Lecture 3. Strategies for Developing Listening Skills.

_Plan
Cognitive strategies of teaching listening.
Metacognitive strategies.
Socioaffective strategies.
Strategic-based approach.
Metastrategic awareness,
one-way communication, two-way communication, autonomy.

How can you raise your students’ awareness of the use of listening strategies?
1. Cognitive strategies of teaching listening.
Those researchers who agree that strategies are critical in coping with listening
tasks distinguish between cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective categories.
Cognitive strategies, such as predicting and guessing words from context, help
organize listening to complete a task, achieve comprehension, and promote learning
Five Practical Classroom Ideas
Having outlined what makes listening tasks effective, here are five classroom ideas
based on these principles.
1. Listen & play
Topic: Weather/Countries Functions: Understanding key information Aims:
Developing listening skills for details using icons, maps & weather report video
Learning new weather words & countries around the world through listening
Activity: Listen to the weather forecast around the world Match the weather icons to
the flags/countries
Pre-taught vocabulary: none
Follow-up activity: Make a video about your local weather today using weather
flashcards
Resources: https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/games/whats-the-weather
2. Listen & make
Topic: Making things Function: Following instructions Aims: Developing listening
skills for live detailed instructions to make a fish origami Learning craft vocabulary
e.g. fold, unfold, turn around, press
Activity: Listen to the teacher giving live instructions to make a simple fish origami
Pre-taught vocabulary: none
 Follow-up activity: Listen & watch 3D Animation video ‘Once I caught a fish alive’
nursery rhyme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w49MQ6Wrqes
Resources: Square coloured paper
3. Listen & respond
Topic: Fruit & Veg, Food Functions: understanding requests Aims: Developing
transactional/top-down listening skills in the context of shopping Learning quantifiers
e.g. some, a lot of, and measures e.g. Kilo, a dozen
Activity: Listen to a customer (teacher) who recorded a message (video/audio) for the
greengrocer (learners) asking to do the shopping for her and collect the items from
the shelves (rows of desks in the classroom) Sample: ‘Hello there! I’m very ill today.
Sorry, I can’t do my shopping. Can you please help? Can I have two kilos oranges,
please? Then, I need some onions and a dozen eggs, please!’
Pre-taught vocabulary: Kilo/Pound; half a kilo; a dozen
Follow-up activity: Learners make their shopping lists in turn and get partners to do
the shopping
Resources: Realia, toy fruit & veg
4. Listen & guess
Topic: Appearance Function: describing people Aims: Developing listening skills for
selecting relevant information Learning new vocabulary and phrases to describe
people through semi-authentic listening (different accents are featured in the text)
Activity: Listen to six people describing 6 other people they met in different
situations Ignore irrelevant information. Focus on their appearance and match the
description you hear to the face in the pictures
Pre-taught vocabulary: Beard, moustache, freckles. Other new items are taught in
context through visual/aural input
Follow-up activity: Play ‘Guess who?’ game – one learner at a time describes a
person from class/school/local town or celebrities. Other learners guess who they are
Resources: https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/games/face-match
5. Listen & tell
Topic: Positions Function: describing places Aims: Developing listening skills and
predict key information using visual and aural clues Learning basic prepositions of
place and describing places
Activity: Watch the video. Listen to the conversation. Tell where Hero was/is now
Pre-taught vocabulary: None New items are taught in context through visual/aural
input
Follow-up activity: Play ‘Treasure hunt’ – Teacher hides small cuddly toys or nice
kids’ stuff in the classroom/school and sends learners on a treasure hunt. Learners in
groups ask the teacher for clues. Good listeners usually win
Resources: https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-videos/heros-
adventure

2. Metacognitive strategies, or thinking about listening, facilitate planning,

monitoring, evaluating, and reflecting on the listening process.

3. Socio-affective strategies involve communicating with teachers, classmates,

and native speakers, as well as developing self-confidence and motivation.
Teaching Listening Steps
Step One: Pre-Listening 
1. Set a goal.
According to Funk and Funk (1989), it’s important to
have a goal or purpose for every listening activity.
First, begin by stating a purpose. This will give
students guidance to know where to focus, enabling
them to achieve success.
2. Build Background.
Next, help students connect what they already know
with what they will hear in the audio story by asking
questions about their personal experiences with the
topic. Explain what students need to understand
before listening, preview vocabulary words. Invite
them to think about relevant prior knowledge, anticipate the subject of the story, or
otherwise engage actively in preparing for the story.
3. Prepare the Environment.
If playing the story out loud to the whole class, limit distraction by making the
environment at home or in school as quiet as possible. For instance, use headphones
for listening if appropriate.
4. Introduce Listening Strategies
Next, introduce tools and strategies for successful listening (see below).
Step Two: Teaching During Listening 
5. Scaffold Note-Taking.
Students can use a listening organizer to help them focus on important ideas and
details while listening to the story, which can help to deepen their understanding. For
example, listening organizers might include T-charts, Venn diagrams, or a blank page
to keep track of a character’s actions in the story. Such organizers can guide students
in taking notes to help them focus their listening and teach them strategies to support
comprehension in other contexts.
6. Explain Problem-Solving Strategies.
If students do not understand a word or idea, they can use clues from the story to
make a guess. If they are listening independently, they can stop the audio and think or
listen again as needed. They can be “problem-solving listeners”. These strategies
should be taught before students begin listening with reminders provided as needed.
Step Three: Post-Listening 
7. Reflect on the Audio Story.
Finally, engage students in synthesizing what they learned from listening to the story
with a focus on key understanding goals. For example, ask students to respond to
listening comprehension questions in writing and then share their responses. This
could either be with a partner, small group, or in front of the whole class. Discuss key
themes in the story and encourage students to make connections to other texts or
experiences. Students can respond to questions about the story through writing,
speaking in conversation, recording themselves speaking, or a combination.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCBO69h6r4c
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
Students brainstorm kinds of songs
Students describe one of their favourite songs and what they like about it
Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a love song
While listening
Students listen and decide if the song is happy or sad
Students listen again and order the lines or verses of the song
Students listen again to check their answers or read a summary of the song with
errors in and correct them.
Post-listening
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
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