Planning a Listening Activity

Help your students get comfortable with listening!

The purpose of the Prelistening Activity is to prepare students for listening, to ensure student success, and to get students excited about listening. Prelistening Activities should motivate students and answer the questions, “Why are we doing this?”

Students tend to listen carefully if they have a purpose or a task to perform based on the listening. A thorough procedure could be like the following.

There should always be some follow-up after listening, not necessarily for the purpose of checking comprehension, but to give the students the satisfaction of knowing they can apply what they have just heard to their learning or, even, to their life. The post listening activities are often based on something from pre-listening or while-listening activities. Post listening should not be looked at as testing. It is merely checking to see if the Planning a Listening Activity 3 TESOL Connections, August 2011 students understood the passage and can use what they heard in the future. “How can I apply this to my life?”

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Some places to find free listening passages:

• Breaking News English: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/
• BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml
• Voice Of America: http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/index.cfm
• English Listening Online: http://www.elllo.org/
• Nursery Rhymes: http://www.eaglesweb.com/Mother_Goose.htm
• Podcasts (narration): http://www.eslpod.com/
• Podcasts (jokes): http://www.manythings.org/jokes/
• Podcasts (links): http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Listening/Podcasts/