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Pre-listening activities

Submitted by admin on 18 August, 2010 - 19:07

Listening skills are hard to develop. Students can do a variety of work before listening to help themunderstand.

Why do pre-listening tasks?

Aims and types of pre-listening tasks

Selection criteria

Why do pre-listening tasks?In real life it is unusual for people to listen to something without having some idea of what they aregoing to hear. When listening to a radio phone-in show, they will probably know which topic is beingdiscussed. When listening to an interview with a famous person, they probably know something aboutthat person already. A waiter knows the menu from which the diner is choosing their food.

In our first language we rarely have trouble understanding listening. But, in a second language, it isone of the harder skills to develop - dealing at speed with unfamiliar sounds, words and structures. Thisis even more difficult if we do not know the topic under discussion, or who is speaking to whom.

So, simply asking the students to listen to something and answer some questions is a little unfair, andmakes developing listening skills much harder.

Many students are fearful of listening, and can be disheartened when they listen to something but feelthey understand very little. It is also harder to concentrate on listening if you have little interest in atopic or situation.

Pre-listening tasks aim to deal with all of these issues: to generate interest, build confidence and tofacilitate comprehension.

Aims and types of pre-listening tasks

Setting the contextThis is perhaps the most important thing to do - even most exams give an idea about who isspeaking, where and why. In normal life we normally have some idea of the context ofsomething we are listening to.

Generating interestMotivating our students is a key task for us. If they are to do a listening about sports, looking atsome dramatic pictures of sports players or events will raise their interest or remind them of whythey (hopefully) like sports. Personalisation activities are very important here. A pair-workdiscussion about the sports they play or watch, and why, will bring them into the topic, and makethem more willing to listen.

Activating current knowledge - what do you know about?

'You are going to listen to an ecological campaigner talk about the destruction of the rainforest'.This sets the context, but if you go straight in to the listening, the students have had no time totransfer or activate their knowledge (which may have been learnt in their first language) in thesecond language. What do they know about rainforests? - Where are they? What are they?What problems do they face? Why are they important? What might an ecological campaignerdo? What organisations campaign for ecological issues?

Acquiring knowledgeStudents may have limited general knowledge about a topic. Providing knowledge input willbuild their confidence for dealing with a listening. This could be done by giving a related text toread, or, a little more fun, a quiz.

Activating vocabulary / language Just as activating topic knowledge is important, so is activating the language that may be usedin the listening. Knowledge-based activities can serve this purpose, but there are other thingsthat can be done. If students are going to listen to a dialogue between a parent and a teenagerwho wants to stay overnight at a friend's, why not get your students to role play the situationbefore listening. They can brainstorm language before hand, and then perform the scene. Byhaving the time to think about the language needs of a situation, they will be excellentlyprepared to cope with the listening.

Predicting contentOnce we know the context for something, we are able to predict possible content. Try givingstudents a choice of things that they may or may not expect to hear, and ask them to choosethose they think will be mentioned.

Pre-learning vocabularyWhen we listen in our first language we can usually concentrate on the overall meaning becausewe know the meaning of the vocabulary. For students, large numbers of unknown words willoften hinder listening, and certainly lower confidence. Select some vocabulary for the studentsto study before listening, perhaps matching words to definitions, followed by a simple practiceactivity such as filling the gaps in sentences.

Checking / understanding the listening tasks By giving your students plenty of time to read and understand the main listening comprehensiontasks, you allow them to get some idea of the content of the listening. They may even try topredict answers before listening.

Selection criteriaWhen planning your lesson you should take the following factors into account when preparing the pre-listening tasks.

The time available

The material available

The ability of the class

The interests of the class

The nature and content of the listening text

The choice of pre-listening task also gives you a chance to grade the listening lesson for different

abilities. If you have a class who are generally struggling with listening work, then the more extensivethat the pre-listening work is the better. If, however, you wish to make the work very demanding, youcould simply do work on the context of the listening. Thus, the same listening text can provide work fordifferent abilities.

Personally, I feel it is important to devote a fair proportion of a lesson to the pre-listening task, shouldthe listening warrant it. For example, the listening about an ecological campaigner lends itself well toextended knowledge and vocabulary activation. However, a listening involving airport announcementsmay only need a shorter lead-in, as the topic is somewhat narrower.

Overall, training your students to bring their own knowledge and their skills of prediction to theirlistening work can only help them when listening to the language outside the classroom. These skillsare as much a part of listening as understanding pronunciation or listening for details.

Gareth Rees, teacher and materials writer

This article was first published in 2003

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Pre-listening activities | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC