Listening comprehension skills

Simple principles of Teaching Listening Comprehension

Before we start our class let's do the revision of what we have done so far. we had discussed the four communication skills required:

Today we will focus on Listening skills:

In the early stages of listening discrimination of sounds for e.g,. bit and pit are two different words but sound similar. The student should also be able to discriminate between the sounds of his/her native language and sounds of the English Language.

As a Teacher, while teaching English listening, you should  be clear with:

1) your goals in teaching a lesson must be explicit and simply explained to students.

2) You should carefully plan for the materials you will introduce to enhance the learning. These materials should be relevant to the interest and levels of the students.

3) You must insist on active and overt student participation.

It is also important to understand that Listening, Thinking, and Remembering is not separate acts, in fact they complement each other, but in the beginning students might tend to focus on these as independent items.

                                            

Task-oriented activities help in improving the performance of students and to engage them in class. six types of task-oriented exercises are: 

a) Listening and performing actions: e.g. Simon says (stand up, sit down, jump, close eyes).

b) Listening and Performing operations: e.g. listening and constructing a figure or drawing a map etc.

c) Listening and Solving problems: e.g. Riddles, numerical, spatial, or chronological problems.

d) Listening and Transcribing: e.g. Writing notes, messages.

e) Listening and summarizing information.

f) Interactive Listening: e.g. asking questions and answers from students. 

While preparing lessons for the listening comprehension following format can be used:

1. Select the teaching Point.
2. Introduce the topic before class.
3. Give one or two guiding questions.
4. Divide the listening into stages.
5. Divide the passage into several sections.
6. Summary of the passage in the end.

At the end of the class one should always ask oneself "What worked and what didn't work for the class?"