How to Teach Listening

Dictation (for both strategies): Full text dictation-1

• Students read a list of sentences and check whether the sentences are true or false when listening to the text.
• Students have a multiple-choice exercise.
• Students have an incomplete version of the text with gaps to fill in.
• Students respond to the text by answering the questions. (Short answers or complete sentences)
• Students write down the content word in the blanks.
• Students reorder a list of scrambled sentences when listening to the text.

Dictation (for both strategies): Full text dictation-2

• Students draw what the teacher describes. They may color it, complete it, etc.
• Teacher reads out the text. Students have a copy of the text with errors, missing words or extra words added. They correct the text to make it the same as the teacher’s.
• Students write down the whole text.
• Teacher reads out the text very quickly while students write down what they can. Then, in groups, they try to reconstruct the text. In the end, they compare with the original text.
• Students write a summary of the text after listening to it.

Dictation (for both strategies): Student-centered dictation

• Information gap: students work in pairs, each on having an incomplete version of the text, with gaps in different places. Not allowing to look at each other’s text, they read out what they have, each completing their own text.
• Information Hunting: Students work in groups of 3. The text for each group is put on the other side of the room. S1 goes to the text, reads and memorizes a section, returns to the group and says what is remembered. S2 writes it down and S3 checks what S2 has written. They may then change roles and continues.

Sample of Listening activities

• Information Gap (pair work)
• Predicting
• Listening Comprehension
• Phantom of the Opera

End of this session