Are you looking for some listening strategies to teach your students so that they will become better listeners? Then you’re in the right place! I’ve been using these strategies with my students for a while now and they always yield great results. When students are equipped with the strategies to take on a spoken text in English, they will always get more out of it than if they didn’t have those strategies.
Listening is a skill and you can learn it. A while ago, I found that my students weren’t really listening intentionally to the English texts that we were giving them. They weren’t getting all the details that they should be getting. And that’s when I decided I should teach them some tools to attack any spoken text that they would come across. Below I will tell you what I came up with and what turned out to really work well!
Listening skills training
It takes some time for students to understand that they can apply listening strategies to a spoken text, and they don’t just have to wing it. Listening skills are enhanced by practicing each skill repeatedly, and you must remind them of these strategies often, but then it will work wonders.
Listening skills types
There are a few types of listening skills and they are:
- Predicting and activating knowledge
- Structure and format comprehension
- Word comprehension
- Summarizing and understanding details
Let me explain these types better with some listening skills examples:
Predicting and activating knowledge:
Before starting to listen to audio or watch a video, students must predict what it will be about and activate their knowledge about the topic. They can do that by looking at the title and visuals. For example, a YouTube video will have a title to guide the audience, and it will have a still from the video that should also allude to the topic. By predicting and activating knowledge, the brain will make connections better, and it will be easier to understand the spoken text.
Structure and format comprehension:
You should teach your students what type of formats exist for spoken texts. Some formats I come across often are tutorials or instruction videos, documentaries, commercials, and interviews. I teach them how they can spot what they have on their hands. For example, an interview will have questions and answers, and a documentary is the factual story of a real person or place.
When they know what kind of format they have in front of them, they can also decide what the purpose is. Does the video want to inform or educate, entertain, or persuade? Depending on the purpose, students should understand spoken texts in different ways.
The last thing regarding structure is to teach students signposting language. Knowing signposting language will help students understand where the creator of the spoken text is going. For example, when they are introducing a topic they might say “I’m going to discuss..” or “Today, I’ll focus on..”. When they are nearing the end they may say “To sum up..” or “In conclusion”. For indicating examples they could say “For instance”, and for starting a new topic: “Moving on to..”. For a good list of these, click here.
Word comprehension:
I teach my students that when they don’t know the meaning of a word in the spoken text, they must a) decide if it is necessary to know what that word means, and b) use the context to figure out the meaning. Listen to what else is being said to help decide.
Summarizing and understanding details:
When the student is done listening it is good for them to summarize what they just heard in their own words. A useful tool for that are the 5W and H questions: Answering who, what, when, where, why, and how about the topic will lead to a good summary. From there, students should be able to answer comprehension details as well.
Try these listening comprehension strategies for yourself and immediately see results! Teaching students strategies for learning really is the best thing we can do for them.
Listening skills activity
Some listening activities ESL students will enjoy are those that have them follow all of the steps above. In my TPT store, I have a question set that can be used with any spoken text and it does exactly this. It will take students through pre-listening, while listening, and after-listening activities. You can use this in your own lessons, or even give it to students for homework. Click here to check it out!
I also have another blog post about fun listening activities using the Taxonomy of Bloom. Click here to go there now! It contains all the fun ideas for a listening lesson that will really engage your students into learning.
Related articles:
How to do active listening activities with your students that are engaging
5 really cool websites for listening practice
Top 5 ways to use songs for listening practice in your lessons
