Listening practice

Listening is more than accepting the sound waves that come into your ears. Listening requires your brain as well. Think about what you do in your first language when you are having trouble understanding -- you're in a crowd, the connection is fuzzy, the person has a speech impediment. Do you notice that your brain is working more, sifting information, deciding what to pay attention to and what to ignore?

The same skills are important in second-language listening, but since we often don't realize we're using them in our first language, it's helpful to teach them explicitly to our learners. In this case, we're not so much teaching as helping our learners realize what they're already doing in their first languages and practice applying it to second-language listening.

I recently taught a listening lesson to a class of four learners of varying proficiency levels. Here's what I did:

First, I wrote some listening skills on the board. I described each one and solicited examples of situations where this skill might be useful. Here are the skills and some examples:

• Listening for details. Notice specific information that relates to your listening goal, e.g. numbers, names, dates, places. We use this when we're listening to a voicemail, for example. You don't need all the information; you just want to know who called and why, and their phone number. when you make a phone call and hear "For this department, press one. For that department, press two." You just want to know which number to press and that's all.

• Listen selectively. Pay attention to some things but not others, depending on your listening goal. Imagine watching a youtube video about how to fix your toilet, and you already know how to do the first part of it. At the beginning, you'll listen with less attention, paying attention for cues that tell you that the instructions for the second part is coming -- and then you'll pay closer attention.

• Listen for global understanding. In this case, you want to know the general idea, theme, topic, or purpose. You might use this skill when you're channel surfing. You just want to get a general idea of what the show is about -- is it action? rom-com? the weather? -- before changing the channel.

• Listen for the main ideas. Pay attention for key points, like instructions for a DIY project or the plot of a story or the main points supporting an argument.

I gave them some cards; on each card, I had written a sentence summarizing a key point from our listening text. The learners looked over the cards and asked questions about any words they were unfamiliar with. I solicited from them their predictions about the listening text.

Then we wrote some listening goals. We focused on global understanding and main ideas, plus hearing the exact words that they had just asked about.

We listened, and they took notes.

After listening, we discussed. How did your predictions compare to what you heard? What did you do in your brain when you were listening? Did you use the skills? How did it go? What problems did you experience? What questions do you still have? What skills can you use to get those questions answered?

Then, we set listening goals again. The learners decided what part of the listening text they wanted to understand better -- whatever they were interested in or had questions about. We talked about listening selectively so they could focus their attention on the information they specifically wanted.

Then we listened again. And afterward, we discussed. What answers did you hear to those questions? Did you accomplish your listening goals? What were you doing differently in your brain this time compared to the first time?

We ended with an extension. I asked the learners about the upcoming week and where they expected to use English. They expected to listen to the weather, talk with their supervisors or clients at work, and so on. We talked about which listening skills they could use in those contexts and why, so they have a plan for the week.

If you want to bring this to your classroom, it's not hard to put together. You'll need to find some audio to listen to, and you have the whole internet at your disposal. For beginner and intermediate learners, look for short texts where people talk slowly and clearly. For more advanced learners, I might start with a short easy listening text so they have some experience explicitly using these listening skills, but then I might have them practice their listening skills with someone who talks fast or has an accent, or even a fuzzy recording. It's helpful to expose learners to the kinds of language they will hear in real life and broaden their listening abilities. If your learners tell you that a particular accent is difficult for them, you can deliberately seek out a recording of someone with this accent.

Sound waves and ears are the same, but using your brain to employ different skills will increase your comprehension -- and that's the goal of listening.

Credit: Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, fourth edition, ed. Marianne Celce-Murcia, Donna Brinton, and Marguerite Ann Snow.