Teaching Listening

Strategies for Developing Listening Skills

Language learning depends on listening. Listening provides the aural input that serves as

the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication.

Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their listening behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and listening purposes. They help students develop a set of listening strategies and match appropriate strategies to each listening situation.

Listening Strategies

Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input.

When is a board not a board?

Classes differ in terms of location, status and amount of technological equipment, and in the age, level and number of students, but they all have one thing in common: a board. Teachers are always using the board, but there may be much greater potential to exploit this resource than many people think. One way of finding new possibilities is by using metaphors. This article considers a number of metaphors for the board, and suggests that creative thinking may help teachers find the full potential of this ubiquitous ‘empty space’ resource.