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What's the best way to learn receptive skills?

Miranda Hamilton

July 26, 2021

We often think of speaking and writing as the most challenging of the four language skills but what about the receptive skills? With reading, learners have time to think, but listening in another language presents a very different set of challenges for the learner. How often have we heard learners complain ‘it’s too fast, teacher!’? So how can you help?

Some guides are designed to help teachers understand the subskills of listening, with activities, tips and strategies to help you develop your learners’ listening skills as they prepare for their exams.

Here are just a few of the ideas from the guides for you to try with your learners. They will work at all levels.

How many words?

This micro listening is a great activity to try towards the end of your listening lesson, when learners have already heard the recording, so they know the speakers’ voices and the topic.

• Select a short phrase, of around 10 words, from the listening you have just completed. Set up the audio so you are ready to press ‘Play’.

• Tell the learners to listen and count the number of words they hear. You will need to play the audio several times. Pairs discuss. Take a range of answers from the class, but don’t tell them the answer just yet.

• Write the phrase on the board and count the number of words with the class. Who was the closest?

• Now ask them to listen and read the phrase at the same time. This time they have to decide which words they hear most clearly, in other words, you want them to notice the stressed words. Ask why they think they heard these words most clearly. Explain that stressed words carry the key information.

This micro listening activity helps raise learners’ awareness of sounds, helping them notice the stressed words and preparing them to listen for key information.

Support every learner

In mixed-ability classes, put a few simple strategies in place so the whole class can listen to the same recording, and take part in the same activity. This means that no learner feels lost or left behind.

• Make the gap-fill or sentence-completion task more achievable and supply the first letter of the missing word. Alternatively supply the first and the final letter and indicate how many letters the missing word has.

• Provide an additional layer of support for weaker learners by giving them the audio script. They can read the script as they listen and use it to help them find the correct answers.

Prepare to listen, prepare to understand

Don’t be in too much of a hurry to hand out the listening task and press ‘Play’. Time spent in class before listening means learners are better prepared to understand.

• Before you listen, have a class discussion around the topic of the listening. This gives learners the opportunity not only to practice their speaking, but also to practice listening to one another. A good discussion will make them think about the main ideas they might hear when they listen. • Useful vocabulary always comes out of a class discussion, creating a very natural way to pre-teach vocabulary before they listen. Useful language linked to a discussion is easier to learn because learners have a context, which makes it easier to remember than pre-teaching vocabulary from a wordlist.

• Take your time to discuss the task and check understanding. Encourage the class to reflect on their discussion and predict the answers. Remember to write their predictions on the board. Did they guess correctly? It doesn’t matter if they did or not, what matters is that they are prepared and ready to listen to see if they were right.

Feeling prepared to listen means learners feel confident and ready to understand, both in the classroom and in their exam.

Adapted from: https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/blog/whats-the-best-way-tolearn-receptive-skills

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Answer questions according to TEXTS.

Answer questions according to TEXT. 

Available from: <https://www.redalyc.org/journal/6377/637766241008/html/>. Accessed on: Nov 22 , 2022 nd

Read the text below and mark the right option for questions.

The Rules of the Game

You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it a bit but it will be yours for duration of your life on Earth. You will lear6yk,jkl´-n lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called Life. Each day in this school you have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think they are irrelevant and stupid. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation. Failures are as much a part of the process as success. Lessons are repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you learn it – then you can go on the next lesson. Learning does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned. ‘‘There’’ is no better ‘‘here’’. When your ‘‘there’’ has become a ‘‘here’’, you will simply obtain another ‘‘there’’ that will again look better than ‘‘here’’. Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about ranother person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. All the answers lie inside of you. The answers to life’s questions lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust. You will forget all this.

( ) With the failures in our life we may have success or continue the process until get it.

( ) The end of the text is optimist. 

( ) The text is about game called life and we have many to learn lessons with it.

( ) Life is no a school where we have the opportunity to learn lessons that we may like or ignore them.

( ) You don’t have all the tools and resources you need.