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5.1 Techniques, skills and development – 5.2 Anecdotes/Stories/Dictation/Descriptions – 5.3 Multimedia in the EFL classroom

Paul Murphy

Congratulations on successfully passing the fourth module! 🙂

In this Teaching Listening fifth course module, we will be taking a look at the receptive skill of listening, and exploring different ways in which we can approach it. We will also consider what kinds of tasks will help learners to improve their skills. We will be taking a look at (5.1) Techniques, skills and development, (5.2) Anecdotes/Stories/Dictation/Descriptions, (5.3) Multimedia in the EFL classroom. It is essential that you thoroughly read through all the information presented within this module, before then completing the Module Quiz and proceeding to the sixth module. If you have any module-related questions, please contact your personal tutor through the CONTACT LESSON TEACHER button. Good luck and we hope you enjoy completing your fifth module! 🙂

(5.1) Techniques, skills and development.

Even if a learner understands the grammar and vocabulary of a language, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be able to understand a single word when it is spoken. Amongst other things, it may seem to them that:

So, how can you help your students to become more skillful at listening?

Let’s begin by looking at an unsatisfactory, Pre-intermediate listening lesson. The following is a transcript of a short telephone conversation from the recording accompanying a learner’s work book. Although it has been specially recorded for students of English, it sounds reasonably authentic, i.e., it sounds spontaneous rather than scripted; the people are speaking at normal speed and are not making unnatural efforts to enunciate or exaggerate stress and intonation.

Receptionist: Home Recruitment and Training. Can I help you?

Rachel: Hello, yes, erm, I’m, er, I saw your advert and I’m looking for a job, I mean, I’m interested in a new job, and …

Receptionist: Ah, yes, you need to speak to Mrs Sawyer, but I’m afraid she’s not in the office right now. Could I take your name and number, and I’ll ask her to call you back? 

Rachel: Er, yes, yes. The name’s Rachel, Rachel Thompson and my number is 0208557 2828.

Receptionist: Thank you, Miss Thompson. I’ll pass on your message.

Rachel: Thanks. Bye. 

Receptionist: Goodbye. 

The following is the transcript lesson procedure and intended to help improve a learner’s listening skills:

1. Say to students: Listen to this.

2. Play recording once.

3. When finished, quickly ask individual students the following questions: 

4. Look coldly at students who get the answers wrong and tell them that they should have listened harder.

Now, apart from the insults, in what other ways might this plan be unsatisfactory?

This lesson is a parody of some of the language lessons that many of us were likely on the receiving end of as a student in school. I can personally remember feeling quite nervous about them.

While I was listening, I knew that some comprehension questions were going to come at the end, but I never knew what the questions might be or who would be asked to answer them. 

The questions, anyway, seemed pointless; they were not necessarily what I would listen for if I heard the conversation in real life; it was as if the teacher was focusing me on the difficulties rather than showing me that it was possible to achieve a lot despite the difficulties. The questions seemed more of a memory test than anything else.

When the recording was played, I struggled to listen to everything, and to remember all I heard, and in consequence actually remembered very little. 

In fact, it’s actually not necessary to understand every word in order to understand the information you might need from a recording. We need to show students this important fact – help them to worry less about understanding everything and work more on catching the bits they do need to hear. Often, when listening in everyday life, we may need to listen to: 

There is really nothing in this lesson to help a student learn to listen better; either they can already listen and remember the required answers, or they cannot. But if they want to improve their listening, then they need a different approach.

Here is a second version of the same lesson, using a printed version of the text with listening tasks:

1. Hand out a copy of the text of the conversation to all students.

2. Play recording.

3. When finished, ask individual students the following questions:

Still though, there seems to be another problem with this. The questions are a lot more sensible, and the general tone is certainly less threatening, but the problem now is that the students don’t actually need to listen at all. Giving out the text turns it into a reading exercise. Reading is usually easier for most learners than deciphering the stream of speech, and most students will probably work out the answers from the printed page rather than by listening. So ideally, the listening activity:

One way to achieve these goals is simple enough. By giving learners the questions before the recording is played (rather than after), you will give them the opportunity to listen with a clear aim in mind. In everyday life, we usually have some purpose in mind when we listen: to find out today’s weather, to learn something, to be entertained, to discover what Sarah did next, etc. By giving the learners a clear purpose in listening, you turn the exercise from a memory test into a listening task. 

Let’s look again at the lesson procedure task; redesigning it to take the checklist above into account. A simple plan would be as follows: 

1. Set questions.

2. Play recording.

3. Check if the students have found the answers.

4. If not, play the recording again as often as necessary.

This ‘question first’ technique is often characterized as ‘task before audio’. The word ‘task’ reminds us that the activity the students are asked to do may be something more useful, more realistic, more motivating than simply finding answers to comprehension questions. 

Try to think of a task (other than finding answers to comprehension questions) to set learners before listening to the telephone enquiry at the start of this section. Some possible ideas could be:

The most useful tasks are often the ones that require learners to listen in similar ways to how they might hear such a conversation in real life. In the case of a phone enquiry, like this:

When choosing the right task, remember the broad distinction between different kinds of listening:

This can be reflected in tasks. Do you want learners to gather specific details or to catch the gist? You can, of course, do both, but remember that it’s usually better to divide these different kinds of listening into separate replays of the listening material. For example, by setting the first task, playing the recording, getting feedback; then setting the second task, playing it again, getting feedback.

Please remember, too, not to overburden students – if you are asking them to listen and write then this is using two skills at once. Unless note-taking is a specific skill being practiced, it is often better to limit the amount of writing demanded of students, especially at lower levels. 

Having said all this, we must still wonder how useful, relevant or interesting it will be for your learners in your location to listen to a recording of people discussing a recruitment advertisement. If you are teaching in an English-speaking country – or if your students are planning to work there – the lesson may seem more relevant than to students who are unlikely to do this at any point soon.

The recording also raises a few other doubts: 

Despite all these doubts, a task-based approach to listening, using recorded material, does seem to be generally helpful in improving students’ abilities, and we can be certain that it’s better than the memory test we started with.

Let’s now look at the concept of graded sequence of tasks as a route map through a listening exercise.

Many teachers use a graded sequence of tasks as a route map through a listening lesson. By starting with a simple task, letting students do it successfully, then moving on to set a more difficult task on the same recording, the teacher can virtually let the class find its own level, so that you stop setting new tasks when you find the point at which they are beginning to find it too difficult. 

The following is a task-recording-feedback-flow – a basic working procedure for lessons on reading and listening skills, with three initial guidelines:

Lead-in | Pre-listening introduction to topic, discussion, looking at pictures, etc. | Pre-task work, for example, looking through worksheet, work on vocabulary, prediction, etc. | Set clear task | Complete task | Conclude | Tie up loose ends, lead to follow-on activities, review what has been learned, etc. | Play the recording again if learners couldn’t do the task.

It is important to communicate to learners that they are not trying to understand everything. They only need to do enough to complete the specific task.

It is also important to be mindful when providing post-listening task activity feedback. Don’t ask unfair questions – you set a clear task – have they done it? Don’t throw in a whole pile of extra questions now! 

(5.2) Anecdotes/Stories/Dictation/Descriptions.

Anecdotes. Anecdotes are short – often amusing – stories about a real person or event, and are often introduced into the English language learner classroom as they are an excellent medium in which to present entertaining and fun listening activities, and they provide an excellent opportunity to practice language; whether you are listening to them or telling them.

Stories. Stories help develop learners’ vocabulary and listening skills in much the same way as anecdotes do, but often also place emphasis on reading and writing skills. When choosing stories for your class, it is essential that you choose appropriate materials for the age group/type of student you are teaching. It will also be necessary to make a decision early on regarding who will be doing the reading (teacher or student(s), or both, and whether you wish to correct throughout the speaking activity, or at the end of each paragraph or chapter.

Dictation. Dictation has numerous uses in the ELT classroom, often involving very little preparation and a lot of creativity and interest. Used imaginatively, it can be an effective tool for working on accuracy and fluency in all four skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening). Additionally, dictation activities where students compare their version of the text to the original can increase their ability to notice aspects of the language which are sometimes overlooked, as well as errors which they commonly make. These might include common spelling errors, absence of articles or the third person ‘s’, etc. The comparison also helps students to become better at identifying errors in their own written work.

Descriptions. Descriptions work along the same lines as dictation, but are often utilized in encouraging development of differential language knowledge, such as when listening for details and focussing on specific information – perhaps a number, name or object – while ignoring anything that does not sound relevant. In this way, learners are able to narrow down their search and get the details they need, with a learner’s speaking skills developing through the act of vocalizing the description and a learner’s listening skills developing through the act of receiving the description.

(5.3) Multimedia in the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom.

It has become very popular for teachers to use movies as an instructional tool in classes, but many teachers seem to view this as an easy lesson option – playing a video while they sit at the back of the class and focus on non-lesson activities. Whenever you use video in class – which is likely to be via YouTube – it is essential to introduce the movie and explain the relevance of using this tool of instruction, so that students understand this relevance.

For most students, watching movies presents a few important issues – such as an inability to understand certain accents and isolated slang terms – so always try and play your movies with English subtitles.

There are of course many different genres of movies, so it is crucial that you choose a movie which the majority of the class will find entertaining, and one which contains an appropriate level of English for your learners.

Another form of multimedia which is very popular among teachers is the use of song files and music videos in lessons.

There are many ways of utilizing songs in your classes.

You could, for example, print out the lyric sheet to a song, with some words missing, and the students then listen to the song and try to fill in the missing words.

You can also have your learners listen to a song with their eyes closed, play the song again, and then ask them to write down a sentence or two from the song. Afterward, you should facilitate a discussion about the songwriter’s true intent, and the meaning behind the song’s lyrics.

While it is usual for the teacher to research their own movies, try asking your students for recommendations. This way, you should be guaranteed that you will have the complete undivided attention of students in your class whilst utilizing multimedia teaching tools.

And finally, consider showing students short clips instead of the entire movie. For example, if any of you are familiar with the movie ‘Withnail and I’, you could just focus on the (Shakespeare’s) Hamlet soliloquy, which appears at the end of the film, and base your whole lesson around this five-minute section of the movie.

Today’s learners need help in developing a critical lens when it comes to selecting and consuming quality multimedia. Teachers can help their students develop their media literacy by carefully selecting and using multimedia purposefully in the classroom.

Congratulations on reading through the fifth module!

Now it’s time to take the Module 5 Quiz, after which you will gain access to the sixth module.

Important! We recommend reading through the fifth module again to ensure that you are fully prepared to take this quiz.

Click on the VIEW THE LESSON QUIZ button to proceed to the Module 5 Quiz…

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