Page 226 - Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies 2009

Chapter 14: In One Ear, Out the Other: Learning To Listen
205
Owner Mrs Smith
Manager Richard Taylor Manager Paul Jones
Owner Mrs Smith Area Manager Mike Smith
Manager Paul Jones Manager Richard Taylor
Manager Mike Smith
Figure 14-1:
A business English activity.
Manager John Jones
Other simple forms of questions to get at the main idea of a dialogue may be:
✓ Do the speakers in the dialogue agree with each other or not? ✓ How many speakers are there?
✓ Where do you think they are?
Get students to tick off the things they hear, using words or pictures.
I had a class of children listen to the story of Red Riding Hood. They knew the story but didn’t realise what it was because they weren’t able to translate the title. They were very keen to find out if the English language characters did the same things as the characters in their version. I gave them a worksheet with the words grandfather, wolf, big ears, big teeth and big feet on it and told them to tick the things they heard in the story.
Listening for detail
After the students have a chance to listen to the text once and get the gist of it, you can prepare to go a bit deeper by setting a more detailed listening task for the students to tackle while listening to the recording a second time. This time the students can listen for more specific information based on particular expressions the speaker uses.