A Listening Skills Lesson Plan

An idea and some tips for planning a listening skills lesson using authentic materials.

Planning a listening skills lesson using authentic materials can be quite daunting. However, such a lesson will be so much more rewarding than one which relies on coursebook materials which, let’s face it, tend to offer nothing more than some dodgy acting in unrealistic situations.

Read more: A Listening Skills Lesson Plan

To choose your audio, you need to ask yourself similar questions to those you ask when planning a reading skills lesson.

I have chosen this TedTalk to use with my B2 level business English students.

Thanks to TedTalks

Will my students enjoy listening to/watching it?

Yes, it is relevant to their current work situation and a topic which often comes up in our classes.

Is the length suitable?

This recording is around 4 minutes long, which is manageable. Any longer, I would have to consider either breaking it down into smaller chunks or just using an excerpt.

Is the level of English suitable?

Yes, my B2 students will find it challenging enough but I don’t expect any major problems.

Does it have a particular language focus I could exploit before or after the listening skills practice?

There are some useful words which students may regularly hear/read in their international work environment.

My Lesson Plan

  1. Arouse interest and pre-teach some lexis.

Give the students the following words and ask them, in small groups, to predict what they think the recording will be about.

2. Feedback on pre-listening task

Gather students ideas of what the recording will be about and put their ideas on the board (giving them something to focus on while watching/listening)

3. Provide the students with practice in listening for gist.

Simply ask the students to watch/listen and see if their predictions were right.

4. Provide the students with practice in listening for detail.

Ask the students to watch/listen again and make notes on the “four things which work well” in hybrid working. You can provide the students with some clues if you like as I have below but this might not be necessary (think about what your students can handle).

Key PointWhat she says – add to the notes below
Anchor Days– overlap with ……..
– watercooler…..
Plan spontaneity– structuring unstructured time
– 6-7 minutes
– one word
Use the right tools to communicate– video …..
– email ….
– take a break
– one-to-one …..
Commit to the new culture– who?
– mixed messages…

5. Post-listening fluency task

As a round-up to the lesson I would suggest having the students discuss the pros and cons of hybrid working.

6. Alternative post-listening task or something for the next lesson

It could be a good idea to get students to write a summary to give to their manager based on what they have learned from the video.

Have you got any good listening skills lesson ideas that you can share?

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Lesson planning is such a major part of teaching, if you have a thorough lesson plan, you should be able to sit back and enjoy the lesson, while the learners do all the work! Read on for some tips on how to perfect your plans!

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A Reading Skills Lesson Plan

Looking for ideas for a reading skills lesson?

I want to provide my students with practice in the reading subskills, what do I need to do to start planning?

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  1. Find a suitable text
  2. Come up with an idea to arouse interest
  3. Decide on which sub-skills practice the text would be suitable for
  4. Create the in-reading tasks
  5. Plan a suitable post-reading task
Continue reading “A Reading Skills Lesson Plan”

How to Achieve a Pass A on your CELTA Course

I often read or hear from trainees that their aim is to achieve a Pass A when doing CELTA. So what exactly is the best way to go about this?

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A Guide to Lesson Planning: Basic Stages

On our most recent CELTA course in Munich, some of the trainees seemed to have a problem with the stages a lesson should include so I’ve tried to break down the basic stages for different lesson types.

Continue reading “A Guide to Lesson Planning: Basic Stages”

Teaching with Technology

Further to my review of Bringing Technology into the Classroom by Gordon Lewis, I thought it would be good to share some applications/websites that we have been known to use in our centre:

Kahoot
CC 2.0

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Coursebooks – How to use and adapt them

On our CELTA courses in Munich, we use two coursebooks with the students (currently Speakout and English Unlimited) but as the course progresses and trainees become more confident in the classroom, we encourage them to move away from the coursebook a little. Why?

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A Stress-free, Prep-free Christmas

Planning a pre-Christmas lesson but stuck for ideas?  Worry not, I have the perfect lesson for you….

dog christmas xmas bulldog
Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

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A Guide to Lesson Planning: Language Analysis

In order to teach a specific item of language, for example a tense or a lexical set, it is essential that you, as the teacher, “know” this item thoroughly which is why on a CELTA course you are asked to include a language analysis on the lesson plan. What does this include and what do you need to consider? Here, in this third post in the series on lesson planning, we have the answers to these and other questions all about language analysis. Continue reading “A Guide to Lesson Planning: Language Analysis”

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