Developing listening skills

[mllufriu]

1. I like commenting issues with my students, explaining, or asking them to explain, and making them ask questions. I also find informal chats quite useful. I use the text book recordings, of course, but I normally ask different questions to make sure they understand and to encourage comments and feed back. And I like working with video, songs and films as well. It is great when we have native “guests” in the class – like a language assistant, but sometimes also British fellow students and other people we might invite - because the motivation to participate increases enormously.


3. Yes, I think that both native and non-native teachers “must” use live teacher listening, because when interacting with the students they are offering a meaningful opportunity to listen to and use English. Perhaps native teachers can provide a more “real” experience, and surely a better accent, but this shouldn’t discourage us non-native teachers. It is true that we have to offer fluency and this involves continuous preparation. We may feel that exposure to native English by means of recordings, video etc is more necessary. On the other hand, our students will have to use English in a world where more and more people from the most various countries and with the most varied accents speak the language and communicate. And this is what we want: to communicate.

[Admin]

Thanks for your comments Mllufriu. Lots of interesting observations and points here. Like you say; live listening suddenly makes it all real. So much more stimulating and motivating for the learners and the teacher.