Teaching English typically falls into one of four categories; reading, writing, speaking and listening. Often, the listening aspect can be overlooked or be reduced to the poor effort of pressing play on the cassette that came with the twenty year old workbook your school provides you with, (if you are lucky enough to be provided with anything, decades old or not!).
Listening doesn’t have to mean a silent class listening to an unnatural conversation carried out by actors with questionable pronunciation, it can be interactive and fun if you look outside of the realm of role play and rote Q & As.
Here is an incredibly simple listening activity that can be carried out with very little preparation – the good old dictation.
Traditionally, a dictation would require the class to sit in silence listening to the teacher reading a passage and writing word for word what they hear. Not fun.
In this activity, the teacher reads a passage but instead of writing what they hear, the students have to draw it.
Either in groups or individually, students have to engage their ears and utilise their listening skills without getting bogged down in worries about spelling or grammar – this is a listening activity after all, not writing.
There are some variations for how you can carry this out depending on the ability of the class and how challenging you want to make it;
- teacher reads the passage and students can only listen
- teacher reads the passage and students can make notes
- teacher reads the passage multiple times including part way through the drawing process
- teacher reads the passage once and students can come and ask questions to clarify specific details
- teacher reads the passage and gives a copy to students
- teacher reads the passage and shows it on the projector/writes it on the whiteboard
Below is an example passage that I have used in my classroom. You can of course use your own words, taking into consideration the previous learning you have done with your class, or perhaps a descriptive piece of writing from a book. The important factor is that there are specific details that can be checked off afterwards.
It is a hot summer day and the sun is high up in the sky. A few white fluffy clouds sit in the bright blue sky and three birds are flying. The sea is sparkling in the sunlight and the beach is looking beautiful. A family is sitting on the beach; mum is sat in the shade of an umbrella reading a book, dad is making sandcastles with the daughter and the son is standing in the sea, feeling the cool water on his feet. A crab is close to him and he can see fish in the sea. Everyone is happy and having fun. Two palm trees stand tall, one on the left, one on the right. On the right, four monkeys play in the tree, throwing coconuts down below.
I’m a big fan of (healthy) competition in the classroom, so I always do this with small groups of students, each group with a piece of A3 paper. I encourage students to take different roles, with less artistically inclined students responsible for reading the passage or asking the teacher questions (depending on how you run the activity) and checking off particular details. The artists in the group will go to town creating wonderful pictures that you can then keep to display around the classroom.
After a set amount of time, I like to get groups up one by one to show their work and as a class we go through the passage and check off each detail. The group whose picture has the most correct details, wins!
Further variations and extensions of this activity include;
- students write passages to read to each other
- matching descriptive passages to pictures
- students look at a picture and write a passage describing it
Even if you don’t specifically teach listening as a subject, it is an aspect of English teaching that is often overlooked. Needing so little preparation other than having a piece of writing to hand (you could even write one on the spot if you were caught out) this activity is perfect to insert into any lesson as a warm up, filler or just a bit of creative fun. Why not try it yourself and let me know how it goes?
This is part of a weekly feature – Teacher Tuesday – make sure you come back next week for another lesson idea. If you have an idea to share as part of Teacher Tuesday feel free to get in touch.
cornishkylie 