PRE- LISTENING STAGE

PRE- LISTENING STAGE

Authentic activities

Listener´s expectations

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In real life it is unusual for people to listen something without having some idea of what they are going to hear.

To increase and improve listening skills, teacher must implement authentic activities where students tell their experiences about real life situations,by using texts and listening activities through role plays.

• Context
• Everything should be made as realistic as possible.

Teacher´s books as a source of ideas

In our first language we rarely have trouble understanding listening. But, in a second language, it is one of the harder skills to develop - dealing at speed with unfamiliar sounds, words and structures. This is 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 something and answer some questions is a little unfair, and makes developing listening skills much harder.

It is very important to check the teacher´s book before embarking on preparation for a lesson.

Types of pre-listening activity

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Pre-listening activities play a very important role in helping students to learn how to listen in the foreing language.

Ideas for pre-listening activities

Pre-listening activities also help students to prepare for what they are going to hear, and helps mitigate the anxiety which comes from listening in a foreign language, by providing a clear context.

Moreover, pre-listening activities can offer opportunities for class discussion and more interaction among students.

Pre-listening work can consist of a whole range of activities, including:

• the teacher giving background information;
• the students reading something relevant;
• the students looking at pictures;
• discussion of the topic/ situation;
• a question and answer session;
• written exercises;
• following the instructions for the while-listening activity;
• consideration of how the while-listening activity will be done.

Factors which affect the choice of pre-listening activities

The need for clear instructions

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Making sure that students know exactly what is required of them is an essential part of the pre-listening stage.

Amazingly, while some students may remain focused on tasks, others may appear to be distracted or confused. For that reason teachers must take into account the following aspects:

When 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.

Personally, I feel it is important to devote a fair proportion of a lesson to the pre-listening task, should the listening warrant it.

Limiting pre-listening work

The level of difficulty of listening work has to be adjusted by the level of the text and the level of the students.

There are students who need most support in listening and may be slower at assimilating printed material too, and the teacher and the rest of the class have to be patients, this is a limiting pre-listening because the teacher has to choose if give a fast or slow class.

• If directions or instructions are not effectively and clearly formulated, there will be a number of students who will simply not have assimilated what is to be done or have only caught part of the information.

• Students should understand what they have to do before teacher starts to play, read or speak the listening text.

• Teacher have to check that students have understood.

• Try to give them clues about the activity (podcasts, audios,songs) teacher is doing because its could be motivating for student.

• Teacher needs to specify about the type of answer/sentence, if teacher wants brief answers or more complete sentences he/she needs to accept a shortest sentences as possible answer because students are not able to formulate a long answer.

• Teacher have to ensure of instructions have been giving and try to guide to their students in the activity process.