System of exercises in teaching listening comprehension in school

All exercises for teaching listening are divided in two main groups: preparatory and communicative.

Preparatory exercises are language drills performing operations in identification, recognition and perception. They are receptive activities. The level of performing a drill is usually a separate language item: a sound, terminal tone, a word, a structure etc. or a combination of items comprising not more than a single phrase. In cases when it is language receptive-reproductive exercises, the level slightly differs up to a number of sentences. Simulative-communicative exercises of receptive-reproductive origin are performed at the level of a phrase, a group of phrases or a super phrasal unit. Communicative activities are of receptive and receptive-reproductive origin. The level of performing is usually a listening text.

Preparatory exercises are aimed at overcoming separate difficulties of listening. They help students acquire the ability to recognise new words, word-combinations; to differentiate similar words; to define meaning of homonyms, polysemantic words; to differentiate grammar forms.

Communicative activities are exercises in listening as a skill. They are aimed at grasping the general meaning of an utterance and at singling out its separate parts. Exercises in listening as a skill are performed at the level of a text.

Each group of exercises includes several kinds of activity. Every kind of exercise is aimed at overcoming a definite difficulty or at forming a corresponding sub-skill. There are eight kinds of exercises in the preparatory group and 5 kinds of activities in the communicative group.

8.6.1. Preparatory exercises: Isolating the listening skill

Exercises designed to practise listening nearly always involve the other skills as well, e.g. students listen and respond in writing; the teacher asks questions and students respond orally. This is as it should be. However, in some cases, it is difficult to see whether students have understood a listening passage or have not, without isolating the listening factor. For example, some students have understood it but can’t remember; others understood, but get stuck over formulating a correct answer; a few students may be just too lazy or apathetic to put their hands up to answer. In many cases, students’ level of understanding is ahead of their writing or oral ability. One way of practising only listening is by asking students to respond to what they hear in non-linguistic way. An example at the elementary level might be:

Exercise 1. Identify and put a circle around/ put a tick at…

Students listen to a teacher reading or on tape: Jane isn’t as tall as Mary is. Put a circle around Jane.

More interesting would be a connected text where students have to identify more than one person.

Exercise 2. A similar task likewise relying on visuals is ‘identify and number’. The students have a series of pictures, e.g.:

Students hear on tape or the teacher reads: Number 1. It’s got 4 legs. It’s not very big. It likes milk and fish. Number 2. It’s got 8 legs. It’s quite small. You’re afraid of it. Etc.

Exercise 3. Another useful exercise, which does not involve reading, writing or speaking, is picture dictation. Here a teacher dictates a passage and students draw what the teacher dictates. The teacher must be careful to make sure that what he is dictating is well within everybody’s artistic capabilities. He should make it clear that it doesn’t matter how badly people draw. Follow-up work can be done, which also involves speaking practice by asking students to ‘read back their dictations’ by describing the pictures they have drawn. Alternatively, the teacher can ask the students questions about their pictures. If the students are in an elementary class, the teacher can make up a text for picture dictation connected with colours.

Exercise 4. Another relative activity is to give students a partially completed picture to which they have to add details as they hear a description, e.g.: students are provided with pictures of an empty street and they hear details of what is happening in the street, which they must draw in.

Exercise 5. This activity is usually called ‘ listen and do’: students have to listen and follow instructions. Lego building is a good example. The students have a set of Lego bricks and with these have to build a model, following instructions as they hear them.

Exercise 6. Grid listening: students here have a table, which they have to fill in as they listen to a text. In this case, a little bit of reading is usually involved. This is a technique frequently used in ESP (where students will be working with scientific and technical materials). It can equally well be used at the elementary level. For example:

Text: Mary, who is 12, loves animals and has a cat and a dog. Her friend John is a year older, but he has no pets.

Although grid listening may involve just ticks (V) and crosses (X), it could also involve some writing.

8.6.2. Preparatory exercises: Non-isolated listening skill

There are 8 kinds of preparatory exercises. Performing exercises of this group, students are being prepared to listening to texts. Habits of oral perception of speech items are formed with these exercises. The level of items varies from a sentence to a super-phrasal unit. Exercises are aimed at overcoming the following difficulties, which may be caused by listening as a skill:

a) finding grammatical cues in sentence structures;

b) guessing the meaning of unknown words;

c) understanding sentences containing unfamiliar words which do not interfere with comprehension of the whole utterance;

d) anticipation of what the speaker is going to say and readjusting the predictions;

e) eliciting different categories of meaningful information (time, space, cause, effect);

f) estimating different kinds of cohesion between sentences;

g) telling the main idea in a group of sentences;

h) concentrating attention and retaining information in memory.