TEACHING LANGUAGE

SKILLS FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION

LISTENING
Main source: Brewster, J., G. Ellis, G. and D. Girard (2011).
The Primary English Teachers Guide.
Penguin

Faculty of Education. Albacete. 2015/2016

1. The initial stages.

Give the children confidence
Listening to a foreign language is hard work, especially

for young children.

Classroom language (routines, instructions, questions)
very useful, especially at the beginning. The amount of
English should increase little by little.
Listening is NOT a passive activity. Listen and
remember not a good strategy. The teacher should
direct her pupils attention to specific points. Guide their
attention.
In order to do this: different techniques (visual
materials, pictures). Scaffolding.

2. Explain why the children have to listen

The learners must know why they are listening, the purpose

of the activity.
This helps to reduce anxiety and facilitate the process.
Different kinds of listening purposes:

To physically settle pupils: to calm them.

To stir pupils: to stimulate or relax them when bored or tired.
To improve the general listening attitude. Listening for
enjoyment, improving concentration, developing the memory.
To develop aspects of language: pronunciation, intonation, new
words, structures.
To reinforce conceptual development (cause-effect, size, etc.).
To interact with others: Asking questions, checking meaning in
pair and group work.
To provide support for literacy. For older children. Connections
between spoken and written English.

3. Help pupils develop strategies for listening

INTELLIGENT GUESS-WORK.
Important strategy :
Predicting. Before listening, encourage pupils to guess.

Use picture to do this. Stop to ask them what they

think may come next.
Working out the meaning from context. Act out new
words.
Recognizing discourse patterns and markers. Words
like first, but, then, and, are signals of what may come
next. Very important for stories.

4. Set a specific listening task

Listening in three stages:

What pupils do in preparation for the listening (prelistening activities). Get them motivated (warmingup, brainstorming, questions-answers). Useful to
introduce useful words such as key nouns, adjectives,
verbs...
While listening, they remain active (while-listening
activities). Listen and label, listen and match, listen
and classify) See table page 102.
After they have listened (post-listening activities).
Checking understanding, difficulty, etc.

Of course, the activities are graded according to the level

of difficulty.

5. Listening principles
Dont forget that most listening is based on teacher talk.
Pre-recorded material is also useful: good model of spoken

English.
Encourage students to listen as much as possible.
Help students prepare the listening. (Read questions first!)
Once is not enough.
Encourage students to respond to the contents of the
listening (Difficult? . Do you agree?).
Different listening stages demand different listening tasks.
Different levels demand different listening tasks.
Exploit the listening to the full.

6. While-listening activities
LISTEN AND REPEAT.
LISTEN AND DESCRIMINATE.
LISTEN AND PERFORM

ACTIONS/FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS.
LISTEN AND DRAW/COLOUR.
LISTEN AND PREDICT
LISTEN AND GUESS
LISTEN AND LABEL
LISTEN AND MATCH
LISTEN AND CLASSIFY.
LISTEN AND TRANSFER
INFORMATION

For the purpose and

materials of each type,

see Table 2 (pages
102-103).