Tackling listening from KS3 to the GCSE exam!

On this post I would like to write about some of my favourite listening activities that I keep using year, after year. They are not just my ideas but a compilation of resources from wonderful and generous people on social media, colleagues and friends. These are high impact activities, which, in most cases, I believe require minimal preparation! 

Similarly, I explain how I tackle the teaching of Listening in preparation for the GCSE exam, which is one of the hardest papers!

Listening activities based on Sentence Builders

Listening activities should be an integral part of MFL teaching and learning. Listening opportunities must be present in all language lessons, from simple classroom instructions, to specific well-thought and planned activities aimed to consolidate structures. Listening is great for modelling good pronunciation and avoid the fossilisation of mistakes based on pronunciation. It is also core in the process of acquisition of the second language on its whole! In fact, it is through listening that we learn our mother tongue. In other words, listening tasks involving the teacher should be a first priority when teaching a language which should lead to listening opportunities from the mere use of the language through oral activities among learners.  Some of the teacher-led activities I use to practise listening are:

Dictation

This is a great activity which can be extremely powerful and requires hardly any preparation.  There are different versions of this:

1. Dictation of syllables of single words

2. Dictation of words not syllables, as a second stage

3. Dictation of sentences based on Sentence Builders before requiring students to translate sentences.

4. Dictation of paragraphs

5. Dictation among students in pairs

Partial dictation

This activity is another of my favourites. It is similar to a Dictation but the teacher starts the word and students finish it in writing or orally. Great for phonics! It does not need any preparation and it is great for retrieval practice and adaptable to any topic and level! 

Teacher: Me lla.....

Student write: mo

Delayed Dictation

This is another great activity, inspired by Gianfranco Conti. It is a like a normal dictation but students are not allowed to write what they hear until  after a few seconds (I normally wait 10). This activity helps students memorise words/ sentences, while focusing on phonics and making the link between phonemes and spelling.  It also helps the process of syllables identification in another language, which can be very difficult to spot, specially in Spanish where we use elisions between words and utterances sound like a very long word!

Running Dictation

Students, even at KS4/5 with complex texts, love this activity. Prepare different texts stuck on the wall and divide your class in groups, as many as texts you have, (the text can be the same for all groups). One student in each group remains seated, while the others in the group take turns to run to the text, memorise a section and dictate it to the student sitting on the table, who in turn writes it down. This is a fun way to practice listening, reading and memorisation of key structures. I normally have groups of 3/4 students. The quickest group to write down the text, exactly as the one of the board, wins. You can add a further step in the process: to translate the text into English once this has been completed. Or use the text as a grammar activity by changing it to the past or adding another paragraph in the future!  

For more reflections on dictation, visit Gianfranco's blog here and Steve Smith's blog here

Spot the missing word

This activity, which I originally heard from Gianfranco Conti, consists of preparing a text, remove words from it, without gaps, read the original text and expect students to write the missing word, without knowing where the gaps are. 

Bad Dictation

This activity is similar to the previous one. The teacher prepares a text and reads the text to the students but with subtle differences. Students must listen to the teacher and spot the differences between the written text and what they hear from the teacher. 

Listening Battleships

Another activity of Gianfranco's repertoire! This is another one of my favourites! I present students with a grid similar to the one below, based on the Sentence Builders we are working on.

I read different sentences and students must write the coordinates (A1,B5 etc..). The sentences are very, very similar so students really need to listen for detail. The subtle changes in detail will depend on what I would like to focus on: vocabulary, grammar or phonics!

This activity is great as it leads to playing batteships in pairs orally and then, for homework,  to translate the sentences or a selection of these based on coordinates!  Gianfranco also suggests to play battleships orally making patterns with the difference coordinates, so students listen to their partners and try to sport a shape!

Listening Pyramid

This activity is based on the original Pyramid Translation activity from Gianfranco Conti. The Listening Pyramid idea, I first heard it from @MFLSwavesey in our mfltwitterati Padlet (photo below), where the original Powerpoint can be found under "Other Games". The idea is for the teacher to say increasingly longer sentences, which students write them down. 

Dictogloss

This is a great, multi-skilled activity, which incorporates listening, reading and writing. It can be carried out by the teacher to the whole class and/or in pairs.

1. Teacher reads a paragraph based on the Sentence Builders we are working on.

2. Students listen and write down in, Target Language, key words.

3. Students, in groups or a partner try to reconstruct the text

With students, I like doing this activity with two texts A/B. In pairs, students first work through text A and then text B, which are very similar!

1. Student A reads text A and writes a summary in English. Student B reads text B and writes a summary in English too.

2. Student A, using their notes in English must translate the text into Spanish to their partner who listens and transcribes in target language.

3. Student B completes step 2 with Text B

4. Both students compare their transcription with the original texts.  

As a follow-up activity, students can translate the texts into English or use it as a model to create a similar one in writing or as mini oral presentation.

Parsing Listening Activities

This is another activity I first heard from Gianfranco Conti's. The teacher reads sentences and students need to recognise a grammar pattern in the string of words they hear. Students write down the words containing such grammar pattern, for example, verbs in the past tense, future or subjunctive.  At a low level could be, writing the adjectives or the feminine/masculine nouns. This activity is very powerful to make students think about the structure of the language and hearing for detail, especially if you mix different verb tenses, for example!

Transcribing Listening Activities

Another Zero preparation and high impact activity. The teacher reads sentences and students write them down in English: this process involves high level decoding as students need to decode the sounds of the language into meaning (linking phonemes to semantic form) and then translate these sounds-meanings into English. Give a couple of points for each correct answer and you can spend a whole lesson doing this! 

Oral activities 

Any oral activity you carry out in the lesson will involve listening!  This is great as students can actively practice this skill while carrying oral activities just by writing down key points/ideas on what their partner is telling them.

For more ideas on Listening activities, you can visit Dylan Viñales blog here or use Gianfranco and Steve Smith's book: Breaking the sound barrier, which is dedicated entirely to this skill.

Exploiting the textbook listenings

Formal listening instruction has, traditionally, been rather ignored in the past, which is a big mistake as speaking a language involves 50% listening and it is such a powerful source for modelling. The listening audio files that we get along with text-books are potential gems as language input offering different accent experiences, intonation etc. to that of the teacher.  

However, in my opinion, these listenings have two big flaws: 

1.  the tasks that students are required to do with the oral input,  in most cases is superficial and does not exploit the potential of the listening, in fact activities seem to be a mere test exercise! 

2. the vocabulary on the audiofiles, especially if you do not teach via a specific textbook, may vary significantly from your sentence builders, which may be difficult to comprehend and demotivate students.

Nevertheless, I believe that after practising the specific vocab of Sentence Builders  through listening practice using the activities above, textbook listening materials, if paired up with transcripts and modified on what is required as a task, offer a great opportunity to learn new vocab and grammar in context, while practising listening/reading skills.

That's why I always create my own listening activities based on audiofiles from different textbooks on a given topic, exploiting these to their maximum potential. Below there is an example of a listening lesson to take place in the Language Lab based on the topic of Holidays for a Y10 group, middle set. I ignored the activities from the textbook, far too easy and superficial, and created my own tasks based on the needs of this particular Y10 group. 

These needs will differ from class to class and from a same audiofile, I may create activities focusing on grammatical input requiring listening for detail and lexico-grammar connections, or I just may ask students to write down a general summary of what they hear, ignoring specific detail. The transcripts can then lead to translations, reading activities etc.

Holidays Listenings Y10 

How to create a virtual Language Lab in your classroom!

Technology is great as it allows you to simulate different learning environments. If you do not have access to a Language Lab but you use Onenote in your lessons, this type of activities can also be done in the classroom, in individual laptops, where audio files and specific tasks are  shared/ distributed via Onenote. Using their laptops and headphones, students can access the activities via Onenote while working at their own pace, simulating a Language Lab in your very own classroom.

Similarly, you can share your resources: audio files and worksheets, via your school VLE, Teams (in assignments) or Google Classroom. Students just need to bring their laptops and headphones to lessons and work independently.

Language Lab environments, not only develop listening skills but they also encourage independent learning in students. 

How to tackle GCSE listening preparation

The listening GCSE paper, regardless of board and language, is traditionally one of the hardest papers for students. There are different reasons for this, on one hand I am not convinced that Listening, as such, is taught systematically in many schools and it is just assumed that it will develop naturally as you teach the language, the Cinderella skill as Gianfranco Conti calls it. This tends to occur especially in Spanish and German as they are phonological languages and not so much in French. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the language and type of tasks that students are asked to carry out in GCSE exams can be extremely ambiguous and confusing, making this skill rather difficult to master in these exams! It seems as if the boards want to catch up the students, with too many implied meanings and obscure use of vocabulary and idiomatic expressions.  How to tackle this?

After our Spanish listening results were the worst of the four skills 7/8 years ago, we implemented a plan in the department for KS4: to teach listening explicitly and dedicate at least a lesson every two weeks to it exclusively, while still practising it to some extent in all lessons. This is our routine, which has resulted in the Listening being,now, the highest scored skill in the GCSE exam:

1. We carry out simple and short listening activities during lessons based on Sentence Builders, like the activities explained above (delayed dictation, dictogloss etc..)

2. In the Language Lab we dedicate a lesson or two to carry out text book listenings previously modified by me to make tasks more meaningful from the point of view of grammar, vocabulary or phonetics, as I explain above. At this stage, having the transcript is vital! Students are trained to cover the transcript, where possible but to use it while listening to the audio file if they need to. The idea is that students are not tested but they learn from the text and train their ear to the string of foreign sounds!

3. While carrying out step 2, students highlight new vocabulary in the transcripts and add it to a personal Random Vocab Quizlet and learn it for homework.

4. Students repeat steps 1 and 2 in other lessons.

5. Once the studied topic is fully covered and students have carried out multiple listening activities from the teacher and textbooks (we use Viva, Mola and Oxford for AQA listenings), students get exposed to exam style questions from past papers on the studied topic. 

To do this, we use Exampro, which is brilliant!  

Exampro is worth every penny and it allows you to create activities based on past paper questions on any skill. In the case of listening, you can download the audiofile for each activity and the transcript, together with the mark scheme. 

At this stage, we carry out the Exampro activities in the classroom first. We listen while reading the transcript. We read the question, analyse the question and reflect on the difficulty for that particular question, so that students get exposed to the type of thinking they will need to face in the exam. This way we develop exam technique! During this process, students highlight new vocabulary and add it to their personal Quizlet as before.

6. In the Language Lab, students work on the same Exampro questions, again. This time they are encouraged not to use the transcript while working at their own pace.

7. Every so often, we use This is Language. This website is pricey but very good to develop listening skills: students carry out listening activities on line based on videos on the different GCSE topics. They get points and compete against each other. 

This sequence works! When repeated, over and over again with each topic, students start improving their listening skills considerably. To incorporate retrieval practice to this structure, when carrying the different stages, I always include vocabulary from past topics. 

I have seen many lessons where students carry out just textbook listenings, and only exam style questions when formally tested, without reflecting on how to tackle the actual task/question in the exam.  In many cases the gap between the textbook listenings and those appearing on exam is far too wide and if the exam technique has not been taught systematically well, only the higher attainers can narrow such a gap, which can lead to frustration and a sense of inadequacy in weaker students.

I do not believe in the way the listening GCSE exam is tested BUT it is what students will need to face on the day and we need to teach them to tackle this.