Listening
I must confess one of the skills that I neglect is listening. However, it should be one of the most important ones. By improving listening, the learners learn to train themselves to understand the native speakers or other speakers of English. I think this is because, it is easier to check, assess grammar, vocabulary or reading comprehension. Also the students tend to just sit and wait till the listening task is over, then I sometimes choose less listening tasks. But this year it will be different as I’m planning to give more emphasis on listening and I’ll treat all the skills equal.
What I usually do for listening:
- Tasks of the course books ( usually these are the ones students just sit and wait and then say, ‘sorry I couldn’t catch’)
- Dictations
- Lots of songs (and these are the ones they really love)
- Watching movies with English subtitles
Recently I’m just thinking how listening to news will be useful for them. I believe if I can spare just five minutes at the beginning of each week listening or watching the news, they will learn more about the current affairs and improve their listening skills.
The followings are great links for listening activities
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab
I will be happy to hear more.
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Hi Eva,
How cool of you to challenge yourself! Here are some FREE listening resources that I am involved with. I hope you like them. You asked for our ideas but the comments won’t let me share links so just google them. 🙂
Monthly News Digest
Learning English Video Project:
Survival English (EnglishClub)
Dictations (EnglishClub)
Podcasts: http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/esl-library-podcasts/id358835098
Have you watched this great screencast about iTunes? “You don’t need an iPod” by Russell Stannard.
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/iTunesNew/index.html
Thank you Tara for these sites. I’m sure they will e very useful.
Eva
Excellent list.
Thanks for sharing!
Here are two more websites that I usually recommend for students who want more litening practice:
elllo.org (with 3 Ls)
esl-lab.com
Cheers from Brazil!
Ronaldo