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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Face-to-face CELTA v Online CELTA

CELTA Online or CELTA face-to-face, which one should you do?

Before the pandemic I was very much against the idea of the online environment for language learning. I felt that an online classroom would not provide the active participation opportunities the physical classroom offers. I freely admit that I was wrong as you can also read in one of my earlier blog posts. Even now that my school has gone back to classroom teaching, I continue to deliver some of my lessons online but what about delivering a CELTA course fully online?

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In it for the learners!

I’m sorry to say that EFL teaching is not going to make you a millionaire! Having said that, most of us do not do it (just) for the money but get huge satisfaction from helping our learners. It seems obvious, therefore, that these learners should be at the forefront of our minds when planning and delivering lessons. Indeed, on the CELTA course, one of the criteria for a Pass A is that the candidate has a very good awareness of their learners but what exactly do we need to know about them and why?

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Teaching unplugged revisited: A Scott Thornbury webinar

On LinkedIn last week I spotted a series of webinars by Delta Publishing called “Speaking Globally”. The webinars included speakers such as David Crystal, Nicky Hockly and Scott Thornbury so I decided to sign up for what I could fit into my teaching schedule and Tuesday early evening found me sitting comfortably on my sofa with my laptop.

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I have seen Scott Thornbury speak several times on the topic of Dogme teaching but if it’s new to you, here are the basic principles:

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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
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My Top Five ELT Tools

Whether you are teaching solely online or managing to combine your online lessons with some socially distanced, face to face teaching as I am, technology is where it’s at. My top five ELT tools change regularly depending on what I’ve read/ heard about recently but in no particular order here are my top 5 at the time of writing …

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Face-to-face v Online Teaching

Is there a difference between classroom teaching and online teaching?

At the beginning of March 2020 I wouldn’t have been qualified to write about teaching (English) online but with grim thanks to a pandemic I was forced into becoming au fait with the online world a lot quicker than I might have wanted to. Is there much of a difference?

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100% CELTA Online: Anything to Lose?

Many of you will have seen that Cambridge is offering the CELTA course fully online during these strange times, something which has never been possible before. So what are the advantages and disadvantages or is this a purely win-win situation?

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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.

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CELTA Grading – not to standard

Worried about receiving a not to standard grade?

Have you taught a CELTA teaching practice lesson and the grade was not to standard (NTS)? Are you concerned as to what this might mean? Let me put your mind at ease.

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