow
students. Below are some fun and interactive ways to provide listening practice in your lessons.

Listen and draw a story

The teacher reads or makes up a story and as the students listen they draw the different scenes. You can help
them by explaining which scene to draw. This can be done individually or in small groups on larger paper. This
really helps you to see if the students are understanding and they will often ask questions if they don’t understand
(because they’ll be so keen to draw the picture!)

Adjectives draw

After teaching various adjectives (big, small, long, short, tall, high, low, etc.) give each S a piece of paper. The
teacher says an adjective / noun combination and the students have to draw it (e.g draw a long snake, draw a big
house, etc.). It is fun to make silly words (draw a small elephant). The teacher should also draw so he/she can
compare with the students’ pictures at the end.
Blindfold walk

This is really fun. Teach: go forward, go backwards, (3) steps, turn right / left. Then place a blindfold on a
student and direct him/her around the room to eventually pick up a flashcard or object (e.g. “Go forward 3 steps,
turn right, go forward 5 steps, now go backwards 2 steps, turn left, etc.). Finally, have students work in pairs – one
blindfolded and one giving directions.

Listening with flashcards

Scatter a lot of flashcards that students have already leaned around the room and have the students sit on
floor. Make up a story and incorporate all of the flashcard pictures … as you say the flashcard word the student
nearest that card must touch it. For example, if students have learned lots of animal vocab the story could start
“Once upon a time there was a farmer who had some cows (touch), sheep (touch) and pigs (touch). One day he was
surprised to see lots of new animals on his farm. Next to the gate was a zebra (touch) and in the pond was a hippo
(touch …), etc, etc.”.

Secret Message

Make two teams and have each stand in a line (parallel with each other). Take two students from the front of each
line outside the classroom and whisper a sentence to them (e.g. “Tonight it is going to rain and tomorrow it is going
to be sunny”). Then the students come back and whisper the sentence to the next S, who in turn whispers it to the
next, and so on down the line. The student at the end either writes the correct sentence on the board or says the
sentence to the teacher (depending on the level of the class). Points are awarded: 2 points for a perfect sentence,
1 point for nearly perfect and a bonus point if the team finished first and got the sentence right. Then do it again
with two new students.

Guess what it is

Put students into teams of 3 or 4. Then everyone sits and listens carefully to the teacher for a description of
something or someone (e.g. “This is an animal which lives in Africa and Asia loves taking baths. It flaps its ears to
keep cool. It has a really long nose” – answer: elephant). Then each team discusses what they think it is before
giving an answer. You can give the description sentence by sentence, encouraging the students to guess each time,
until one group wins. You can start off with easy clues and slow speech but then progressively choose more
difficult words and speak more quickly so the students really have to concentrate.

Put in order

Put your students in teams and have them sit together. Give each group around 10 objects or picture flashcards –
each team must have the same things. The T now says all the words for items in front of the students … the
students listen but mustn’t touch the objects. Finally, the teacher says “Put the objects in the correct order” and
the teams have to put in order the objects in the order that the teacher said them. Make sure you write down the
order as you say it or else you’ll forget!

Listening dialogs

Before class, prepare some dialogs based on the lesson theme. Also, prepare some comprehension questions based
on the dialogs. In class, have two students read the dialog and the other students have to listen and then answer
the questions. In higher level classes, make groups and give each group 15-20 minutes to write a dialog and
questions (questions on a large sheet of paper). Then each team reads their dialogs while the rest of the class
answers the questions which have been taped to the blackboard.
Number / Word bingo

Playing bingo requires students to listen carefully. You can use either numbers or words that they have been
learning. Creating the bingo sheets and words takes a bit of time but once done can be used with other classes,
time and time again.

Spelling Messenger

Put students in teams of three. S1 is given a word on a piece of paper and mustn’t show it to his/her team
mates. He/She stands at the end of the room furthest from the board facing the wall. S3 is at the board facing
the board. S2 acts as the messenger. S1 whispers the first letter to S2 who then runs and whispers it to S3, who
in turn writes it on the board. S2 goes back and forth until the word is written on the board. All the teams
compete – they have different words but all with the same number of letters. The first team to complete the
word correct wins a point.

- See more at: http://www.eslkidstuff.com/blog/top-10-lists/top-10-listening-activities-without-a-

cd#sthash.UJSUpVqn.dpuf

Try These 8 Activities to Improve Listening Skills

Voice blogging

Using a free website (such as Voice Thread) have students record voice journals about their week. Encourage
students with semi-personal topics or hypothetical questions (e.g. What would you do if you had one million dollars?
Describe your best vacation. etc..) to prompt speaking. This works just like a blog but with student voices rather
than writing. Even if your school doesn’t have computers with microphones or recording capabilities, with
VoiceThread students can use any phone to record their voice blog.

Students can then be assigned to listen to several of their classmates and give each other comments. By listening
to each other and giving encouraging comments, you are building a positive classroom environment and cooperation
within the classroom all while students build their listening skills.

Listen for the hidden phrase

An engaging whole class activity is to pair students up and give each pair a "secret" word or phrase. For
easier dialogues, give a simple phrase such as “I love soccer,” or “My father works a lot;” etc… To challenge
students, give a slightly more obscure phrase, such as “John does yoga every Saturday,” or “I saw a UFO in my yard
last night.”

Students are then tasked with developing a dialogue with their partner that somehow uses this phrase. Students
may script the dialogue if they wish, but only give them limited planning time (5-10 minutes). After they have
prepared their dialogue, students perform the dialogue in front of the class, and the other students listen
carefully to hear which words or phrases seem extra carefully planned to find the secret phase. If you have
individual white boards, have the students write down the phrase as they hear it and then show their board after
the pair has finished the dialogue. If they found the correct secret phrase, they get a point. If no one finds the
pair’s secret phrase, the pair that developed the dialogue gets a point.
Listen for the word

Using popular culture media is always a good way to practice listening skills. Using songs, watching TV shows, or
even listening to podcasts will help build skills. To go an extra step, have an additional task while listening to the
song or TV show such as assign students different words to listen for and have them keep track of how often they
hear these words. This is particularly helpful with reductions like gonna, wanna, hafta.

Listening to various media is also a good time to practice unfamiliar words. Encourage students to write down words
they have never heard before. Without subtitles or lyrics, students will have to rely on the sounds they think they
heard to make a guess at how to spell this unfamiliar word. Encourage students to write down other surrounding
words to help you decipher what the word might be or to write down the time when they heard the word so you can
go back to the spot and listen again. These are important skills for students to master so that they can continue
learning even outside of the classroom by hearing new words.

Student-designed quizzes

If students are in a computer lab or if they have iPads/iPhones, give each student a dialogue, lecture, or
song to listen to. These can be easily found on various free listening websites. Have students listen to the lecture
multiple times and then create a quiz for another student to take. Students will be excited to “play teacher” by
creating quiz questions, and they will have to rely on their listening skills to write accurate questions.

Describe the...

Place students into pairs and have them sit back to back. Give one student in the pair a unique picture with a
lot of simple shapes drawn on it. I prefer to draw my own pictures with randomly placed hearts, flowers, stars,
houses, stick figures, etc. Put these shapes in different places, angles, and with extra features as desired. Give
the second student in the pair a blank piece of paper. The student with the picture must dictate to his/her partner
how to draw the picture. Make sure to emphasize no cheating or peeking! When finished, change the pictures
around the groups and have the partners switch roles. When everyone has drawn once, the team with the most
similar pictures win!

Put the celebrity in the right place

Similar to the picture describing game, this game has a similar setup but without the drawing. Give students a
chart with many different celebrities in the boxes/grid. This can be easily done by creating a table in a word
processing program and pasting internet images of celebrities in the table. Be sure to make several different
versions with celebrities in the different spaces. It’s okay if the students don’t know all of the celebrities; in fact,
it may be better if there are some they don’t know, so they have to rely on describing physical features rather
than giving names. Print a second blank grid with the pictures of the celebrities cut out into individual pieces but
not attached to the grid.

Students should sit back to back and be instructed to not peek or cheat. The student with the table with pre-
assigned celebrities should give the other student instructions on how to fill in his table with the celebrity picture
pieces. For example, the first student might say “The picture of Brad Pitt goes in the first square, and Angelina
goes in the square below Brad Pitt.” It may be helpful to pre-teach the vocabulary “columns” and “rows.”
Stand up/sit down

When working on individual sounds, give students a target sound and then read a script out loud that contains
multiple examples of this sound. For example, if you are practicing the /ae/ sound (like in “cat,” “hat,” etc…, you
could read the following script. “Yesterday, my cat ate a plastic toy and swallowed it fast.” Whenever students
hear this sound for the first time (cat), they should stand. When they hear it again (plastic), sit down. Read slowly
enough for them to have time to stand up or sit down. This activity is great because it gets them out of their seats
and lets them get some excess energy out!

Vowel discrimination
Another good activity to do when you are studying specific vowel sounds is to give students two different
color note cards (e.g. one red card and one blue card). For a review activity, assign one vowel to the red card
(e.g. the /ae/ sound as in “bat”) and another card to the blue card (e.g. the /ei/ sound as in “bay”). When you read a
word, have students raise the card in the air for the correct vowel/sound they heard. For a more advanced game,
give students several colors of cards to correspond with several different vowels. Also, you could give the students
several cards and read a sentence where each word represents a different vowel. Students must recreate the
pattern of sounds they heard by lining up their note cards in the correct order.