Teaching Listening Skills to Young Learners

Study Notes

Listening is a crucial skill that precedes speaking, reading, and writing, forming the foundation for oral language development.
Effective listening instruction needs to vary based on the learners' age, level, learning style, and phonological awareness.
Teachers should carefully train learners to listen to English sounds and follow simple instructions.
Varied listening activities are essential for learners to build confidence.
Learners benefit from a range of listening tasks to reinforce understanding.
Listening materials and teacher language should adapt to the level of familiarity and complexity to support understanding.
Incorporating listening skills through songs, games, and stories makes the process enjoyable.

Pre-listening: Personalize the context, brainstorm, and identify key words.
While-listening: Label, number, tick, and arrange pictures to maintain engagement and comprehension.
Post-listening: Encourage drawing or retelling to solidify the understanding of the listened material.

Listen and Tick: Providing a worksheet with animal pictures and playing the Old MacDonald song. Children tick animals they hear in the song.
Listen and Number: Using the same worksheet and song, have children number the animals in the correct order heard in the song.
Listen and Do/Perform: Employing the Simon Says game to reinforce following instructions through listening.
Listen and Identify: Present pictures of a boy and a girl, then ask the children to identify them based on descriptions, like "He is wearing blue trousers."
Listen and Repeat: Using the Chinese whisper game to practice listening and repeating words.

Divide into groups.
Study provided pictures.
Design listening activities based on pictures covering pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening stages.