Section 2

Listening – The Forgotten Skill

Listening truly is the forgotten skill. We often forget to purposefully include work on improving listening skills in English lessons. This section highlights listening.

Activity A

Various listening activities

This activity takes time to focus on a variety of listening activities so that tutors will remember to purposefully include listening activities in their sessions. It also introduces the concept of non-verbal clues.

Discussion, use of handout

Materials and equipment

Handout 11.3: Listening List (2 pages)

Preparation

Find a paragraph in an article to read for step .
Copy handout and pick a few items to highlight in the discussion.

STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS

  1. Remind your tutors that of all the time we spend communicating, we spend 5 per cent of it listening. So listening should be an important part of ESL sessions. The listening portion of the lesson should be purposeful and of some interest to the learner.
  2. Read a lengthy paragraph twice. The first time, do it in a monotone without facial expression. The second time, read with expression in your tone and use facial expressions. Ask tutors which reading was easier to understand – they should pick the second reading. Ask them, aside from the fact that the information was repeated, why it was easier.
  3. Share the following information with the tutor. In a conversation, the message is delivered in three ways – via words (7 per cent effective), tone of voice (38 per cent effective) and non-verbal clues (55 per cent effective)
  4. These non-verbal clues include many visual clues like gestures, facial expressions and body language. Listening, then, is often an auditory and a visual experience. Without the visual clues, ESL learners find it difficult to understand others and express themselves. Ask even advanced learners and most will say that they don’t like telephone conversations – they miss the visual clues. Some of these visual clues differ from one culture to another so learners may get the wrong message even when they can see the speaker. Suggest that tutors look into a difference in visual clues if the learner understands the words but not the message.
  5. Pass out the Listening List handout and talk about a few of the listening activity ideas.

Variation

You might want to refer to the Canadian Language Benchmarks listening benchmarks to see the competency outcomes learners need. Use some of these examples to add to the handouts and discussion.