Page 76 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Listening and Speaking

Table 4.1 Examples of Active Listening Activities
Type Examples of activities
Listen A number of simple activities with which teachers can check if the pupils have un-
and do derstood classroom instructions (e.g. Open your books!, Raise your hand!, Make a
circle!) and generally all TPR activities.
Listen In listen-and-repeat activities learners develop pronunciation skills, the focus is on
and re- sounds, stress, rhythm and intonation. However, it is important to put this type of
peat listening activity in a context and bear in mind that activities in which teachers ask
students to just repeat something after them are not very effective. Drill-based ac-
tivities can be made more communicative if they are turned into a game, such as the
game Chinese whispers or Telephone. In this game, players first form a line or circle,
then the first player comes up with a message and whispers it to the ear of the sec-
ond person in the line. When the last player hears the message and says it out loud,
the message is compared to the original.
Listen Listen and colour activities can be used at the very initial stages of learning when
and pupils are learning the names of colours and basic vocabulary items. From simple
colour activities related to a vocabulary set (for example, colouring school supplies) to
more complex tasks in which children colour a picture which requires from them fa-
miliarity with more complex vocabulary. It is always a good idea to contextualise the
activities with a story. For example, we can tell a simple story of a house which is sad
because it has no colours and the pupils can make it happy again by colouring dif-
ferent parts of the house according to the teacher’s instructions.
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In addition, the author suggests spending more time on the post-listening
stage which can be dedicated to any difficulties or questions the learners
might have and that the pre-listening activity should not take more than a
few minutes.

Listening Activities
The first types of listening activities used with YLs will probably be those
which require non-verbal responses from children, especially activities which
are based on TPR and require a physical response from learners. In these
activities, children have to understand a message and respond accordingly
(Pinter, 2006). Several well-known games can be used for this purpose, such
as Simon Says or the action song ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.’
In order to make listening an active and learner-centred process, it is useful
to plan activities so that learners have to do something while listening. For
example, in the course book HappyHouse2 (Maidment & Roberts, 2009), each
unit starts with a basic ‘listen and point’ activity in which children listen to
a text on the tape while they have to point to different items in a related

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