A Nice Idea for a Listening Skills Activity

Let me explain the picture. It is, I suppose, along the same lines as a heart monitor print out. You need to imagine it without the different coloured lines, so looking like a very very wide set of rugby posts. The pupils draw these in their books - you may need a couple of them for a slightly longer listening.

Then, when you read or play the listening, pupils draw the monitor line. Above the line means they understand. Below the line means they don't understand. Some pupils will dip up and down almost with every other word. Other pupils will take "understand" to mean that they know what it is talking about even without necessarily understanding every single word. This in itself is useful information and produces good discussion with pupils as to what they mean by "understanding" a listening. You can see that this pupil started strongly, had a couple of dips below the line and then tailed off at the end. The lowest line represents their first listening. Being able to realise when you are losing track or losing concentration and tuning back in again, is one of the first benefits of this activity.

You will see that there are several lines. These are done on subsequent listenings to the same text. Some might be immediately, or later the same lesson, or returning to it in a future lesson.

In between each listening, we use different interventions. Firstly, simply listening again. Or pooling ideas of what we heard on the board before listening again. I might work on some of the vocabulary during the lesson and then come back for another listening later. Or we might read the transcript or a partial transcript in today's lesson, and then come back to the listening in the next lesson. One other thing that can help is to show pupils the questions which go with the listening. Not in order to ask them to answer them, but so they can see how having the questions structures the listening and guides them through it. If you do then move on to asking them to answer the questions, they will be well prepared for them.

You can see that there is a gradual improvement in this pupil's understanding of the listening. You can ask pupils to annotate when each trace was done and what intervention it was associated with. This helps pupils realise how to tackle listening and what sort of activities can make a difference. It is also less intimidating than having comprehension (or incomprehension) questions straight-away.

If you are reading the text yourself, you can also vary the speed. Although in this case, pupils might find it harder to track the same speed as they draw the line. You can also use this for authentic resources, such as videos. But in this case pupils would need much longer lines and wouldn't want to be looking down at their book. I have to admit that I use a different technique for this. Pupils make a little airplane out of a biro and a short ruler, and fly them above their heads as they watch, dipping lower when they don't understand and picking back up when they get it again. But that might be too silly for some teachers.