Evaluating listening skills

di E. Darling, British Council

Colophon
© Agenzia Scuola 2012

Task 1.3. A listening skills lesson framework

(20 minutes)

By planning a listening lesson in logical stages we can help our learners to practise and develop their listening strategies.

As we have already seen, we can divide a listening lesson into three main stages:

  • pre-listening activities
  • while-listening activities
  • post-listening activities

Here are some typical activities you might find in a listening skills lesson:

  1. Tell the students the topic of the listening. Ask students to work in groups to brainstorm words related to the topic.
  2. Ask students to order a series of pictures or sequence of events.
  3. Ask students to listen to a conversation and identify where it is taking place
  4. Ask students to read information about a topic then listen to find out whether or not the same points are mentioned.
  5. Ask students to listen and decide who is talking and what their relationship is.
  6. Use the listening as a model to focus on specific language and/or get students to practise pronunciation of connected speech.
  7. Show a picture related to the listening from the course book and ask students to predict what the listening will be about.
  8. Provide a written gapped text and ask the students to complete the missing words.
  9. Provide students with question prompts to discuss their personal ideas about the topic of the listening.

Decide during which stage of a listening lesson they would be useful (some activities might be pre and while activities) and whether they are developing bottom up or top down strategies. Tick the column if you have used this type of activity before and/or you would like to use it again. Put the activities into the chart below.

When you have finished, compare your ideas with these suggested answers:

You can find more ideas for pre- while- and post- listening here:

Pre-listening activities


Listening Activities


Making listening an authentic experience