Beyond the EU: DORA and NIS 2 Directive's Global Impact
Bishop's Stortford talk on listening
1. Bishops Stortford High School
Breaking the Sound Barrier
Part 2: Comprehension and two-way listening
July 7th 2017
2. Problem with comprehension model?
Common assumption that listening develops naturally through practice.
Have we neglected a more structured approach to it?
Danger of assuming listening skills will develop without specific
attention to bottom-up decoding skills.
But listening inherent to communicative TL teaching and can’t be
divorced from other skills.
3. Teaching Schools Council Report (2017)
“There is significant evidence, including from the most effective
practitioners, that direct and systematic teaching of phonics in the new
language is a more reliable method for assuring accurate pronunciation
and spelling. However, this is still relatively rare practice in classrooms.”
“The aim should be that a pupil can pronounce most words accurately
from the written form, including those not yet explicitly taught; and
that they can produce a potentially accurate spelling of new words.”
https://www.tscouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/MFL-
Pedagogy-Review-Report-2.pdf (p.12)
4. Two-way listening
Question type Example
True/false
statement.
Tom is a cat. True or false?
Yes/no question
through intonation.
Tom’s a cat?
Yes/no question. Is Tom a cat?
Either/or question. Is Tom a cat or a dog?
Multiple-choice
question.
Is Tom a dog, cat, elephant or
crocodile?
Question word
question.
What is Tom?
5. Listening via question-answer
Peppa Pig est le personnage principal de la série. C’est une cochonne.
Elle habite une petite maison avec son frère Georges et ses parents.
C’est la fille de la famille. Elle a beaucoup d’amis. Elle porte une robe
rouge et des chaussures noires. Elle a sept ans. Elle adore sauter dans
des flaques d’eau.
Papa Pig est le père de Peppa. Il est content et il aime jouer avec Peppa
et Georges. Il adore les cookies et le gâteau au chocolat. Il aime danser
et jouer de l’accordéon, mais il n’aime pas l’exercice physique. Il
travaille dans un bureau.
6. Variations on QA
• Teacher reads question, students write down answer (great for
recycling and keeping all students busy)
• Teacher reads question, students write answer with a prompt
• Teacher reads answer, students write question (more challenging)
• Pair work QA (better than group work)
• Student plays teacher from the front
7. Other non QA interactions for listening
• Giving false statements to correct
• Transformation drills (e.g. tense manipulation – focus on grammar)
• Substitution drills (students change one element in the sentence)
• Complete the sentence tasks (promotes prediction and parsing)
• “Aural gap-fill” – short term memory
8. Developing intermediate listening (1)
Importance of teacher voice – listening is social
“Detect my lies”
Give a simple account about yourself or, for example, what you did during
the last weekend or a recent holiday.
Choose your topic depending on what theme, grammar or vocabulary you’ve
recently covered.
Talk for about two minutes and ask the class to detect five lies within your
account. Make these quite subtle inaccuracies or blindingly obvious
inventions, depending on your class.
Use as many verbal cues as possible to help students understand, e.g.
repetition, rewording and hesitation. Try it!
10. Developing intermediate listening (3)
What can I take on holiday?
• Tell students they’re going on a holiday and have to work out what they
can or can’t take with them. Only you know the criterion that an object
must meet for the student to be able to take it. The students must work
out the criterion.
• Give students one example of an object which can be taken, enclosed in a
model TL statement, e.g. I’m going to Barcelona, and I’m going to bring [a
swimsuit]. Write the model statement on the board, then turn it into a
question and reflect it back to the class: What are you going to bring to
Barcelona?
11. Developing intermediate listening (4)
Would I lie?
Students work out which 3 of 6 statements are not true by asking you questions. Prepare 6
statements about yourself, three true and three false, and write them on the board. For example:
My brother has twin sons.
I have three cats.
If I’d been a boy, I would’ve been called George.
My family was brought up in Spain.
My favourite movie is The Sound of Music.
My father was an extra in Star Wars.
Tell them there are 3 false statements and they have to find them by asking you questions, listening
to your answers and watching your reaction. You can embroider your answers as much as possible,
giving the right number of hints depending on how fast you think your class is.
12. Oral or listening activity?
• Alibi
• How well do you know your bestie?
Note advantage of teacher voice over audio/video – differentiation,
selecting and grading of input for content/speed.
Listening is a social task!
13. “Whole body listening” – making it memorable
•Simon Says (not just parts of body)
•Alouette
•Describe and do – example
14. Developing advanced listening
• Lecture format to develop listening and cultural knowledge (AO4)
• General knowledge quizzes
• Inviting a native speaker (or other native speaker!)
• Lyricstraining.com
• Independent listening tasks – various sources
• Ilini.com (French)
• News in Slow French/German/Spanish
• See links at frenchteacher.net for more French
