Differentiation in Listening Tasks

Differentiation in Listening TasksJune 2013The problem with listening.

It is a skill which needs practice, not just testingMany pupils will be de-motivated by their lack of successMany will have learnt nothing to help them improve their performance next timePupils find the lack of context difficult, and the lack of visual clues. What difficulties do YOUR classes have?

Questions to ask when we plan for listening in class:

What is the aim of the task? To test pupils? To develop pupils confidence in listening? To get pupils to apply recently learned language in a new context? To use a listening as a source of language for manipulation? To develop other language skills such as inference?

How can we differentiate?

By taskBy outcomeBy responseHow do YOU differentiate?

Sometimes we DO need to test pupils, but the work we do with them in class will better prepare them for summative assessments. How can we build pupils confidence with listening?

Little and Often Variety of responsesPrepare pupils for listening activitiesVaried listening resourcesFocus on the key features of your language

Listening is vital for language learning. It is a source of language input, the decoding of which is believed by most to account to a large extent for language acquisition. But for learners it is often the activity that causes most anxiety. You can often detect a powerful change in the atmosphere in a languages classroom when a listening activity is announced and then in progress. So often students ask is it a test? when you start a listening activity, presumably because this is how it feels to them. Ive never been asked that about a reading activity. It is true that its most often the lower ability that find it the most scary and demotivating but there are a significant number of students in top sets that struggle with listening.

5VARIETY OF RESPONSES to build pupils confidence in listening

Predict answers.

Put your hand up when you hear

True/false

Multiple choice

Underline correct answer

Pre key language

Put the pictures in order

Listening whole class activities to build pupils confidenceIn pairsAnswers firstOrdering cardRunning listening comprehensionVisual listening (YouTube, BBC online clips, adverts)SongsListening speakingProduce own listening assessmentAll speaking (when spontaneous) is listeningPre-teach key language Repeat listening tasks

In whole class teaching situations I think there are lots of things we can do to make listening more effective and more enjoyable. By more effective I really mean less scary, because fear is not positively correlated with either motivation or progress! Some favourite ideas for this involve a slight twist on the usual format of playing a CD, individual work answering questions.

1. Learners work in pairs and listen for alternate number answers and then share their answers before listening a second time. On feedback their approach is we think that no. 1 is.....2. Give the answers first and ask learners to anticipate (written or orally) what language they will hear (even scripting a suggested dialogue/monologue). When they listen, they compare what theyve anticipated with the audio material.3. Learners respond to material heard by ordering cards. The focus can be the on structures, where learners sort the activity cards into columns to denote present, past or future or opinions, where the categorising is into positive and negatives or simply on the order in which the items on the cards are mentioned in the passage.4. Learners are the source of listening themselves. A text is posted on the wall learners read and memorise as much as they can and run back to their group and repeat it. Learners have to respond to the text by answering questions or filling in a grid or completing a multiple choice activity. (if learners write down what is said, this is called running dictation).

5. Move away from the disembodied voices of CD by using video extracts for listening tasks (Youtube, foreign television channels, short tv adverts, bbc online clips)6. Use songs. Gap fill and or responding using a simple proforma to identify key features, key language and elicit opinions.7. Use listening as a stimulus for speaking as often as you can, rather than an end in its own right. 8. Learners make their own listening material in groups (as a revision activity at the end of a module) and the whole class completes the different activities. Can use video for this (webcam & effects)9. Think of all speaking activities as listening activities too and let this influence your planning. For example, verbal tennis, speaking lines, role plays are as much about listening as they are about speaking. 10. Pre-teach some key language. Teacher selects some key language crucial to the listening passage and flags this up, defining it in the foreign language for learners before listening. This activity is a listening task in itself and can greatly enhance learners comprehension of the text when they come to listen to it.11. Repeat listening exam papers a couple of lessons later or the following week (after you have gone through and marked it. This really improves confidence which in turn impacts on performance.

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2010 Edexcel Higher Q78

Using real advertshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZKZSeWx-EYLe petit garon: Cest Maurice qui a _______ la mousse.Rpte Coco! Cest Maurice qui a ______ la mousse!Cest _________ Coco! Rpte! Cest Maurice qui a _______ la mousse.

La voix de femme:Si la mousse au ________ de Nestl est si ________, cest parce quelle est prpare avec ___ chocolat Nestl.

Le petit garon:Vas y! Rpte!

Coco:Vas y! Rpte!!

Le petit garon:Je te remercie Coco

La voix de femme:La mousse __ Nestl la _____ mousse au chocolat Nestl!

Cest Maurice qui a mang la mousseQuestions sur la publicit.Qui a mang toutes les mousses au chocolat?Comment est la mousse au chocolat?Coco est quelle sorte danimal?Maurice est un a) un poisson rouge b) un chat c)un lapin?Vrai ou faux? Le petit garon veut que sa mre pense que Maurice avait mang toutes les mousses?DiscussionAimes-tu les mousses au chocolat?Quels autres parfums de mousse aimes-tu?Les mousses sont bonnes pour la sant?Quand manges-tu les mousses?Les mousses sont croquantes?

VARIETY OF RESPONSES to build pupils confidence in listeningActive learning when you hear the word, do an actionTasks which involve listening with a purpose e.g. Give a focus for the task- e.g. listen out for certain information (who, what, when, where, why).Visuals are really helpful to support listening work - filling in blanks on a plan, a map, following directions, matching pictures with a statement. Listening for real information - treasure hunt - hide an objectUse the transcript before listening to concentrate on matching the sounds pupils hear with what they can actually seeUse the transcript after a listening comprehension exercise.Give pupils recordings via Fronter to practise at home - eliminate the element of stress.Isolate irrelevant elements - e.g. give the name of people speaking it is not essentially part of the learning-process, unless you are teaching the alphabet and spelling.

VARIED LISTENING RESOURCES

Misheard lyrics pupils rewrite the original lyric

Take your teeth out tickle my toes

Last night I dreamt of some bagels

Dont cry for me Im the cleaner

Conversations with the class, drama

Music videos and adverts

Clips of UK/US shows in the TL. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXg93bGW0PY - 16 et enceinte

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbDI6uAEeNg - Ugly Betty in Italiano

THE PURPOSE OF LISTENING ACTIVITIES

Make up your own exercises to practise the skills required for Higher pupils the ability to draw conclusions from indicators such as conjunctions (mais, avant, aprs), use of tenses, expressions of agreement or disagreement

Dont rely on the recordings provided by the course-book, which are often there to test the content. Think about how you can use them in different ways.

Differentiated responses to one listening activity Some possible tasks in order of difficulty: Listen to the recording.a.Where do you think it takes place?b.What could you say about the people speaking?Look at the list of words below. Listen carefully to the recording and put a tick next to a word every time you think you hear it.Look at the list of statements below, then listen to the recording and tick the ones that are true.Listen to the recording and answer the questions below: Here is a transcript of a recording you are about to hear, with words omitted. Fill in the gaps. (In preparation, you could either omit from the transcript the word you want the learners to recognise, or miss out every 5th/15th/19th word according to levels. You could give them the first couple of letters of the word, or list the words underneath the passage out of order and put in some words which do not occur at all.)Listen to the recording and write a summary (in the taught language).

Differentiating listening activitiesDestination Departure timePlatform Additional information ABCDEAn easy way of differentiating a listening activity is to set all learners a core task to complete. Those who complete this can listen for additional information during subsequent listenings to the extract.Alternatively, you could give your learners a grid to complete and ask them to add information to one column at a time during successive listenings to the extract. The example below refers to listening to announcements at a railway station. Columns A and B could be the core material which all learners complete, with subsequent columns filled in only by those learners who are able to do so. All headings should be translated into the taught language and you may want to give some learners additional clues in the taught language to listen out for.

16How do you assess listening? Targets for improvementWhich techniques help them They keep a log of their resultsKey words which they are going to revise for the next time. Using words from the listening in their writingUsing transcript from listening for another activity in class e.g. speakingPupils make a vocab list for revision from the listening activityPupils keep a log of completion of different kinds of listening activities, in preparation for listening assessmentsListening for gist Listening for detailWord families in advanceNegatives