View Content #26793

By Harinder Kaur Khalsa, adapted by Leila Tamini Lichaei, CASLS Fellow

This activity of the week is included to complement this week’s Topic of the Week and offers a variety of ideas related to listening strategies that are beneficial to learners of all proficiency levels.

Learning objectives: Students will be able to

• Identify listening strategies that they can use before, during, and after listening.
• Articulate a plan to use a few listening strategies.
• Practice a few listening strategies.
• Demonstrate conscious awareness of their personal listening strategy use.

Mode: Interpretive

Materials: Student Handout, Listening Skills Strategies Sheet

Procedure:
1. As a class, brainstorm reasons that people listen to audio texts. Some answers may include: 

• to be informed 
• to reflect 
• to be entertained and intrigued

2. Next, ask learners to offer their favorite audio texts in the target language. What types of texts would they like to listen to? What would they need to better understand those texts?

3. After that discussion, discuss with learners that you will be working together so that they understand strategies to use before listening, during listening, and after listening.

4. Have learners brainstorm the strategies that they use while listening in small groups. After the brainstorm, allow each group to document strategies on the board as either pre-listening strategies, during listening strategies, or after listening strategies. 

5. Discuss the strategies that learners brainstormed. Augment their offerings from your own experience and/or the strategies in the Listening Skills Strategies Sheet. 

6. Ask learners to do a quick self-assessment regarding the strategies on the board. They should, in their own notes, make a list of the strategies they know and use, the strategies they would like to use more, and the strategies they either are unfamiliar with or don’t understand.

7. Ask the learners to vote on 3-5 strategies that they don’t know or understand and inform them that you will spend time modeling those strategies in the upcoming weeks. If time allows, feel free to go ahead and model a strategy or two.

7. Pass out the student handout. Ask learners to plan how they will handle the next audio text that you will use in class. It should be a text that aligns with curricular needs. Allow learners time to fill out the handout.

8. As students listen to the text, direct them to consciously engage in the strategies they have selected. 

9. Provide time for the learners to reflect on their strategy use. Use the following as guiding questions:

• Were the strategies helpful? How so?
• Did the strategies help you focus?
• How did strategy use impact your stress, if at all?
• Is there a strategy that you tried that you want to practice more or need more modeling from the teacher for? Which one?

10. Read the reflections and use them, in concert with the student handout the rest of the school year to remind learners to continue both modeling strategies and remind learners to engage with strategies as they continue to grow.