Teaching Listening Skill to Young Learners sometimes tough for the teachers as they do not want to listen anything Properly. Here are some Tips to Teach Listening Skill to Young Learners.

1. Teaching Listening to Young Learners
Who Are Young Learners?
Age 5 to Age 7 (Jean Piaget)
What is listening?
Take notice of and act on what someone says;
respond to advice or a request.

2. The six stages of listening
About listening
 Every day we hear many sounds.
 But do we really listen to all of them? No.
 There is a big difference between just hearing something and really listening. In this
lens, I will introduce the six different stages of listening to you. You may never have
thought about what you are actually doing when you truly listen to something or
someone! (There are also other models out there that only have five steps, others have
eight steps of listening - but I prefer the six step one). I hope you will find this lens
educational!

3. Stage 1
Hearing something
Sound waves make their way to your ears: you hear something. This could be the
barking of a dog, a car's alarm system or someone's words.

4. Stage 2
Paying attention
 You will only pay attention to a certain amount of the sounds that you
hear. The dog that is barking in the distance may not be of interest to you
at all, so you screen it out. The sound of the car alarm may be a different
story: if it is the sound of your car, you will pay attention to it! Paying
attention can be problematic when there is noise that makes it harder to
hear the sounds (or a bad phone connection).

5. Stage 3
Understanding the sounds
 In stage 3, we try to make sense of what the sounds that we are now paying attention
to. In the case of the car alarm, we may come to the understanding that someone is
trying to steal our car! In the case of a conversation, we will try to understand what the
other person is telling us. Problems might occur if the other person speaks a different
language or is using terminology that is not known to you. For some people words also
could have a slightly different meaning (e.g. for one person, the "dentist" is just a job,
for others it is a term filled with negative emotions).

6. Stage 4
Evaluating
 In stage four, we build our own opinion about what we have heard, paid
attention to and understood. We decide what to remember and whether we
feel positive, neutral or negative about it. Often we judge too quickly, e.g.
when we have strong beliefs about a topic or if we do not like the person we
are listening to.

7. Stage 5
Responding
 Straight after stage 4, we will have to react to what we have heard and paid
attention to. In case of the car alarm, we could respond by running out to
our car. In a conversation, we could either respond verbally (with words) or
non-verbally (body language, facial expressions). We can check whether we
understood the speaker by asking questions or we could give feedback on
what we have heard. If you do not respond, the communication usually
stops.

8. Stage 6
Remembering the communication
 The last stage is the remembering stage. Actually, this stage also takes place within the
communication because you need to remember what has been said to react and keep
the conversation going. Depending on the kind of communication, you will also need to
remember the information long-term (e.g. if the conversation was with your boss about
a job you need to do, or with your tutor about an upcoming exam). Most of the time,
we will not be able to remember 75% of the details of a conversation in the future
unless we jot down some notes afterwards.

9. As you see, there is more to listening than just hearing something! As Listening is the second
Skill of a Language, it is necessary for all age’s learners to listen that language and understand
the real meaning of the words and sentences.
Activities for Teaching Listening to
Young Learners
 Keep in mind that children learn
when they find things interesting.
So it is a must to choose
appropriate tasks for the young
learners.
The 6 R Method is Very Effective for
Young Learners
 Rhyme
 Rhythm
 Repetition
 Reception
 Reproduction
 Redemption

10. Rules of Listening in Young Learner Classes
1. Although listening is a receptive skill, the students are not and should not be
passive while listening; in other words, they should be engaged and/or work in
the listening task actively.
2. The students should be engaged with different listening tasks according to
their age, learning style, listening capacity and phonological awareness.
3. The language teachers should train the students to listen to the English
sounds carefully.

11.  4. The teachers should train the young learners to follow simple instructions to get
them ready to develop other language skills.
5. Different listening tasks should be addressed in class:
 Listen & Do
 Listen & Draw
 Listen & Color
 Listen & Mime
 Listen & Predict
 Listen & Respond
 Listen & Write (needs literacy)
 Listen & Identify (may need literacy)
 Listen & Match (may need literacy)
 Listen & Complete (needs literacy)
 Listen & Read (model for pronunciation)

12. 6. The students should be given a different task each time they listen to the same
text. (i.e.: First, listen to have a general idea; second listen to complete the blanks;
third, listen to check your answers)
7. Input through tapes, videos or teacher modelling should be provided; the audio
tools should be in good quality.
8. The teachers should be aware of the importance of familiarity (with the context,
language, task, voice ...etc.), difficulty (what is expected as the output) and teacher’s
language (repeating, simplifying, and using gestures, intonation and formulaic
expressions that help children to figure out the intended meaning)

13. 9. It is important to embed listening into stories, games, routines, rhymes, songs. They
may not understand every word, but they can understand the meaning from the
context, visuals, and gestures as in real life.
10. Both bottom-up (requiring linguistic knowledge) and top-down (requiring world
knowledge) listening should be addressed.

14. Thank You