This document discusses strategies for teaching listening skills to language learners. It emphasizes using both top-down strategies like listening for main ideas and bottom-up strategies like recognizing word order patterns. Teachers should create goals for classroom and outside listening comprehension, develop awareness of the listening process, and allow practice with authentic tasks. Pre, during and post listening activities are recommended, including activating background knowledge, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress. Developing listening skills is important for language acquisition and interaction.

1. Is receiving language/input through
the ears
• Involves identifying the sounds of speech
and processing them into words and
sentences.
• Background knowledge and linguistic
Teaching Listening

2.  Receive individual sounds (letters, stress,
rhythm and pauses) and we use our brain to
convert these into messages
that mean something to us.
 Strategies for identifying sounds

4. GOALS FOR TEACHING
LISTENING
 Create estrategies for the comprehension of
aural imput iside and outside the classroom.
 Identify relevant and non-relevant information.
 Tolerate less than word-by-word comprehention.
 Develop Ss’ awareness of the listening process.
 Allow Ss to practice authentic listening tasks.

5. METACOGNITIVE
ESTRATEGIES
Before listenign
 Decide in advance what to listen for.
 Decide if more linguistic or background
knowledge is needed.
 Decide whether to enter the text from the
top down or from the bottom up.
 Assess Ss’ background knowledge of the
topic and linguistic content of the text.

6.  Activate Ss’ previous knowledge.
 Clarify any cultural information which may
be necesary to comprehend the passage.
 Make Ss aware of the purpose(s) of the
listening activity.
 Provide opportunities for collaborative
work and discussion activities.

7. PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES
 Looking at pictures, maps, diagrams or
graphs
 Reviewing vocabulary or grammatical
structures
 Reading something relevant
 Predicting the content of the listening
text
 Going over the directions for the activity
 Doing guided practice

8. During listening
 Verify predictions and check for
inaccurate guesses
 Decide what is and is not important to
undertand
 Listen again to check comprehention
 If the Ss are to complete a written task
during or inmediately after listening, allow
the to read trough it before listening.

9.  Keep writing to a minimum during listening.
 Organize activities so that they guide listeners
trough the text.
 Use questions to comprehention.
 Use predicting for monitoring Ss’
comprehention as they listen.
 Give immediate feedback whenever possible.

10. WHILE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES
 Listening with visuals.
 Filling in the graphs and charts
 Following a route on a map
 Checking off items in a list
 Listening for the gist
 Searching for specific clues to meaning

11. After listening
 Evaluate comprehention
 Evaluate overall progress
 Decide if the strategies used were
appropiate
 Modify strategies if necessary

12. AUTHENTIC MATERIAL AND
SITUATIONS
“Using the language outside the
classroom”
One-way communication
 Radio and TV programs
 Public address announcements
 Speeches and lectures
 Telephone customers service
recorddings

13. Two way communication
The listener focuses on the speaker’s
meaning rather than the speaker’s
language.

14. Strategies for Developing Listening
Skills
“Language learning depends on listening.
Listening provides the aural input that serves as
the basis for language acquisition and enables
learners to interact in spoken communication”.
1. Top-down stratrategies.- listening for the main idea,
predicting, drawing inferences, summarizing.
2. Bottom-up strategies.- listening for specific deatils,
recognizing cognates, recoganizing word-order
patterns
3. Metacognitive strategies.- planning, monitoring and
evaluating.

15. Difficulty of the listening text
 How is the information organized.- main ideas first,
details and examples second.
 How familiar are the Ss with the topic.- background
knowledge.
 The text involve multiple individuals and objects;
Are they clearly differenciated? More marked
differences make comprehention esaier.
 The text offers visual support.- maps, diagrames,
pictures or images in a video.

16. LISTENING STRATEGIES
(textbook audio and video)
1. Plan for listening/viewing
 Review the vocabulary
 Review the worksheet
 Review any information
2. Preview the video
 View the video without sound
 Identify the kind of program
 Make a list of predictions about the content
 Develope intensive and extensive listening/viewing

17. 3. Listen/view intensively section by section
 Jot down key words you understand
 Answer the worksheet questions pertaining to the section
 Write a summary of the section
4. Monitor comprehention
 Does it fit with the predictions you made?
 Does your summary for each section make sense in
relation to the other sections.
5. Evaluate the listening comprehention progress.

18. ASSESSING LISTENING
(post-listening activities)
 Evaluate listening skills
 Extend the knowledge gained to other contexts
 Post-listening activities must reflect the real-life
uses
 It must have a purpose other than assessment
 It must require Ss to demostrate their level of
listening comprehention

19. Bibliography
 National Capital Language Resource Center
(NCLRC). (n.d.). The essentials of language
teaching. Retrieved April 23, 2007 from
http://nclrc.org/essentials.
 “Listening in a foreign language” by Ana Maria
Schwartz, in Modules for the professional
preparation of teaching assistants in foreign
languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, ed.;
Washington, DC: Center for Applied
Linguistics, 1998) recuperado de
http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/listening/liindex.ht
m