Blog 16 Listening at the KTP

Hello, everyone ✌

For this new entry, I will write about one aspect of teaching English at the KTP program that is constantly practiced during class, but requires more attention to be implemented: Listening. First, I will provide a definition of what teaching listening means and its importance when learning English. Then, I will mention some activities and interventions I made to practice listening in my classes at the CCA. Finally, I will give my opinion regarding the importance of teaching listening at the KTP.

The guiding questions for this entry are:

How did you approach listening in today's sessions? 

Did you include any of the tips/strategies we worked on in our last session? If not, which ones did you include?

Listening:

Listening is one most crucial skills when learning English. It involves both comprehension and constant responses in the form of written or oral productions. Listening is not just a matter of being able to hear what is said, but to comprehending the message. That is why it is sometimes considered one of the most difficult skills because people need to adjust their listening to a variety of accents and pronunciations that can sometimes divert the message.

When it comes to teaching speaking, there are different ways to approach it. Normally, it is expected to do the process of listening in 3 phases: pre-listening, during-listening, and post-listening. Students can have a scaffolded process to start working on their listening skills. Pre-listening serves to invite the student to practice their predicting skills. Guiding questions like What do you think the video will be about? Fosters the students' imagination and helps them to have prior knowledge. During listening, students focus on the listening in can be to a macro level. like the global message of the audio, or to find specific information, a word, or mini ideas of the video. It is recommended to invite the student to take notes so they can grasp information more easily. In the post-listening, students can contrast ideas and make their own interpretations of what they heard. 

Some final recommendations include choosing an audio that students can understand, depending on their level. American variation is suggested, but it is good to include variations from time to time. Include moments of communication so students can share and have a more meaningful learning experience. Finally, mix it with speaking or writing so you can check that students did indeed understand the task.

Taken from: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/planning-lessons-and-courses/framework-planning-listening-skills

Listening in my classes:

Listening is a skill that I regularly practice in my classes. I usually include it as part of the global skills moment or the exposure in the language cycle. For listening, I try to follow the three moments so my students can make the most of the videos I show them. First, I give them reflective questions to discuss in pairs to activate prior knowledge and invite them to infer what the main message of the video is. During listening, I ask them to make groups and give a specific aspect of the video to focus on. Sometimes I tell them to make notes, although I also want to challenge them to only use their memory. In the post, students share their findings, and I guide the communication between groups.

In the class this Saturday, we worked on the quiz review. I didn't make a specific activity that focuses on listening. Nonetheless, while giving the instructions for the listening in the quiz, I gave them some tips to have the best score possible in the quiz. In both groups, I told them that the listening would consist of two repetitions of the same audio. I told them the first listening was to find as many answers as possible and see how the video is organized. I gave them the time to read the questions and predict the moments they must pay attention to find the correct answers. In this case, it was true or false in both classes. Then, for the second listening, I told them it was the moment to confirm answers and answer the ones they didn't find in the first listening. 

I feel these tips were useful as I could see good results in some exams I observed.

Personal reflection:

I feel that listening is a really interesting skill, because it involves both understanding and producing to confirm if the student understood. In my case, I could say I have good listening skills, as I was graded a C1 in the IELTS I took. However, sometimes I still have problems understanding some accents or specific language. For example, with minimal pairs or non-literal language. I will continue to include listening in my classes as I want my students to be able to communicate and be able to use the language affectible in authentic contexts.