THE WHILE-LISTENING STAGE

 

The purpose of while-listening activities

 

While-listening activities are what students are asked to do during the time that they arelistening to the text.As far as listening comprehension (i.e.listening for meaning)is concerned,the purpose of while-listening activities is to help learners develop the skill of eliciting messages from spoken languge.

 

The nature of while-listening activities

 

While-listening activities should be interesting,so that the students feel they want to listen and carry out the activities.Part of the interest can stem from the topic and the content of what is said,and the listening text should be chosen with the interest sof the students in mind.

 

Factors which affect the choice of while-listening activities

a)The possibilities for varying the level of difficulty if required;

 

b)The inconvenience of carrying out activities which require individuals to give their responses orally in the classroom.This kind of work is best done in a language labarotary.Classroom while-listening activities generally have to be limited to those which can be done without the need for each student to respond by speaking,altough of course a great deal of listening occurs when a teacher speaks to a class or an individual ,and then some kind of spoken response is made by the students without causing disturbance and preventing others from listening;

 

c)whether the work is to be done by the students with the teacher present or whether it is to be done as private study,either in a lstening centre or at home.This will influence the teacher's choice of activity as he/she may want

_to give diffirent students diffirent works according to their levels of ability;

_to provide additional instructions/clarification for work to be done away from the classroom;or

_whether or not the while-listening activities generate material or ideas whiiich might be used for other,post-listening work,and if so,whether the teacher wishes to make use of these.

 

Ideas for while-listening avtivities

 

1)Marking/checking items in pictures

Having carried out some lpre-listening work using a picture,students are then asked to respond to various stimuli(questions/statements) by marking things on the picture.

The teacher who has checked through the actual listening text in advance (preferably by listening to it,not just by reading through the transcript) will have used the pre-listening stage to introduce any lexis or expressions which the students are not familiar with or nedd reminding about,so that the chances of everyone succeding with the task will be enhanced.Ther are many activities which fall into this category:identifying people and things,marking items mentioned by the speaker,marking errors,checking details,marking choices,etc.

This type of while-listening activity is good for helping students to focus on the listening itself,because they not distracted by the nedd to try to write down words.

 

 

 

2)which picture?

Students hear a description or aconversation and have to decide,from the selection offered ,which picture is the 'right' one.The most common pictures used are drawings/photos of people or scenes,indoors or out of doors.This an activity where the level of difficulty can be changed both by the degree of similarity or contrast between the pictures and by the level of sophistication of the description/conversation.

 

 

 

3)Putting pictures in order

A number of pictures are presented to the students.The aim is to arrange the pictures in the correct order according to the listening text.Generally the ordering can only be done by numbering each picture,because most exercises of this kind are done from books.It is important not to have too many pictures ( up to five or six) and to have a series which cannot be put in order easily without listening at all.

 

 

 

4)Completing pictures

This activity is popular with younger students and is particularly useful at the very early stages of learning when the level of difficulty can be kept very low.It is one of a vast range of activities which entail carrying out instructions.Having looked at the basic outline of the picture,the students is required to follow the instructions and draw in (or color) various items.

 

 

 

 

THE POST-LISTENING STAGE

 

 

Post-listening activities ambrace all the work related to a particular listening text (whether recorded or spoken by the teacher) which are done after the listening is completed.Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening stages and some relate only loosely to the listening text itself.

 

Ideas for post-listening activities

 

1)Matcing with a reading text

This activity is particularly useful for students who have so far learned their Engish mainly through reading and writing and who have difficulty in matching the heard word with the written word.At first,it is probably best to stert from the written word and use reading as the pre-listening activity.

In this example below,students match people with the actions.

 

 

 

 

2)Jigsaw listening

'Jigsaw listening' is a term which was used by Marion Geddes and Gill Sturtridge in the late to describe a listening activity in which a class of students is divided into a small number of groups and each group listens to a diffirent listening text,altough all the texts are on the same topic,and then the groups exchange information to build up the complete picture.The success of a jigsaw activity depends on each listening text being incopmlete in some way which is crucial for the completion of the task,so that the students need to seek details from each other and provide accurate information from their own listening.When there is quite a lot of information contained in the listening texts,it is useful to provide a while-listening activity which requires the students to record,on a chart for example,points which they may need to convey to the other groups at the post-listening stage.

 

3)Establishing the mood/attitude/behaviour of the speaker

It depends on the listener interpreting what is said, rather than just looking for the overt meaning.It is not just the words that are important but how they are spoken.A comment such as 'You're so kind' can be spoken with varying stress and intonation to show that the words are spoken sincerely /sarcastically / fawningly /etc.The loudness/quietness of a voice might indicate anger or sarrow,excitement or boredom.Variations in delivery often have the same significance across many languages,but this is certainly not always so,and the types of misunderstandings which can occur through non-recognition of the underlying meaning,as opposed to the surface meaning of the word spoken,can be significant.

 

 

 

4)Role-play/simulation

Role-play and simulation are activities which can be based on a diffirent stimuli: role cards,stories,characters seen on television,etc,as well as listening passages.The attraction of using listening as an input is that it can

provide the students with a selection of langyage appropirate to the roles and situations which are to be developed.Even if the situation presented in the listening text is diffirent from the one to be used in the role-play,it is useful for the students to hear relevant language functions and forms which they may wish to use whwn their turn comes to speak.