Teaching listening skills is possibly the hardest part of
our job as EFL teachers. It is much harder when you teach listening to Young
Learners (YLs) in a non-English-speaking environment. With very little English
exposure at home or in mainstream schools in countries where English is not
widely spoken, YLs need thorough guidance in approaching listening,
particularly, to authentic language. In an English-speaking-environment, where
English is everywhere, it is still crucial to teach learners to be effective
listeners. YLs need to be engaged and have a good reason for listening and
understanding what is being said. Listening plays a key part in the YLs’
language development, simply because it is their main source of sample language
and it constitutes the springboard for language acquisition and, hence, their
future spoken production (Krashen, 1981). In this article, the focus will be on
teaching listening to YLs aged 8-11 at A1 level (though some points made are
transferrable to other age groups).
What Does It Take To Teach Listening Effectively?
In current ELT practice, listening skills are more often
tested or practised than taught (Field, 2008). This is something I have noticed
over the years when talking to newly-qualified teachers and many colleagues in
a variety of teaching contexts. I admit I have been doing that for a long time
myself with frustrating results. I used to pre-teach new vocabulary, to get
learners to ‘recognize’ the words pre-taught and offer some sort of practice
extension through listening comprehension questions and that was it. It took me
a while before I realized that it’s not sufficient to play a CD track to get
your learners motivated to answer a list of (rather unchallenging)
comprehension questions about a fake conversation, in which one of the
interlocutors sounds like a YL. Teaching listening effectively takes a lot more
than that.
a. Motivation
YLs love visuals, animations, games, fun things to watch,
listen and do. Their main motivation is expressing their world to others and
sharing experiences with peers. Listening tasks and materials should raise
learners’ interest and keep them engaged while they are doing things with the
language they hear. Listening in class also has to be a chance for YLs to use
all their imagination, creativity, curiosity and energy to learn.
b. Engaging Listening Tasks
What makes a listening task engaging for YLs? YLs are in the
stage of their life in which they are gathering information from their world
experience. They are gradually developing the abilities to listen carefully to
get something done or just get the gist of what has been said for a purpose. In
other words, learners are learning to decode messages purposefully and manage
information with confidence. The teacher’s job is to create real-life
conditions in the language classroom, as much as possible, in order to ‘train’
YLs to develop effective strategies for understanding oral messages that have
some connections with their world. Listening tasks must therefore clearly
reflect YLs’ real life experiences and everyday new discoveries.
How can teachers make listening tasks more engaging? Think
of all the different situations when YLs listen carefully to people around
them. In which situations would they listen up for important details? Possibly,
when they need to follow instructions to make something, e.g. crafts, or to do
something ‘fun’, e.g. playing a guessing game. In these situations, there is a
clear purpose for listening and extracting key information. This is called
transactional listening (Richards, 1990). In this case, YLs’ language knowledge
can help them understand and select the information needed, which is called
‘bottom-up processing’ (ibid.). There is a lot YLs haven’t experienced
first-hand yet, but, while carrying out realistic tasks, they can still
activate the world knowledge they have gained through games, books, stories or
simply from parents’ or teachers’ talk. This is called ‘top-down processing’
(Richards, 1990): the context and the listener’s background knowledge will help
understand the message. New things will easily attract YLs. Selecting or
designing materials that can feed YLs’ endless curiosity and spark their
imagination is just vital to make tasks engaging. While keeping learners
motivated, listening tasks also need to create the opportunity for meaningful
language exposure and life experience.
c. Appropriate YL Materials
Teaching listening involves providing a fair degree of
motivation, purpose and engagement to a range of listening tasks that YLs can
relate to their real life or their world experience and that will provide
training for effective listening. Listening tasks need to be manageable in
order to avoid demotivation or information overload for YLs (Brown & Yule,
1983). Authentic materials can offer a chance for real language exposure though
task grading will be necessary, e.g. through visual aids or pre-listening
tasks, not necessarily vocabulary pre-teaching. For instance, you could choose
to use an example as a pre-listening task with an immediate response as to
build learners’ confidence before approaching the actual task (Lynch &
Anderson, 1988). Listening materials surely need to feature motivating tasks,
but also they need to provide interesting content and be visually attractive to
a child aged 8-11. Selecting listening materials can be hard. You need to walk
in your learners’ shoes and see the world with their eyes not your own. Talk to
your YLs as much as you can to find out about their interests and make a list
of topics that are age and culturally appropriate to your class, not YLs in
general. Materials should always have a fun and competitive element to make the
exposure to real language more enjoyable.
Having outlined what makes listening tasks effective, here
are five classroom ideas based on these principles.
1. Listen & play
Topic: Weather/Countries Functions: Understanding key
information Aims: Developing listening skills for details using icons, maps
& weather report video Learning new weather words & countries around
the world through listening
Activity: Listen to the weather forecast around the world
Match the weather icons to the flags/countries
Pre-taught vocabulary: none
Follow-up activity: Make a video about your local weather
today using weather flashcards
Resources: https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/games/whats-the-weather
2. Listen & make
Topic: Making things Function: Following instructions Aims:
Developing listening skills for live detailed instructions to make a fish
origami Learning craft vocabulary e.g. fold, unfold, turn around, press
Activity: Listen to the teacher giving live instructions to
make a simple fish origami
Pre-taught vocabulary: none
Follow-up activity: Listen & watch 3D Animation video
‘Once I caught a fish alive’ nursery rhyme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w49MQ6Wrqes
Resources: Square coloured paper
3. Listen & respond
Topic: Fruit & Veg, Food Functions: understanding
requests Aims: Developing transactional/top-down listening skills in the
context of shopping Learning quantifiers e.g. some, a lot of, and measures e.g.
Kilo, a dozen
Activity: Listen to a customer (teacher) who recorded a
message (video/audio) for the greengrocer (learners) asking to do the shopping
for her and collect the items from the shelves (rows of desks in the classroom)
Sample: ‘Hello there! I’m very ill today. Sorry, I can’t do my shopping. Can
you please help? Can I have two kilos oranges, please? Then, I need some onions
and a dozen eggs, please!’
Pre-taught vocabulary: Kilo/Pound; half a kilo; a dozen
Follow-up activity: Learners make their shopping lists in
turn and get partners to do the shopping
Resources: Realia, toy fruit & veg
4. Listen & guess
Topic: Appearance Function: describing people Aims:
Developing listening skills for selecting relevant information Learning new
vocabulary and phrases to describe people through semi-authentic listening
(different accents are featured in the text)
Activity: Listen to six people describing 6 other people
they met in different situations Ignore irrelevant information. Focus on their
appearance and match the description you hear to the face in the pictures
Pre-taught vocabulary: Beard, moustache, freckles. Other new
items are taught in context through visual/aural input
Follow-up activity: Play ‘Guess who?’ game – one learner at
a time describes a person from class/school/local town or celebrities. Other
learners guess who they are
Resources: https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/games/face-match
5. Listen & tell
Topic: Positions Function: describing places Aims:
Developing listening skills and predict key information using visual and aural
clues Learning basic prepositions of place and describing places
Activity: Watch the video. Listen to the conversation. Tell
where Hero was/is now
Pre-taught vocabulary: None New items are taught in context
through visual/aural input
Follow-up activity: Play ‘Treasure hunt’ – Teacher hides
small cuddly toys or nice kids’ stuff in the classroom/school and sends
learners on a treasure hunt. Learners in groups ask the teacher for clues. Good
listeners usually win
Resources: https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-videos/heros-adventure
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