Listening Activities and Listening Resources

While teaching your students listening put in mind pre-, during, and post listening activities.

Pre listening
Pre-listening activity is a warm up. It activates students’ previous knowledge and engages them in the topic. For a pre-listening activity, I would ask some general questions related to the topic of the story. Later, I would play the audio once and ask students what they understood from the context and what the main idea is.

While-listening
It includes exercises students do while listening like fill in the gaps or true and false. I would hand out a "fill in the gaps" worksheet to work with while listening to the audio. Next, I would invite my students to access the listening resource like ESL lab web so that they can work on other exercises on their own.

Post listening
As a post listening activity, I would ask my students more specific questions and details about the story to engage them in speaking. Also I would tell them to engage in conversations with their peers.



A detailed example on TED ED lecture

TED Ed lectures (https://ed.ted.com/). This site helps to develop both top-down and bottom-up listening skills and provides not only authentic audio material but also compelling visual cues. TED Education videos offer teachers the opportunity to develop interesting and engaging class content for students. I have always used them in my classes to inspire my students and allow them to develop effective communication skills and behaviors. Authentic material and visual cues have a positive impact on our class delivery and allow us to meet the needs of our students. Without these videos, I do not think it would be possible for a teacher to find appropriate teaching materials. This resource is useful in my educational context especially with the undergraduate Graphic Design students who are mostly visual learners.

 Video lecture “Who decides what art really means?” (https://ed.ted.com/lessons/who-decides-what-art-means-hayley-levitt#watch)  discusses major art criticism theories. I chose to use this video to introduce the approaches to art interpretation. This video corresponds to students’ interests since they not only analyse famous artworks but also create their own paintings and provide peer feedback and interpretation.

Pre-watching: First, I would introduce the topic through a short warm-up activity asking students to reflect on their experience of visiting museums. Students will think about the role and importance of preparation before they examine artworks. They will reflect on their personal ways of engaging with works of art (whether they research the type of artwork that is on display before they go to the exhibition, whether they read the labels in the museum, the strategy they use to select the exhibits that are of interest to them). All students have the visited museums and art galleries (including virtual museum tours) as part of their Art History curriculum.

Then I would show two mages on the board: a painting by the established artist (for example, Henri Rousseau The Sleeping Gypsy (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80172). The students will answer the questions: 1) What do you see when you look at this work? 2) What is the artist saying to you? What mood, feelings, ideas are expressed? Then I would introduce the students to the interpretation provided by art critics. Students will reflect on the questions: a) Is your interpretation of the painting similar or different from the critics’ thoughts? b) Now you know what art critics think about the painting, is your attitude to the painting different? After that I would play the video once and ask the students about the answer to the main question of the video: Who decides what artwork means? The video discusses two viewpoints on the problem but does not give a definitive answer. In order to understand the arguments for and against each approach to art interpretation students will have to listen for specific details. So the next step would be moving from top-down to bottom-up listening strategy.  

While-watching: In order to understand the content of the video which might be in line with their own reasoning discovered during warm-up activity students will watch the video again and complete the tasks in the handout. I will pause the video after each logical part. The students will watch the video again and do ‘fill in the gaps’ task and restore the logical sequence of sentences and arguments.

Post-watching: As a post-watching activity students will decide if the statements based on the content of the video are true or false (they will watch the video or its parts again if it is necessary) and answer comprehension questions. Students once again revisit the question: Who decides what art really means? and try to provide the answer using the arguments from the video.

As a class activity we would hold a conversation on the relevance of art in peoples’ lives.

Home assignment: I would ask the students to find the examples of a lesser known established work of art and come up with its interpretation. Then students will research the art critics’ views on the artwork and compare their findings.      

Listening Resources

Voice of America: http://www.voanews.com

American English: Sing Out Loud

Children's songs: https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/sing-out-loud-childrens-songs

Traditional songs: https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/sing-out-loud-traditional-songs

EFL listening websites:

ESL Lab: http://www.esl-lab.com

ESL Lounge: http://www.esl-lounge.com

Many Things: http://www.manythings.org

TED Ed: https://www.ted.com/watch/ted-ed

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com

Additional Websites:

NBC: http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news

ABC: http://abcnews.go.com/Video

CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com

PBS Kids: http://pbskids.org/video

National Geographic: http://www.nationalgeographic.com

Academic Earth: http://academicearth.org/electives