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On day one participants discussed why we listen. Here are some ideas about the importance of listening from Ms Minh Huong, trainer from Hue.

Why Listen ?

Essential for interaction Listening makes up 45% of all communication!

Passively acquire more language than non-listeners

New Tieng Anh course books with listening activites will soon be introduced into schools

Practice makes perfect! The more we listen, the better listeners we become.

Listening is the weakest language skill throughout Vietnam.

EAR Idioms: to be wet behind the ears = to be inexperienced
It went in one ear and out the other = This person forgot what I told him/her

'Listen up'

Day one also focused on the shape of a listening lesson.
Here is the summary of the three main stages.

The three stages

Pre-listening
This stage prepares students by getting them to think about the topic or situation.They can be either asked to predict what they are going to hear or to activate their general knowledge related to the topic of the listening text. In real life we always have expectations about what we are going to listen to, so we should mirror this in the classroom too.

While-listening
Here students can do two tasks:
Firstly, an easy success-oriented gist/scan to increase confidence and motivation for the listening
Pehaps simply listening to check their predictions.
Secondly a more demanding task such as matching, form completion, ordering, etc. The main purpose is to practise different target skills.

Post-listening
Students do something meaningful with the information or language from the listening text. They can either do a roleplay about a topic related to what they have heard or practise some useful language or grammatical points from the text.
Never abandon this stage as the students have invested a lot of interest in the topic.

Listening Subskills

Listening is an umbrella term because it covers various different subskills. Being aware of these skills is essential.

Prediction

Guessing ahead what students are going to listen to will help have a better understanding of the listening text.This can be done with open prediction, thinking about the story based on its title, or a series of T/F statements which can give an idea of what the text is about. This skill is practised in pre-listening stage.

Extracting specific information

The recognition of isolated words, for example, when you listen for dates in a personal history, or for numbers or any other small but significant detail in a listening text.

Getting the gist

Having a general understanding of the text. Eg. when you want to know what a speech or a lecture is mainly about.

Extracting detailed information

This will help students gain a deeper understanding of the text or speaker's attitudes and feeling. Here you have to understand every detail and their relationship. Eg. when you have to listen to a recipe or instructions.

Guessing meaning from content

Eg. unfamiliar words from the contextual background and scenario can be guessed at. This is a skill we do in our own language too.

Thanks to Ms Minh Huong for these skills she demonstrated at the Hue workshop

Listening activities

Picture Ordering

This is a very good activity for practising listening for gist - Thanks to Ms My Hao, trainer in Hue, who demonstrated this activity at the workshop.

1. Choose a story with pictures that are self-produced taken from anywhere.
2. Photocopy and give students jumbled pictures.
3. For pre-listening, divide students into pairs, and ask
them to put the pictures in order by filling the grid.

4. Let them listen and check the correct order.
5. For post-listening, ask students to retell or rewrite the story.

True/False Statements

This activity can be useful for practising listening for gist and details - Mr Le Trong and Ms Thanh Minh in Hue used this activity with a text about Alexandre Yersin from Unit 2 of Tieng Anh 10.

1. Give students about 4-5 statements. eg.

a. A. Yersin graduated from medical school.
b. He loved Dalat & came to live there.
c. People loved him for his personality.
d. In 1940 he returned to France.

2. For pre-listening, ask them to guess whether these statements are True or False.
3. Let them listen, & check the guesses.
4. For post-listening, students can do a interview roleplay in pairs with one as a journalist and the other as A. Yersin.

Form Completion

A very good way to practise extracting specific information
- This activity was tested out by Ms Hoang Thi Le, trainer in Hue.

1. Choose a text, a personal history, for example, with various facts.
2. Draw a form with different headings such as date of birth, nationality, likes or dislikes.

Personal InformationForm
Full name: Alfred Bernard Nobel
Date of birth:...................
Nationality:....................
Marital status:..................
Likes or dislikes:................
Important invention:............

3. For pre-listening, ask students to guess the facts in the form based on their general knowledge and then compare their answers.

Matching

This is a very nice way to practice listening for details. This activity was suggested by a group of participants in Hue.

1. Draw a table with two columns on the board and ask students to copy into their books.

Eg.

2. For pre-listening, ask students to brainstorm kinds of exercise they do.

3. Ask them to listen and check if their exercise is the same as the exercise in the text.

4. Let them listen again and this time use the table to match the right activities with the right frequency.

5. Compare and check in pairs.

6. For post-listening, students can ask each other about what physical exercise they usually do.

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