Worksheet11b - 2022 - Activity Bank and Ideas Reading Listening-1

Professional Practice II – Worksheet 11b / 2022
Activity bank and ideas: Reading and Listening
Reading Bank
Examples of top-down activities

Note: Some activities are more suitable for intermediate level, adolescents and adults, but you can
draw ideas for your own material.
Auerbach and Paxton (1997: 259) suggest the following pre-reading strategies:
- Accessing prior knowledge
- Asking questions based on the title
- Semantic mapping
- Making predictions based on previewing
- Identifying the text structure
- Skimming for general idea
- Reading the introduction and conclusion
Previewing: to formulate hypotheses about the text. By taking advantage of contextual clues –
titles or subtitles, headings, pictures, photographs, illustrations, students are encouraged to draw
inferences prior to reading. Identification of text genre: articles, poetry, nonfiction, and plays, as a
very important preview exercise.
Guidelines:
T introduces the theme. How many paragraphs are there in the text? How many sections? What
are the titles? What do you expect in each? Look at the photograph and the captions: What new
word is explained?
1. Ask the students to read the title of the article. Do they know anything about this subject?
2. Have the students read the first few paragraphs, which generally introduce the topics discussed
in the text. Can they determine the general themes of the text?
3. Then ask them to read the first sentence of each paragraph, usually the topic sentence, which
gives the main idea of the paragraph. Can they determine the major points of the article?
4. Read the last paragraph, which often reveals the conclusion of the author. Have the students
discuss how the author organizes the information to present his point of view.
Feedback: In all cases, ask students to tell you what cues they found in the text for their answers,
and which the main idea is.
Examples:
Previewing
Answer these questions:
How many paragraphs are there in the text?
How long will it take you to read it?
How many sections are there in the text? What are the titles?
Look at the photographs and read the captions. What new word appears?
In the Feedback ask students to tell you what cues they found in the text for their answers,
Predicting
The author of the next text has a negative opinion about reality TV shows. What issues do you think
he will discuss?
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Instituto Superior de Profesorado Pbro Dr A. M. Sáenz – Campo de la Práctica Profesional II
Activity bank and ideas - Reading and Listening
1
Identifying Genre
Look at the magazine article. How is the format different form the newspaper article we read last
week? What differences can you find?
Ideas drawn from: http://es.slideshare.net/Joe_McVeigh/designing-effective-reading-activities
Examples of bottom-up activities

Character Descriptions
 Draw the character
 Character Description: Students will read two character descriptions of characters in a text and
identify pictures
 Character traits and evidence: Students will learn to identify a character trait and give evidence
 Character traits: What do character traits tell us about a story? Students read a passage and
determine character traits of different people.
Context Clues
 Pick the meaning
 Meaning games
 Finding the meaning with clue words / pictures
Drawing Conclusions
 Drawing conclusions from pictures
 What conclusion can you make?
 Draw a conclusion: Visual aids Students use visual clues to make inferences about a group of
pictures in a worksheet.
Fact and Opinion
 Fact or Opinion activity: I think and I know
 Is it a fact or an opinion?
Main Idea
 Find the main idea: Students circle the main idea from a list of options.
 Find the main idea and three details
 Find the main idea and supporting ideas
Inference Worksheets
Inference Practice:
 Where is…? Students draw conclusions based on a series of scenarios.
 Who is…? Students find the identity of these mystery people
 What happens next? Students will decide what happens next
Read more at: http://www.k12reader.com/reading-comprehension-guide/
More activities
 Working on anticipation
 Putting in order a sequence of pictures
 Comparing texts and pictures
 Matching, using illustrations
 Completing a document
 Mapping the text out (using graphic organizers)
 Jigsaw reading
 Reorganizing the information
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 Comparing several texts
 Summarizing
 Note taking
 Making inferences
 Understanding relation within the sentence
 Finding information in the text in order to do something
 Putting cut-up paragraphs back in the correct order.
 Reading the text and finding mistakes in this illustration (or: drawing your own picture)
 Reading the text and making a list of particular items
 Solving the problem.
 Discussing the missing last paragraph of the text.
 Making notes under the following headings
Follow-up activities:
 Acting out the dialogue, story, episode, etc.
 Discussing interpretations of, reactions to, feelings about the text.
Further Ideas
Wall Crawl
A “wall crawl” is a reading activity where students have a list of questions to answer or a chart to
complete using information that is displayed on the walls. This can be a mixture of visual and written
information and it is good to liven up a reading activity and to practice the skill of scanning.
Stories:
Students will draw the setting of the story / a scene based on the author’s description. The pictures
will be displayed and the whole class may point out details.
Focus: setting / visualisation
Materials required: story, paper, colour pencils
Character Analysis
This activity introduces students to character analysis a well as the skill of supporting their statements
with evidence found in the text: quoting.
Focus: character analysis
Materials required: story, poster paper, colour pencils, markers, etc.
The teacher may ask students to make a poster with and illustration and including:
- two quotes to show the character’s personality.
- two quotes to show the character’s desires, ambitions.
- two quotes to show the character’s appearance.
- two quotes to show relationship with other characters.
Story Trail
A story trail is a kind of timeline of the main events of the story, displayed in a visual format. This
activity helps students keep track of the story as it unfolds or it may be a picture summary.
A story pyramid.
This activity is probably more suited to older students. They will have to fill in the diagram with the
information obtained in the text.
Focus: literary analysis Materials required: a copy of the diagram for each student
Title: -----------------------------------
Author: --------------------------------
1.-----------
2.----------- -----------
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3.----------- ----------- -----------
4.----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
5.----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
6.----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
7.----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
8.----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
1. name of the main character

2. two words to describe the main character
3. three words to describe the setting
4. four words to state the main character’s goal or problem
5. five words to describe an important event
6. six words to describe the conclusion
7. seven words to describe your favourite part
8. eight words: What would you tell others about the story?
‘Wanted’ Poster
A ‘Wanted’ poster is great fun and it is easily adapted to different levels and ages. It may go from a
picture of the ‘wanted’ character to a detailed poster including:
A ‘photograph’ or identikit picture.

A brief description of appearance.
What he / she was wearing when last seen.
The reward, if any.
More Examples of text-based activities

Predicting activities
Predicting news stories (Top-down activity - not for beginners or children)
You can set a task from the headline and first lines. Ask students to five questions, ask
themselves if they are all likely to be answered in the full report and then revise them if
necessary. Finally, ask them to read the rest of the text to see how many of their questions
were answered.
You can then lead them in the reflection on how they read the report. Did they read it word
for word? Were there bits they skipped? How did they manage to think of so many questions
that were answered in the text without actually reading it first? Their background knowledge
of the genre of news stories probably helped. Factual reporting means the article has to
reveal more information about the character, e.g. his age, which gives students’ predictions
a basis. This process has implications for learning. Students were probably quite keen to
read the full text to see how many of their questions were answered, i.e. they had a very
specific purpose, and one they were involved in creating - their own questions (compare this
with reading a text followed by comprehension questions set by a teacher). If they also had
to check your partner's questions, they probably read the text twice, focusing on slightly
different parts and skipping what was familiar.
Notice the text should be suitable for a prediction task: a number of the main facts should given
in the first few lines. The patterns of the text should be: Main facts - supporting details.
To make it easier, you could give a few more lines from the first paragraph, or supply dictionary
definitions of key words, or do a pre-task brainstorming activity.
Predicting problem solutions, story endings, poem themes
Using a text with a situation - problem - solution - evaluation pattern, you could:
 let students read/hear/watch only the parts which give the situation and problem, and let
pairs work out two or three alternative solutions of their own, then evaluate another pair's
solutions. When they have presented their best solutions to each other during a report phase,
ask the class to predict which solutions are mentioned in the original text. They finally read /
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hear / watch the whole piece and compare and evaluate.
Using a poem, you could:

 write lines on the board, one at a time, not necessarily in order. After each line, ask what the
poem could be about. Accept everyone' s ideas, giving no indication as to which ideas are
closest to the original. If students get too frustrated, give them a line containing more clues.
Stop when they get near the actual theme and let them read the whole poem. This is fun to do
as a whole class exercise.
 give the first few lines, and maybe the last line, and ask students in pairs to describe the
circumstances behind the poem as they imagine them.
Make sure students don't feel they have failed if they predict something entirely different from
the original text. Sometimes their ideas are even better; they are often equally interesting and
viable.
Note: Prediction tasks are difficult to present in a course book, because some students will
have read ahead and know what is coming.
Be sure to give enough clues! Only a headline or title to predict from allows students very little
to work on. It encourages random, unmotivated guesses, which are often over in a few seconds,
and bear little resemblance to the target text. There is little or no linguistic challenge. It is far
better to give a range of clues that provide this and look intriguing.
Jumbles (Bottom-up activities)

Learners are presented with sections or parts of a complete text, but in the wrong order. They
have to read or hear each part and decide in which order they would be best. Sequencing
often requires quite deep linguistic processing of parts of the text, and an appreciation of the
coherence of the whole meaning. The text pattern that lends itself most obviously to this type
of task is the sequential one.
 Where an account of a process / a set of instructions / a narrative is accompanied by
diagrams/pictures, you could jumble either the text or the visuals. This involves matching
text to visuals.
 With listening or viewing materials (which are difficult to play in the wrong order), you could
use a jumbled summary of the content or a jumbled list of main points (perhaps minus the
ending) instead.
Using texts that follow a general- specific pattern or a topic - elaboration pattern, you could:
 split up the general topic statements from the accompanying specific elaboration statements
and jumble them. You might need to leave the first and last paragraph intact, to give students
sufficient context.
 jumble headlines from short 'News in brief' items and ask students to read the items and
select the headline that fits best. To make this more challenging, add two or three extra
headlines on similar themes. Since headlines often use words with several alternative
meanings, a dictionary exercise could be set at the pre-task phase to help students predict
these.
Using a poem, you could:

 either mix up whole verses, or lines within verses.
Note: Jumbles can be frustrating if texts are divided into too many sections. Before you finalize
the task for class use, try it out on someone who has not read or heard the text.
Jumbles are rarely suitable for newspaper reports as events are seldom written in
sequence.
Always give students credit for arriving at a possible ordering, even if this is not the
original order.
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Restoration activities (Bottom-up activities)
Students replace words or phrases that have been omitted from a text, or identify an extra
sentence or paragraph that has been put in.
The aim here is for the student to restore the text to its original state. Although the omissions
or additions are normally selected by the teacher, there is no reason why groups of students
should not make their own, and give them to other groups. This could make an excellent class
revision exercise, with each group working on a familiar text.
a- Omissions
Omitting words / phrases from a written text, you could:
 put them into a box above the text (preferably with one or two extra words/phrases, so that
students cannot do the restoration without thinking) and ask students to find where they fit.
Leave gaps.
 make an even more challenging task by omitting some carefully selected phrases and
retyping the text closing up the gaps. This way, a far more detailed reading will be required.
Such a task is best preceded by one that gives students a general idea of what the text is
about.
The choice of words to omit depends on the aims of the task. For example, some of the new
words that students may not know could be removed or blacked out completely. Ask students
to summarise the story with the words missing. This will prove they do not have to understand
every word to do the task. Another way would be to remove phrases crucial to the story line,
leaving gaps. On the basis of what they've read, learners speculate which phrase could be in
each gap.
Omitting a single sentence, you could:

 put it underneath the text and close up the gap. If you have picked a good sentence, students
will have to read quite carefully to find where it fits best. (
b- Additions
Adding an extra sentence to the original text, you could:
 ask students to spot the stranger. It will need to be fairly well disguised, for example, by
containing some of the same lexis as the text, but should not make sense in the context.
Adding another text of a similar length on a similar topic but from a different genre, you could:
 merge the two for students to read and separate the paragraphs into the two original texts.
For example, this could be done by finding a text about spiders from a children' s
encyclopaedia, splitting it into four or five short sections and inserting it into a Spiders text.
(You would obviously need to retype the merged texts.) This task would be more suitable for
higher level students.
c- Tabularised information
Using a separate table/flow chart/ diagram summarising the main points of the text or
programme extract, you could:
 omit some points (and jumble them below) or add a specific number of extra points. Students
begin by discussing the points, and trying to identify which fit where, or which might not fit.
They then read/listen/ watch to confirm their predictions.
Comparison activities (Bottom-up activities)
Instead of spotting the differences between two pictures, learners compare two (or more) similar
texts to spot factual or attitudinal differences, or to find points in common.
Using different accounts of the same incident/ different descriptions of the same picture or
person, you could:
 ask students to read about each others' experiences of school to find and list points that they
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have in common.
Using a single event covered by different media, e.g. a news story and a broadcast recording
or the same news story from two different newspapers, you could:
• ask students to list the points in common or spot the differences.
Using a report/review of a video extract, you could:

 incorporate two pieces of false or additional information that were not in the original extract.
Students then compare the report / review with the extract itself.
Memory challenge activities (Depending on what you ask them to do, this could be a Top-down
or a Bottom-up activity)
Speed is of the essence here. These tasks are based on the fact that different people will notice
and remember different things from a text they have read fast (set a time limit!), or from a
recorded extract they have heard or watched only once. You may, when doing them, decide to
cut right down on the pre-task phase, because you will get a greater divergence of impressions
if students do it 'cold' the first time.
After a single, brief exposure to the text, depending on the content, you could ask pairs to do
one of these things:
 list a specific number of ideas/things they remembered best (and why). When reporting
these, they find out how many people chose the same ones, and why.
 describe in as much detail as possible one place / person mentioned / shown in the extract.
 write three (or more) quiz questions about the text that they are sure they can answer
correctly. They then ask other pairs their questions.
 with TV adverts on video, list the images on screen, in the right order, and then link them
with what they can recall of the text.
After the report phase, (so long as the teacher does not give away the correct answers) the
class will naturally want to read, see, or hear the piece again, perhaps several times, to see
who remembered the best and whose first impressions were the most accurate (or strangest).
What are higher order thinking skills?

In the 1950s, Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist, and his colleagues developed a
classification system identifying different levels of cognition that defined both lower and high order
thinking. The six levels within the cognitive domain are from lower to higher: knowledge,
comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Higher-order thinking is the ability to think beyond rote memorization of facts or knowledge.
Rote memory recall is not really thinking. Higher order thinking skills involve actually doing
something with the facts that we learn. When students use their higher order thinking skills
that means they understand, they can find connections between many facts, they can
manipulate them, and put them together in new ways. Most importantly they can apply them
to find new solutions to problems.
How to strengthen higher order thinking skills for better reading comprehension:
We can help our students develop higher order thinking skills, for example through reviewing
reading material together with them and asking questions that help make connections and
see analogies.
- Rather than simply asking, “What was the story about?” also ask “How was this story like another
you have read?” Encourage the reader to identify problems or dilemmas so they see themselves as
problem solvers.
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- Ask how a situation in the story or text could affect other characters. This will help students develop
empathy and understand different viewpoints as well as consequences.
- What could have been done differently for a better outcome? This invites creative thinking and
problem solving – skills essential in a competitive market place.
By using higher order thinking skills they can use new information to make help make sense of their
world through analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Reading Comprehension of different text forms

What was the last thing you read before you began reading this article? Was it a chapter in a novel?
A recipe? An analytical report? Your favorite blog? Though you probably didn’t realize it, you used a
certain reading strategy to gather meaning based on the genre of the text. For instance, reading a
novel employs a different skill set than what you may use to read a technical manual.
Understanding that you need to switch skills based on genre (text form) is common to all good
readers. That’s why it’s so important for students to develop reading comprehension skills that will
help them “switch” in various content areas.
Reading comprehension and expository text

Whether it’s science, social studies, or mathematics, all content area books are expository or
informational. That means students need to use different strategies for comprehension than they
would use if they were reading a story. Think about the difference between a mystery novel and a
science textbook. In a novel, each page looks pretty much the same. In other words, each written
page is made of paragraphs, which are made of sentences, which in turn are made of words.
Now think back to your high school biology textbook. Obviously there are chapters and paragraphs
but there is much more. Content area textbooks make use of headings, subheadings, illustrations,
tables and graphs, and summary sidebars. Each component of the textbook is designed to deliver
important information that either summarizes, clarifies, or adds to the written content.
Not only is the layout in a textbook different from a novel or story, the purpose and method of delivery
is different as well. Novels are plot and character driven and depend largely on dialogue to get the
message across. However, content area textbooks are written to inform, explain, persuade or
describe. There are no cliffhangers1 or page-turners2 to keep the student engaged while reading
expository texts. For that reason readers need to have specific strategies they can use to focus and
comprehend meaning.
Content area reading strategies

One strategy for boosting reading comprehension involves helping students recognize word clues
that point to a specific structure. For example, compare/contrast paragraphs may contain the words
“however” and “both.” This is where visual organizers such as Venn diagrams can help students
compare and contrast concepts. Then students can write summaries to clarify meaning in their own
minds.
Students also need comprehension skills that include learning new vocabulary prior to reading,
learning how to use text clues to identify critical information (such as titles, subheadings, graphics,
and summary statements), and recognizing key terms that imply relationships between ideas.
Extract from: http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/ajideh/article.pdf
1
an exciting end to part of a book or television programme that makes you want to read
or watch the next part
2 a book, chapter, episode that is very interesting or exciting
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 Using readers
Many teachers find that they are encouraged or required to use readers with their classes as part of
the course they teach, making the essentially private experience of reading and enjoying a novel into
a public activity. The danger is that what was pleasurable can become dull and predictable.
So, what is the point of readers? At the most basic level, the aim is to encourage an interest in
reading in English and to help students improve their reading skills. If the timetable allows it,
then simply setting aside time for reading may be useful, and allowing other time for reflection,
interpretation, discussion, recommending, comparing, etc. Many teachers set the actual reading for
homework and use classroom time for follow-on activities.
Reading is also a good way of improving knowledge of vocabulary, and obviously work can be
done on this in class. A balance needs to be kept though, there is little point in a student going away
having understood all the words but missing the story.
'Readers' are books of stories (or other content) published specifically for learners to get extended
exposure to English. They often have their grammar and vocabulary 'graded' to named levels (e.g.
Elementary) so that learners at that level should stand a reasonable chance of successfully reading
them. Many readers state the size of vocabulary used and have footnotes or glossaries of words
outside their stated word limit. The main aim of readers is to provide opportunities for extensive
reading for pleasure. For this reason, be careful about integrating comprehension checks, tests
and exercises into your teaching. As far as possible, let students read, enjoy and move on,
rather than read and then have to do lots of exercises afterwards.
Readers can be read outside class or can be used in 'quiet reading' class time.
Using Readers: Alternatives to round-the-class reading

Here are some alternatives to reading aloud round the class you could try:
 You reading;
 You reading narrative, but students reading character dialogue;
 You (having read the chapter yourself before class) telling the story in your own words, without
notes, in the most spell-binding way you can; later, you get students to do the same with other
bits;
 Students reading to each other in small groups or pairs, stopping, changing, discussing and
helping each other whenever they want to;
 Students reading silently, then, without discussion, acting out/improvising a scene based on what
happened;
 Students silently speed-reading a chapter (say in two minutes) then reporting back, discussing,
comparing, etc. before silently reading it more carefully.
Activities to work on readers:
The following ideas are some slightly more unusual activities based around interpreting and enjoying
readers in class:
 Don't always start at the beginning! Try jumping in at the middle and reading one page. Predict
what happened before, who the people are, where they are, etc. Or use a contents page similarly.
 Students draw the picture of the scene. When finished, they compare and discuss their different
interpretations.
 Interviews: one student is a chat-show host or a newspaper reporter and interviews another
student in the role of a character. 'So why did you do that?' 'What do you really think about Joseph?'
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etc. Or get all the characters together and interview them. Similarly, put the characters 'on trial' in a
courtroom: 'Whose fault was it?'
 Map the story (or one chapter). Draw lines on it to show different characters' movements. Or map
out the relationships between characters. A good classroom poster?
 Keep a character's diary.
 Review the book for a TV programme. Meet the author. Discuss, argue. Phone-in callers can ask
questions.
 Would it make a good film? The students are the board of director s for a film company. They
need to decide whether the book is film material or not. How does the story need to be changed?
How can they make it more exciting? Who should direct it? Who should play the parts? Make an
advertisement poster for the film.
 What did the front page of the local newspaper look like on the day when ... ?
 Choose a page or paragraph from the next chapter in the book and blank out some words.
Students need to guess what is going to happen by trying to find the missing words.
 Redesign the cover of the book. Write the 'blurb' on the back cover.
Listening Bank
Examples of Listening Activities

Note: Please provide each activity with the appropriate context and make the task
communicative, meaningful and purposeful. You must also plan the appropriate task cycle
- these are simply ideas. We encourage you to add to this resource bank any other ideas
you may find or think of.
Activities to Activate Students' Prior Knowledge
Word Association: T. sets the context and the topic. Sts call out words they know.
Questioning (same as reading)
Making List of possibilities / ideas / suggestions

When the text contains lists, even short lists of possibilities /ideas /suggestions or
whatever, it is often a good idea to use list making as the pre-listening activity. This way
the students can use their lists during the listening stage.
Looking at Pictures Before Listening. Pre-listening "looking and talking about" is an
effective way of reminding the students of lexis which they may have forgotten or never
known. It will also help them to focus their attention on the coming topic. This is very good
for narrative and descriptive passages.
Examples of Top-down Activities:

 Students must decide whether the conversation is between two friends, two
colleagues or two people who don't know each other.
 From a selection of telephone numbers in the book, students pick out the correct
one said by the receptionist.
 Students have a newspaper page with two or three advertisements on it. They must
decide which one is the one connected to this recording by checking the company
name.
In all cases, the activity should help students to understand the global meaning of the text.
Examples of bottom-up activities: Listen and ...

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 choose the correct picture;
 follow the route on the map;
 walk/sit/move according to the instructions;
 choose the best answer for each question from the four options;
 say a reply to each comment you hear;
 decide which person is saying which sentence;
 match the pictures of people with this list of opinions;
 select from the options the leader's suggestions about where the camp should be;
 draw a picture of the alien;
 decide whether they like the present or not;
 pick up and show the correct picture;
 select from the options the exact words Silvia uses to refuse the offer;
 discuss the general topic
 discuss the general idea
 say what attitudes the speakers had / feelings
 The washing line game

Children have to pick up the real object which the teacher is talking about. The example
here is a team game. It is designed to provide TPR listening practice before the children
move to a speaking activity (it can, of course, be used as a fun revision activity too).
Lexis: clothes and colours.
Materials required: Two boxes or bags, containing clothes, a piece of rope and clothes
pegs. You can either tie the clothes line on either side of the classroom (of possible) or ask
two children to hold it.
- Divide the class into two teams.

- In turns, a representative from each team comes to the front.
- The teacher says something like: “xxx is going to hang out some clothes. He finds a
blue sock.”
- The representative looks for the item and hangs it up on the clothes line with a peg.
- The group that hangs all the clothes out making the least number of mistakes is the
winner.
You could also make students draw a washing line and draw and colour the items while
you mention them.
 Rooms in a house.
Children are asked to arrange a picture or diagram according to the information they hear.
Lexis: Rooms in a house.
Material required: photocopies of a house and some name slips.
There are several possibilities here:
- You can tell a story and children have to place the people you name in the right room of
the house, on their own photocopies.
- In teams, using two big houses on the board. You tell a representative from each team
a short story, they place the name slip in the correct room and move it as the action
discloses. The team which makes the least number of mistakes is the winner.
- You divide the class into two groups: one has to focus on the activities one characters
carries out in the different rooms (on the order of the rooms he goes into) and the other
group concentrates on another character. You tell a story and each group places a
number in the room his character has gone into. Then you can use the board version,
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with representatives from each group coming to the front while you repeat the story.
The whole group then writes the actions or order in which both characters went into
each room in the complete story.
 Recipes
The students are given a set of pictures which are in the wrong order. The teacher
describes the pictures, tells a story, gives instructions, etc. and the students have to
identify the sequence.
Lexis. Food, instructions.
Materials required: Sheet of pictures relating to a recipe, but in the wrong order.
For yourself, you need the recipe. For example:
To make a ham and lettuce sandwich

1- You need a slice of ham, a roll, a slice of tomato, some mayonnaise and some salt.
2- First cut the roll on half.
3- Spread a little mayonnaise onto each half of the roll.
4- Put the ham onto the bottom half of the roll.
5- Now put the lettuce on top the ham.
6- Add a little salt to the lettuce. Be careful! Not too much!
7- Put the top of the roll on top and press it down.
8- Eat the sandwich!
The activity would fit well into the general topic of food. It is best if students already know
the words for some of the food, but they don’t need to know everything. For example, they
won’t need to know the meaning of ‘half’, ‘spread’. The whole idea is that they should be
encouraged to guess on the basis of the clues in the pictures, their existing knowledge of
the topic, or possibly the sound of the word.
- Hand out the sheets.
- Give the students a couple of seconds to look at the pictures so that they realise what
there is there.
- Read out the first sentence and together with the students, find the picture that
corresponds to it. Show them you are going to write the letter corresponding to the
picture next to number 1.
- Read out the entire recipe, while the students write the corresponding letter.
 Total Physical Response

You tell a story, they do the actions. It is an actively fun and simultaneously involving form
of responding by doing.
Materials required: Any short story which has plenty of repetition and which contains plenty
of actions that children can mime. The example is a version of a story called ‘The lion
hunt’. It is set out in two columns so that you can see what prompts and actions might be
useful.
Procedures: a) You can tell the story, acting it out yourself while children watch and listen.
Then you sit down and tell it again, this time the children act it out, with you helping out
with gestures.
b) You can tell the story with pictures or symbols on the board. Then you sit down and tell
it again, this time the children act it out, with you helping out with gestures.
 A Movie:
Video may be easier to understand than audio-listening material because of the visual
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clues. It can therefore be very useful for mixed-ability classes to build confidence in those
students who find listening difficult.
When watching a movie it is always advisable to use a worksheet to guide students on
what aspects they have to concentrate on.
- After the introductory work and some prediction, show students the scene or part of it,
preferably one in which there is quite a lot happening or the story developing.
- As they watch (the 2nd time) they may write as many words, expressions or sentences
on what they are watching as occur to them.
- They may complete charts, put a sequence in order, focus on characters’ descriptions,
etc.
- You could also give students some sentence beginnings which they have to complete.
Students then compare, expand and correct their responses.
- Elicit their ideas on the board, asking for contributions from the weaker students too.
You should end up with a board full of notes.
- You then summarise the ideas, share information, act out a sequence, etc.
 Listen and draw

This is a fun activity that can be adapted to provide practice in many different lexical items
and structural areas. Students will listen to descriptions of people and they will draw as
they listen. They can draw people described from scratch, but you can also give them a
photocopy with the partially drawn pictures:
Possible text to be read to the students:

This is a picture of my grandfather and my grandmother. They are quite strange! My
grandad is very tall and thin. He’s bald but he’s got thick black eyebrows and a big, thick
moustache. He wears glasses on the end of his big nose. He’s got small bright eyes and
he stares hard at you. He always looks very serious; he never smiles. He looks quite
frightening if you don’t know him, I think. He usually wears an old jacket and trousers
which are too long. He uses a walking stick because he can’t walk very well. Oh, and he’s
always smoking his pipe, of course.
My granny, on the other hand, is very short and fat, almost round. She has short, curly hair.
She wears glasses on the end of her nose, too. She’s very different from my grandad; she’s
always smiling and happy. She usually wears a blouse with a high neck and a long skirt.
She loves reading so she’s always got a book in her hand. Oh! And she always wears a big
gold heart on a chain around her neck: it was the first present she got from my grandad.
II) Here is an interesting article to round up main ideas
Listening Activities for Effective Top-down Processing

Ji Lingzhu
margie_ji@yahoo.com
Taiyuan Normal University (China)
Introduction
Once I played the recording of a hundred word passage on how to advertise for a kind of very expensive
perfume to my students in the listening class. Before they listened, all the necessary new words like tuxedo,
Leonardo da Vinci etc, were given and explained carefully. The tape was played three times before I asked
them to retell the main idea of the passage. Half of them failed to give the correct answer. Even some of the
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13
strong learners failed. My students told me they did not know what the writer was talking about, although they
knew all the words and the grammatical rules. Suddenly one lady student who seldom opened her mouth in
the listening class stood up, telling me that the writer was talking about how to make an advertisement for a
kind of perfume. She further explained that she was interested in reading fashion magazines in her spare time,
and people always tried many ways to advertise their products. That was really out of my expectation because
she was not very strong in listening comprehension.
The text itself was not very difficult linguistically and the students were capable of understanding it. What
caused the comprehension failure?
Just like reading, in listening, there are also two simultaneous and complementary ways of processing a text.
In top-down processing, learners use their prior knowledge to make predictions about the text. In bottom-up
processing, learners rely on their linguistic knowledge to recognize linguistic elements -- vowels, consonants,
words, sentences to do the construction of meaning. Teachers often think that the learners hear every sound,
word or sentences before they understand the general meaning of the passage. However, in practice, they
often adopt a top-down approach to predict the probable theme and then move to the bottom-up approach to
check their understanding. According to the schema theory, the process of comprehension is guided by the
idea that input is overlaid by the pre-existing knowledge in an attempt to find a match. The readers must relate
textual materials to their background knowledge, so that the new input from a reading passage is mapped
against some prior schema. All aspects of the previously existing schema must be compatible with the new
input from the text. In a commercial society like ours, my students do not lack the schema for
advertising. However the passage is not about the advertisement for the perfume, but about his thoughts on
the ways to advertise. The students reported that they did not think about the advertisement planning process
while they listened to the passage. The lady student who did well reported that she had read an article on how
to advertise for a famous brand of shirt. Most of the students actually failed because they were not very familiar
with the topic.
In English listening, the content schema must be activated in order for the learners to access their prior
knowledge. Consequently it is our job to use some classroom activities to help them. First of all, we must
assess the students' level of background knowledge on a particular topic before the students listen to the text.
If the students lack specific content schema, we should provide a remedial lesson on the topic to bring their
level of content schema up to the level where they can better comprehend the text. Or we revise the teaching
materials so that they will not be too demanding for the students. Furthermore, the teachers can use the
information gained at this time to make specific lesson plans for the remainder of the listening lesson on that
particular topic.
Activities to Activate Students' Prior Knowledge
To effectively activate the students' prior knowledge, I often use activities in my listening class and will
introduce some of them here in this article.
Word Association Tasks

This method helps to determine what prior knowledge students bring to the new topic before they listen to the
passage. They will respond to a key word or phrase such as "Crimes are harmful to the society." They can
write down as many words and phrases as possible in five minutes' time related to this topic, or they may write
freely on this topic. While they write, they should not worry about the words and sentences they write, just pay
attention to the content. The whole process takes about ten minutes. The teacher can write down the main
ideas on the board. Then according to the information, the teacher should adjust his/her teaching plan. The
free association method of assessing background knowledge was originally developed as part of a pre-reading
plan. Later it was further developed as a measure of prior knowledge. The learners are usually given three
content words or phrases related to a topic and asked to write anything that comes to mind when they hear
each word or phrase. We can also use the semantic webbing method. In this approach, teachers graphically
connect the various concepts and key words surrounding a particular topic on the blackboard, helping students
to see the possible relationship between ideas discussed. Here we are not creating new knowledge, but
making students aware of the knowledge they already have by giving structure to the content information. This
process will enable them to connect what they are going to learn with what they have already know.
This teaching process can be done as group work. Students can be divided into several groups to discuss the
topic. Usually each group will come up with different ideas. After a few minutes, the instructor can ask the
group leader to report their discussion results, and help them to put their ideas into appropriate groups and
label them properly. The students are encouraged to refer to a dictionary as they generate their ideas.
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14
Another Type of Pre-listening Activity Is Questioning.
Usually teachers ask students questions after they finish listening. Here my suggestion is giving them the
questions before they listen to the target text. This task more closely relates to what happens in the real world.
We most often listen to the speaker to find answers to the questions in our minds, relating to a certain topic,
or to confirm what we already thought to be true. Pre-passage questions induce a selective attention strategy.
If we use a certain textbook, in which questions always follow a passage, we may ask the students to read the
questions first. By reading the questions, students may build up their own expectations about the coming
information, and also by trying to find answers to these questions, their prior knowledge on the topic can be
activated. They can even have a framework of the organization of the passage to be read if the questions are
arranged in a well-arranged order.
For instance, students are expected to answer the following questions after they listen to a passage.
 What are the benefits of the social recognition of marriage for children?
 What are the three areas the speaker will deal with in this lecture?
 What are the three possibilities for the number of mates?
 What are the possibilities for the locality of the marriage?
 What are the possibilities for the transfer of wealth?
Ask the students to read the questions carefully, they will know the main idea of the passage is marriage
customs, and the speaker will mainly talk about the benefits of social recognition of marriage for the children,
the number of mates, the locality of marriage, and the transfer of wealth after the marriage.
We can also use the student-generated questions by giving them a topic, letting them ask questions about
what kind of information they would like to know, and then asking their classmates to give answers to the
questions. Before they listen to a dialogue between a policeman and a thief, tell them who the two speakers
are, then ask what they may talk about. You may also ask the learners to role play the dialogue.
However, this method may not be very appropriate for opinion-giving text or fiction. It is best used for passages
that provide factual information. If the passage is too long, one possible solution for the teacher is divide the
text into sections and implement the approach section by section.
Making List of Possibilities / Ideas / Suggestions
When the text contains lists, even short lists of possibilities /ideas /suggestions or whatever, it is often a good
idea to use list making as the pre-listening activity. This way the students can use their lists during the listening
stage. While the students make the list, they can use the words and phrases they have already known, or they
can ask their partners to help. Any checking type activity carried out while listening can then be limited to
matching with known language. This can increase the likelihood of students succeeding with the task. So it is
a very motivating activity, especially for the lower level students.
The list making activity is very good for pair or group work. Students can work it in a relaxed atmosphere
because there is no right answer as to what should be on the list. In the beginning of the course, when the
students are not very familiar with the activity, we may use list-making for the subjects about which people are
very familiar since they are likely to have a lot of ideas. For instance, "the food people like to eat", "things
children are afraid of", etc.
Looking at Pictures Before Listening
I have used this many times with younger learners because they are good at reading pictures. If you want to
check whether the students can name some of the items in the listening text, pre-listening "looking and talking
about" is an effective way of reminding the students of lexis which they may have forgotten or never known. It
will also help them to focus their attention on the coming topic. This is very good for narrative or descriptive
passages.
Why Are These Activities Important?

Listeners do make use of background knowledge for comprehension. Therefore it seems logical to teach
background knowledge in the second language program. In China, the textbooks for listening are chosen by
the department leaders and teachers are required to follow the book closely. The texts are taken from various
resources from English speaking countries, which put emphasis on authenticity. These materials cover a wide
range of fields in the target language culture. However, our students are not culturally ready for these kind of
materials. They are forced to listen to the unknown, the remote and the bizarre, so that they cannot use the
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15
top-down processing strategies very effectively. Therefore they are forced to listen word by word or even sound
by sound. Several scholars recommended the use of narrowed materials, possibly with the local materials,
such as school newspapers, local novels etc (Carrell& Eisterhold, 1983). They are right to a certain extent.
However as foreign language learners, they cannot always stick to narrow materials, we may start from narrow
materials and gradually move to authentic materials. So at the beginning of the course, students should be
given a pre-test on their background knowledge. Then we may present listening passages in a graded order
to ensure that for every topic the students have some prior knowledge. The passages that are learned first
would provide background for later passages.
Pre-listening activities usually have two primary goals: a. to bring to consciousness the tools and strategies
that good listeners use when listening, and b. to provide the necessary context for that specific listening task.
Studies show that learners comprehend more of a text if they are familiar with the text from experience or they
have known something about the topic before or they know in advance what the listening passage concerns.
The four kinds of pre-listening activities help to activate students' prior knowledge, build up their expectations
for the coming information and sometimes even give them a framework of the coming passage. In this way we
can help our students to comprehend better.
What Influences Our Choice of Top-down Activities?
The choice of the activities will depend on a number of factors, such as:
 the time available;
 the material available;
 the ability of the class;
 the nature and content of the listening text itself.
The last item on the list "the nature of the listening text itself" is very important when choosing activities. Some
kind of activities are simply not appropriate to some types of text, and in other instances, the text itself very
naturally makes one type of activity especially appropriate.
Listening texts which naturally rise to certain kind of top-down activities are particularly useful and generally
quite motivating for the students.
When the instructor designs these kind of activities, they should also take the time element into consideration.
You cannot have a fifteen- minute activity for a passage which will last only three minutes. Remember the pre-
listening process should not last longer than the actual listening activity. The learners' proficiency is also a
factor to consider. The activities should not be too demanding, otherwise the students will lose their interests.
Conclusion
Top-down processing is very important in listening comprehension. In our native language, we do not listen to
the speaker word by word, and we are sometimes one step ahead of the speaker. Our students' cognitive level
is quite high, and they are quite strong in comprehension. The only problem is that their English is not very
good. Using top-down activities can quickly help them to transfer their mother tongue listening strategies into
English listening. Activating prior knowledge is crucial in top-down processing.
References
 Carrell, P. L.& Eisterhold,J. (1983). Schema Theory and ESL Reading Pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 23
(4), 647-678.
 He, Q. etc (1992) Listen to This -- 2. Beijing -- Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing
House.
 Kitao, S.K.C. (1989). Reading, Schema Theory and Second Language learners. Tokyo; Eichosha
Sininsha Co., LTD.
 Chia,H (2001),Reading Activities for Effective top-down Processing. English Teaching Forum, Vol 39
No 1.
 Underwood, M ( 1989). Teaching listening. New York: Longman Inc.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IX, No. 11, November 2003
http://iteslj.org/
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Professional Practice II – Worksheet 11b / 2022

Activity bank and ideas: Reading and Listening

Examples of top-down activities

Ideas drawn from: http://es.slideshare.net/Joe_McVeigh/designing-effective-reading-activities

Examples of bottom-up activities

Read more at: http://www.k12reader.com/reading-comprehension-guide/

1. name of the main character

A ‘photograph’ or identikit picture.

More Examples of text-based activities

Using a poem, you could:

Jumbles (Bottom-up activities)

Using a poem, you could:

Omitting a single sentence, you could:

Comparison activities (Bottom-up activities)

Using a report/review of a video extract, you could:

What are higher order thinking skills?

Reading Comprehension of different text forms

Reading comprehension and expository text

Content area reading strategies

Using Readers: Alternatives to round-the-class reading

Examples of Listening Activities

Activities to Activate Students' Prior Knowledge

Questioning (same as reading)

Making List of possibilities / ideas / suggestions

Examples of Top-down Activities:

Examples of bottom-up activities: Listen and ...

 The washing line game

- Divide the class into two teams.

To make a ham and lettuce sandwich

 Total Physical Response

 Listen and draw

Possible text to be read to the students:

II) Here is an interesting article to round up main ideas

Listening Activities for Effective Top-down Processing

Activities to Activate Students' Prior Knowledge

Word Association Tasks

Making List of Possibilities / Ideas / Suggestions

Looking at Pictures Before Listening

Why Are These Activities Important?

What Influences Our Choice of Top-down Activities?

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