1. Listening and
assessment
More than just, “Do you understand?”

2.  Listening is not an isolated skill, but part
of an integrated set needed for
comprehension and overall learning.
 However, listening can be developed by
attention to strategies and practise.
 Motivation has a high corollary effect in
listening.
General Considerations

3.  We listen for a  Environmental clues
purpose and with assist
expectations. comprehension, in
 Most listening in classroom this is
real life requires a usually visual aids
response.  Most discourse
 Visual clues usually occurs in chunks
accompany verbal  Informality –
messages. colloquialisms,
spontaneity, etc
Listening in Real Life

4.  We must strive to incorporate the real life
into the classroom.
 Recorded texts with multiple choice
response isn’t real life
 10x and 10,000 hours
 Our job is to provide venue and exposure
Point is…..

5.  Sounds – phonetic awareness is necessary
for reading, spelling, speaking and listening.
e.g. /θ/, /ð/
 Intonation – in English has a few set
patterns, but varies wildly. Focus on
exposure, rather than teaching specifically
 Noise – it is not necessary to understand
every iota of speech to be a successful
listener.
 Predicting – activate schemata and listening
comprehension will go up
 Visual clues – do not stress perfection
General thoughts…..

6.  Recordings (pro) –
◦ Native speaker
◦ Repeatable
◦ Students can focus on the sounds
 Recordings (con) –
◦ Lacks real life visual clues
◦ Lacks real life spontaneity – pauses,
corrections, responses, deliberations
◦ Often technical quality is bad
 Recommend that recordings be part of a
listening exercise unit
Exercises

7.  Part of a lesson, frequent, over time
 Set up around tasks – note taking (lecture
type long speech), responses (agreement/
disagreement), information gap (with
ability to negotiate for info)
 Activate schemata
Exercises

8.  Word level –
◦ Games involving phonemes (flyswatter game,
categorise ā/ă)
◦ Which language is this?
◦ Repetition
◦ Tongue twisters (Fox in Socks)
◦ Rhyming play – goes well with reading
◦ How many times did I say X?
◦ Minimal pairs exercises
Listening for perception

9.  Sentence level –
◦ Repetition
◦ How many words did I way?
◦ Mark the stress
◦ Mark the intonation
◦ Dictation – spelling is not graded!!!
◦ Dictogloss -

10.  Listening – no response
◦ Follow along in the text – use a finger, best
paired with reading exercises
◦ Listen to a description of picture/person, while
students view the picture
◦ Storyboards
◦ Read to them
◦ Show a movie/tv show
Listening for comprehension

11.  Listening – short response
◦ TPR
◦ Yes/no questions
◦ Brick stacking – colored bricks made into a pattern
that needs to be reproduced by each student
◦ Classify – students hear a list and mark one or the
other category
◦ Gap-fill – map exercise,
 Gordon Lightfoot – this is also a way to link culture
into the classroom i.e. Popular music and poetry
◦ Sports Scores
◦ Family trees

12.  Listening – longer response
◦ Long gap fills (whole lines)
◦ Paraphrasing/summarising
◦ Predictions
 Phrase: “If I had a nickel…..”
 Intonation: “She didn’t wear a RED dress….”
◦ Comprehension questions

13.  Problem-solving
 Jigsaw listening
◦ Maybe conflicting versions
 Interpretive listening –
◦ Half of a phone conversation
 Stylistic listening and analysis
◦ Interview
◦ Comedy
◦ Poetry
◦ Advertising
 Integrated listenging – listen to one point of
view, read a text of the other, and compare
and contrast the points of view
Listening for Study

14.  Can you test listening?
 Assessment is the better term; we should
assess how well our students understand
spoken English, rather than test.
 In this case, any activity that we have
mentioned could be used as an assessment
tool – the student succeeds when he or she
successfully accomplishes the goal.
 Assessment should be on-going,
 it would be very easy to make one task high
stakes without the children even knowing
about it.
Assessment

15. Questions or Comments