Ten Activities to Practise Listening Fluency in the English Classroom

Teaching learners how to improve their listening skills is often a challenge.  Here are some great ideas for teachers to consider utilising in the classroom to make listening tasks less daunting for students: Ten activities to practise listening fluency in the English classroom

From my experience, whatever activity is practised, it must be relevant to the learning goals of each student and be realistic.  We have to prepare students for the reality that most native speakers of English do not speak with an RP accent and so using resources with speakers with regional accents is important, especially if they student has the aim of living and working in an English speaking country.  Teachers must make sure that the task is realistic in relation to the learning goals.  If the student needs listening skills for an office environment because English is the language of business in their workplace then listening activities should focus on the vocabulary they will need to understand in that specific environment.

I have observed the experiences of students preparing for the listening part of EFL exams such as IETS and one of the most difficult challenges is the fact that a recording may be played by the examiner only a specified number of times.  Students may struggle to absorb all of the information and determine the correct answers in this scenario.  With IELTS listening the teacher should make sure that the student has read and thought about the questions before actually listening to the recording.  The more understanding a student has about what the topic is and what type of vocabulary they need to listen for will help them to identify the correct answers.  With practice, the student should be able to answer the questions without needing to have the recording replayed. 

Do you have any interesting experiences of teaching listening in the classroom?  What advice would you give fellow teachers?