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Tips for Teachers
How to tackle Listening as a basic Skill in Learning Language

Listening is one of the hardest activities for most of students. Like reading, it is a receptive skill, but it is usually much more difficult than reading. The question is " Why "?
For one thing, a natural-sounding recording will usually consist of two or more speakers using upgraded language. Their voices, accents, and maybe dialects will be new to your students. These new voices often come as a shock first time round. Often, too, the conversation is fast. There is no body language and there are no gestures to help understanding. Students can't ask voices to slow down, or clarify. In addition to this, students will listen to answer questions and the obvious result is pressure.

Staging a Listening Skill lesson:

As teachers, of course we must be aware of these difficulties and try to help our students in every way we can. We shouldn't just go in and play the cassette, and hand out questions. We have to stage the lesson.
Stage "1" : Pre-teach vocabulary essential for the completions pf tasks.
Stage "2" : Establish interest in the topic. Prompt discussion about the topic. Ask questions about opinion. Show the pictures. Ask students to predict what they thing the text will be about.
Stage "3" : A listening for gist task(e.g. "what are they talking about?") or listening for specific information (e.g. "How many people are there?" )
Either of these tasks would provide easy questions to build confidence and get students used to the voices and speed.
Stage "4": listening for details may be asking how do you know they liked or didn't like the topic.
Stage "5" : a follow up activity based on the topic. This could include listing and talking about their reactions to what they have heard.
By staging the lesson in this way, we are sandwiching the listening. In other words, we prepare the students for what is to come, and we try and create interest so that they end up wanting to listen.

Tips to help Students:
1- Give out the task before they listen and give them time to read it.
2- Make the first task relatively straightforward to give them confidence.
3- Reassure the students. Tell them not to worry if they find it difficult at first., that you will play it again and they are not to understand every single word in the text.
4- Let them discuss their answers for communication and tell them that it is not a test.
5- Play the cassette at least "3" times.
1. Listen just to listen.
2. Listen and do the task.
3. Listen and check the answers.

Tips to help teachers:
Students supposed to tackle a listening text in the final exam. For that reason, you as teacher is responsible to help students do that in the most subtle way.
1. Never forget how stressful your students are. It is an atmosphere of testing. Try to slow your students down. Be cheerful and try to be having fun and humor. To relax your students
2. Give students clear instructions to help them predict what are they going to do.
3. let your students go through the task. Ask them to read the items very carefully. This would help you set them the topic.
4. Let your students listen for "3" times.
• Listen just listen to the text.
• Listen and do the task.
• Listen and check answers.
5. Be careful! You should read slowly enough to give students the opportunity to write down their answers.
6. facial expressions, body language, tone variations of the voice and intonations must all be taken into consideration. To sum. Adjust your reading of the text in a way that make it authentic one.
7. Make sure that your voice is loud enough, clear enough that everyone can hear in the class and understand.
8. It's better if you stand in one place. Moving here and there might distract your students.
9. Emotional reactions and involvement is highly recommended. You should react emotionally and help your students to do so will be of great value.


Proposed by:
S.S Suha Dawoud