Blended learning and listening skills

Blended learning means integrating traditional face-to-face classroom with a virtual classroom (Osguthrope & Graham, 2003; Williams, 2002). The resource will share some of the best practices to enhance students’ participation, motivation and listening skills through blended learning approach.

• The listening texts and the activities/exercises should be level appropriate.

• Include a variety of listening texts (monologues, dialogues, songs, etc.) and different activities (gap fill, true- false, multiple choice, individual/group presentations, etc.). It will help to break the monotony in the classroom as well as to cater to individual learner differences.

• Also use both audio as well as video listening texts when ever possible. When setting up on line activities, try to include a variety of resources.
  
  
• Design challenging tasks that compel the learners to listen and assess their understanding.

• Try to incorporate listening texts based on local events and if possible recordings of local role model orators. Such recordings increase the enthusiasm of the learners to carry out the listening tasks since the content or the context is familiar to them.

• Before each listening activity, familiarize the students about the content of the listening text and specific vocabulary. To save the class time, the pre-preparation can even be done in the virtual classroom.

• Select online tools which are user-friendly to enable the learners to use them easily. (Eg: Google classroom, Moodle, Edmodo, Padlet)

• You can generate online activities in line with the classroom lessons to provide more opportunities for the learners to practice particular listening activities. It will enable the learners to practice at their own pace.

• To promote learner autonomy, self-learning activities can be used in the virtual classroom. For example, you can ask them to choose online activities related to a particular listening skill from recommended listening websites and fill a “Listening Self Report” summarizing what they learnt and whether they recommend the resource or not. (Google forms can be used to generate the “Listening Self Report”)

• Homework activities can be assigned as formative assessments and summative assessments can be conducted both face-to-face and online.

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Osguthorpe, R., & Graham, C.  (2003).  Blended learning environments:  Definitions and directions. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 4 (3), 227-233.

Williams, C. (2002). Learning on-line: A review of recent literature in a rapidly expanding field. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 26(3), 263-272.

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills/listening/

http://www.esl-lab.com/

http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/ 

https://www.esl-lounge.com/