Listening activities: How to deal with them

LISTENING ACTIVITIES: HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM


When students of EFL are faced with a listening activity, their typical reaction is one of fear and dislike, basically because they always have the impression they don’t understand anything at all of the input presented to them. Why does this happen? Normally as a result of a poor presentation of this activity to them, in combination with a lack of the appropriate warm-up for it.

In the past, when a teacher wanted their students to be exposed to a listening passage, he or she simply told their students: “Listen up, children, we are going to listen to a passage and these are the questions you have to answer”. Of course, the kids would start trembling with fear, because after having listened to it, twice or even three times, they would be asked to give their answers. Result? Total failure. Why? Because they would try to understand the whole passage ate first, without focusing on certain parts of it.

What’s the su...