Listening is one of the hardest components of ESL teaching. Anyone who has studied a second language knows how difficult it is to listen and understand, so this classplan is a good way to teach listening.
Remember that when you do a listening class you want students to understand the gist of what they are listening to (for example when listening to a news report on the radio you dont listen to everything that is being said, rather you try to just understand the meaning of the text).
We are going to base this classplan from the media ‘A day at school’ from the excellent ESL resource website www.esl-lab.com
A day at school
Intro: creating interest. Get students interested in the topic with some interest questions, such as “What do you do at school, what are your favourite subjects, what do you do after school etc”. This is a great way for students to get interested in todays lesson, personalising the content for them.
Key vocab: The teacher should choose some words to teach today. REMEMBER: as a teacher you don’t just choose difficult questions, rather words relating to the text.
Listen: Play the audio once or twice, getting students familiar with the text.
Gist questions: Choose 3 questions (multiple choice) to test students understanding of the gist (that is, they understand what is basically going on. Esl-lab has a few useful ones.
Listen again
6 detailed questions: These are once again multiple choice questions but they are to test students understanding of details in the text. A sample questions would be:
Joshua goes to school at:
a. 8 O’clock
b. 9 O’clock
c. 10 O’clock
Production activities: This is where students further their understanding of the text and have the chance to use other language skills.
For example, get students to go into pairs and write out a timetable for things they do at school, times they have class etc. Then students present what they did to class.
This is a fairly basic classplan but if you use this structure then you wont have any problems teaching listening!