10 CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS

External factors affecting listening

Listening is a complex process affected by both external and internal factors.  Internal is mostly related to body functions and external to the speaker and the topic concerned.

Internal factors affecting listening

Listening is an important skill that needs to be developed among students to have a positive life.  How can this be developed?
Here is the list of 10 activities that can be implemented to improve listening.

List of classroom activities to improve listening

The activities are

1. Observational videos:  Commentary or incident based videos to understand words and actions depicted in the video.  News videos are more suited for this purpose.
2. Questions on reading: Allow students to read passages and ask and allow questions, cross questions on the read passage.
3. Conversational comprehensions: Listen to comprehensions and deduce various aspects of the context, character analysis, moods and emotions based on comprehensions.
4. Audio clips: Listen to audio clips, analyse the situation and answer questions based on them
5. Craft - Listen and Do: Listen to craft preparation steps, follow the procedure and process to make the product
6. Key points Summary:  Listen to the entire content and list down summary as points of understanding
7. Extend or oppose: Provide a topic, ask a student to talk for, abruptly stop and ask another student to oppose on the point of discussion
8. Guess the context: Mute the audio, allow students to observe the image and ask the students to guess the topic of discussion or talk. Then give the audio and allow the students to self analyse their guess
9. Sketch or Map: Listen to the complete talk - sketch or map out the topic along with the flow of presentation - Ted talks can be best used for this activity
10. Contextual word synonym or antonym: Provide word synonym or antonyms and ask student to pick out the related words in the audio.