Stepping into the real world: transitioning listening
This is the recorded version of a presentation which originally took place on Friday 4th April 2014 at IATEFL Harrogate 2014.
The abstract
“I’ve studied English for years, but I can’t understand anyone!” This was a common complaint from my students on arrival in the UK. This workshop aims to introduce you to practical activities and materials you can use to help students transition from understanding scripted listening materials to feeling comfortable with real-world English.
The summary
Listening is the skill we use most in a second language. We have to understand speakers in many different contexts, of different ages, genders, levels of education, and with a range of accents, both native and non-native. However, this is rarely reflected in the classroom, where listening tends to be focussed on other students in class or on scripted coursebook recordings in ‘standard’ forms of English, mostly spoken by young to middle-aged adults (or overly excited children in the case of young learner materials!). Teachers also tend to focus on testing comprehension, rather than on teaching better listening skills. This results in students lacking confidence in their listening abilities and/or lacking knowledge of how to approach listening in the real world.
The aim of this workshop is to introduce and try out a range of activities and materials which you can use in your classroom to teach listening, rather than testing it. Some of the principles discussed will be based on John Field’s Listening in the Language Classroom (Cambridge 2008), as well as my own experience in the classroom and as a second language learner. The workshop will also look at how you can make the listening you use in the classroom reflect the real world as much as possible. Finally, participants will be given the chance to share activities and materials which have worked for them, as well as discussing how to apply the activities from the workshop to their own contexts.
The presentation
You can watch the full presentation in this video:
The books I recommended are:
- Collins English for Life: Listening A2 by Chris Flint and Jamie Flockhart
- Listening in the Language Classroom by John Field
(These are affiliate links, so if you buy them or anything else after clicking on these links I will get a little money. Thank you!)
I also recommend showing your students how to make the most of podcasts. I wrote a post on my Independent English blog which you can use as an introduction or to find links to some podcasts I recommend.
I’ve previously shared resources related to weak forms, including more word clouds like the one in the presentation.
The audio tracks are not included in the presentation, so I’ve uploaded them to audioboo so you can listen to them and/or use them in class. No copyright infringement is intended.
Slide 6, audio 1
Slide 6, audio 2
Slide 12
Slide 13, audio 1
Slide 13, audio 2
Slide 16
From another perspective
Lizzie Pinard wrote a summary of my talk as it was happening
Andrea at Anglolang including a summary of my talk in her review of IATEFL 2014
Laura Patsko and Katy Simpson look at the talk from the perspective of English as a Lingua Franca
James Taylor wrote a one-sentence summary which made me laugh 🙂