S and don’ts of developing listening skills

Statements
True / False
Alex likes reading books about war.
Alex says he can get many military books in English.
Alex has got several books on the Japanese army.
Alex likes books by Iris Murdoch because they were the first books in English which he understood.
Rod likes to read only Russian literature.
Rod doesn’t like to read detective stories.
Alex hasn’t read the novels by Rankin
Ian Rankin is a Welsh writer.

Activity 1, Handout 2, Evaluation of listening activities

QUESTIONS

SET 1

SET 2

1	What types of tasks do the sets offer (open/closed questions, true/false, multiple-choice, etc)?
2	What kind of listening skills do the tasks focus on (e.g. listening for the gist/main idea, listening for specific information, etc)?
3	What other skills are the tasks intended to develop ( vocabulary, grammar, speaking etc)?
4	Are there pre-, while-, post-listening tasks?
5	Would you like to use these activities with your students? Why/Why not? What would you like to change?

Activity 3, Handout 4, Tape script (Rita and Nodira) So Rita what is home for you?

Well Nodira what is home for me? er I am from Yorkshire and when I am not travelling around the world doing my job I live in Yorkshire. Recently I moved into a new home - it is a farm or used to be a farm and I’ve even got … buildings where cows used to live er it’s in the middle of nowhere…. it is in a hamlet, it is smaller than a village and there are only 30 people who live there erh so it is quite small. The hamlet really doesn’t have anything but houses … it’s got a phone box and a letterbox and that is all. A bus comes twice a day but that’s it. So as I said it’s in the middle of nowhere but it’s wonderful. It’s quiet and I am surrounded by moors where there are lots of birds like pheasants and grouse and millions of bunny rabbits, so it is very peaceful… very few cars… only er each family has a car and I find it very nice. It is quite in contrast to my job because my job takes me all over the world. It takes me to places like Tashkent - I come here about 4 times a еar - and it takes me to other places in Europe, in Asia, in Africa and even in South America. So for six months of the еar my home is a hotel room and the hotels vary from country to country. In some they’re quite luxurious and in others they’re quite simple. It depends on the country.

Activity 2, Handout 3, A possible sequence for designing listening tasks



Activity 3, Handout 5, Tape script (Jeremy and Nodira)

Duration: 3:14min

So Jeremy could you please tell me what is home for you?

Home is a very simple word which is full of meaning, but I think it has similar meaning across lots of cultures. But at the moment home for me is where I live in Tashkent with my family including my cats but where I come from is also in a sense my home and where I come from is a very small part of Britain called Cornwall, which is a county in the southwest that sticks out to the sea, so it is almost like an island where you are you never far from the sea. My mother, my grandparents and my great grandparents were all born in Cornwall and I also come from there and I was brought up there in the same village that my mother was brought up in and now I have a small house - a little stone cottage which used to belong to a fisherman. Cornwall is a beautiful place - of course I am biased because I am Cornish - but it is very beautiful. As I said it is surrounded by the sea and the sea is the purest of blue-green colours, very clear, full of life, for instance you can find any kind of fish and shellfish and anemones and seaweed and when I was a child I remember going down to the beach and waiting for the tide to go out and looking in the rock pools and examining the shrimps and the clams, and the sea animals and the seaweed like I said. But Cornwall is also a place of beautiful gardens because it is in the southwest it is warmer than the rest of Britain. The sea surrounding the Cornwall is warmer - it comes from Mexico - and there are some areas that are very sheltered, so you have beautiful gardens with plants and trees that are almost semi-tropical so it has very varied fauna and landscape. It is also a place of full of history and mystery. It is known as a Celtic part of Britain like Scotland, Wales and Ireland. And there are lots of old legends and myths about Cornwall. And somehow the people who’ve lived there embody in themselves these myths…. er the Cornish have travelled a lot… they are famous for mining and almost anywhere you go in the world where there are mines you will find Cornish people, but everybody who leaves Cornwall … they always leave their heart behind.

Questions for summarizing:

1. 
   What are the main purposes for human listening?
   
2. 
   Why listening is difficult?
   
3. 
   What are the stages of listening activities?