Context matters here-part of “deciphering” includes trying to figure out where an unfamiliar sound fits into a more familiar context in order to make sense of it. This division into “familiar” and “new” will be based upon your students’ personal “ Language Bank,” or the collection of sounds that they’ve learned to recognize and understand when heard, usually in certain situations. The “new” will be those strings we don’t immediately recognize and that require some sort of identification. The “familiar” will be strings that we already know the meaning of, with or without context. When we engage in breaking the code, deciphering, a number of things will happen.įirst, we unconsciously divide strings of sounds into two general categories: familiar and new. Deciphering: Listening is active code-breaking “Recognition,” rooted in “knowing again,” means that students will draw from personal knowledge while listening. They’ll recognize things that they already know. Students will have an easier time understanding when they hear something familiar to them. In this first step, listeners advance beyond the purely physical activity of “hearing” and begin the first steps of interpreting what they’ve heard, using a process of “recognition.”
So, how do these three activities play out in an ESL classroom? Alerting: Listening is recognition Understanding: a mental reconstruction of the previous two activities, alerting and deciphering, leading the listener to comprehension as well as response.Deciphering: a sorting-out of known and unknown sounds, combined with an effort to identify the meaning of those unknown.Alerting: the physical perception and identification of the strings of sounds that have been heard.“Listening is the interpretive action taken by the listener in order to understand and potentially make meaning out of the sound waves.”īarthes breaks listening down into three general activities: The literary critic and semiotician Roland Barthes explains listening like this: As teachers, we should get the students actively involved, push them (and ourselves!) beyond the passive hearing of a recording followed by the post-listening quiz or discussion. The very format of most listening exercises sets teachers and students up for a passive activity. Listening sometimes gets confused with hearing.
Listening ears clipart pdf#
This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy. In order to help your students get the most out of these listening exercises, you must help students understand that listening is active.Īnd in order to do that, it’s helpful to first think about how listening works… They are designed to help students excel in real-world English-speaking situations. The exercises on this list encourage students to become active listeners. In my years as an ESL teacher, I found that standard English listening exercises-those that include a recording, followed by some questions and possibly a post-exercise activity-offer some pretty good content. How much guess-work do you think goes into answering those multiple-choice and true-false questions? Just how successful are those post-exercise discussions? Have you ever heard a “group groan” when you get the electronic listening device out? Have you ever wondered if students are really listening while that recording plays three times over? Amazing, right?īut be forewarned: Just because there are a ton of resources out there doesn’t mean English listening exercises are straightforward or easy. To reiterate, that’s 250,000 places where you can find listening exercises for your English class. Now, sit back in awe at the quarter-of-a-million hits those three words get you. Google “English listening exercises.” Go ahead.
Novem10 Ear-opening English Listening Exercises That Transform Hearing into Understanding
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