The simplest L2 listening activity

Many teachers feel that teaching second language listening is the most difficult of the four skills. Listening cannot be seen, and what our students understand cannot be seen. There often tends to be a product-focus to teaching L2 listening as John Field (2019) has noted, which involves teachers testing listening rather than teaching listening. In teaching listening, we want to know what our students are understanding as they listen and how they are coming to that understanding, right or wrong.

The simplest L2 listening activity is focused on discussing a listening text through asking questions and discussing the answers with students. The best metaphor for this activity is that the listening text is a mystery, and we are putting together clues to find out what happened. As the teacher, embrace this perspective–there is a lot of mystery in every L2 listening text/experience. Share that excitement and discovery process with your students. You are the Listening Master–your management of this discovery process is key to its success.

The simplest L2 listening activity is a rich, highly adaptable approach to teaching listening. Here is the outline of how it works–I explain each step in more detail afterwards.

1. Have a target listening text or group of related listening texts.
2. Discuss the texts’ content before listening to give students context.
3. Listen.
4. Ask students what they understood, and what they heard to make them understand that. (pairs/groups)
5. Ask students what they understood, and what they heard to make them understand that. (full class–random selection of individuals)
6. Ask other students if they understood similar, different, or additional ideas, including exactly what they heard.
7. Play parts or all of the listening text(s) again.
8. Go through the asking students process again.
9. Repeat #7 and #8 as desired until you are satisfied with students’ comprehension.
10. To end the activity, give or show students the transcript. Ask them about what words or ideas they had trouble hearing but understand when reading the transcript.

Optional but recommended expansion step

11. Now, ask questions that relate to the listening, but are not directly related to the listening text.

How long does this activity last? It varies depending on the length and complexity of the listening text and the rate at which learners comprehend the text and answer questions. I generally do this type of activity for 20 minutes to 1 hour. There are many beautiful aspects to this simple L2 listening process:

• It works with ANY listening text.
• It keeps students’ attention.
• It incorporates repetition without being boring.
• It allows from participation from all students in a class.
• It lets the teacher find out what is difficult about the listening text.
• It give students opportunities to use new vocabulary through answering questions.
• It allows for critical thinking in the inferential questions phase (step #10).

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Now, I want to elaborate on each step of the process below. (I would love to make a demo video, but for now, textual explanations will have to do).

1. Have a target listening text or group of related listening texts.

Listening texts can be anything students can listen to. Examples include:

• video texts
• audio texts
• read texts (i.e., that you read)
• spoken texts (i.e., that you only speak, not read)

You have a massive variety of listening texts available to you. Of course you can use your textbook audio or video texts. But YouTube, Netflix, etc. provide great sources of video texts. Podcasts, Storycorps, and ELLLO are sources of audio texts. I mention these sources of video and audio texts because most of them have transcripts available (I mention the important of transcripts below). But, don’t discount the value of you reading a text, or you speaking a text. Especially for lower level learners, you reading a prepared text or speaking a text (e.g., telling a short story) is a great source of listening for learners. You can modify your speech and vocabulary in ways that other authentic video and audio texts cannot.

Just telling a story involves no technology and little to no preparation, and students often enjoy hearing your stories. In the simplest L2 listening activity, and using your voice is often the simplest, and the best, option.

2. Discuss the texts’ content before listening to give students context.

This step is so important, and so misunderstood. It is often talked about as “activating schema,” and we are taught to “pre-teach vocabulary” and “activate listeners’ knowledge.” I don’t know about you, but when I hear those directives, they are actually pretty vague. The point is this: comprehending listening involves bottom-up knowledge (all the sounds you hear) and top-down knowledge (what you know about the world). We all have some top-down knowledge of course, and we use it not just when listening, but in all aspects of our life. Top-down knowledge is what we use to anticipate what comes next.

We often take top-down knowledge for granted, which is why it is misunderstood. We are so used to our surroundings, sounds, and world we live in, it is easy to forget that we even have top-down knowledge. Top-down knowledge is like water to a fish—we are so immersed in it that we don’t even notice it. Only when it’s absent do we realize how much we depended on it. A good metaphor for how important top-down knowledge is from driving. When you are a new road, especially with many curves and hills, you have to drive slowly and carefully. When you get to know the road, you know what is coming, and you can drive much faster. Now, imagine how slowly you would have to go if it were nighttime and your headlights were not working. We are getting toward approximating the experience of L2 listeners. It is not just the topic or vocabulary that L2 listeners lack top-down knowledge about, it is also the cultural elements and syntax. Meanwhile, their bottom-up skills–being able to interpret L2 sounds–is also challenged.

So, I am suggesting that we teachers often underestimate how difficult L2 listening is. Thus, we are not providing ENOUGH top-down context for listeners before they listen. For teaching listening, give as much top-down knowledge as you can.

So, how do we give this top-down information? The simplest way–talk about the text. Here are some ways you can talk about it so that students will be ready to listen.

• Tell them a summary while using the vocabulary words you think they might not understand. So, rather than giving them a pre-teaching vocabulary list, talk using the vocabulary.
• Tell them the context for the listening–who is speaking, why are they speaking, and where are they? So, give them insight into the context and discourse choices the speaker is making.
• Tell them the structure of the content–how is it structured rhetorically? Is it list of reasons, a problem and solution, a story, etc.?
• Ask them questions after telling them about the story. For example, you might ask them about their knowledge of the topic after hearing your summary, or you might ask how they think people talk in so-and-so situation, or you might ask if they know examples of problem and solutions they have heard before.

Think about this part of the process as building up suspense about the mystery. Note that all of the talking above is also valuable listening practice for your students! Now, rather than being blindsided by a “sudden curve” in the listening, they will be able to stay on the road even though it is dark outside with no lights.

Here are a few more simple ways to provide top-down knowledge before listening:

• With videos, show the video once (or more) with the sound off, and discuss what students think is happening, being said, etc.
• With any listening text, after students have some idea about the topic, have them predict what words or ideas they will hear. Ask them to explain their choices (BTW, using the L1 is fine in these situations when possible, such as EFL situations).
• If there is no video, you can show images that relate to the listening text, but of course, this might take extra effort to create the images.

3. Listen.

Here we go! Sounds like the simplest step, but still a few question to think about.

• Do you want to play the whole listening text or play it in different parts?
• Do you want to play the listening text multiple times or only once?
• Do you want to play the listening text at full speed or at a slower (or faster) speed?

Again, the simple way is to playing it once for now. If the text is longer than 5 minutes, the play it in parts. For low-level learners, longer than 3 minutes should be played in parts.

4. Ask students what they understood, and what they heard to make them understand that. (in pairs/groups)

Now we are getting to the good stuff! Ask students what they understood. Start by asking students to tell each other (in pairs or groups) what they understood. It is ok for students to use L1 with others who share their language. After they have told each other what they understood, they should tell each other WHY they understood that. In other words, what words did they hear (or what did they see on the video) that makes them understand that. This sharing accomplishes two things:

• Students will now be prepared to answer your questions.
• Students will hear other ideas from their partners/groups, which will add to or challenge their own understanding. Either way, active thinking about the listening text is promoted.

5. Ask students what they understood, and what they heard to make them understand that. (full class–random selection of individuals)

Now you ask individual students. You can phrase your questions like this:

"What did you understand? (NAME), tell me something you understood."

Two points are important here.

• 1. Be patient and wait for an answer.
• 2. Allow answers to be as small as single words.

If your chosen student simply cannot answer, then tell them you will come back to them later, and ask another student. When you get an answer from a student, they will either tell you an idea or they will tell you words/phrases. If they tell you an idea:

• Ask them what they heard that gave them that idea. They should tell you some word(s) or phrase(s). Optionally, they or you can write it on the board.

If they tell you words/phrases:

• Optionally, they or you can write it on the board.

6. Ask other students if they understood similar, different, or additional ideas, including exactly what they heard.

Here is the fun part. Step #5 was getting your first clue. Now, you will examine that clue through the eyes (ears) of other students, and you will ask for new clues. Common questions in this step include the following:

• Did you hear (the word/phrase mentioned by the previous student)? Did you hear something different?
• What else did you understand from the listening?

This Step #6 and Step#5 are both interplayed, and you the teacher are in charge of this orchestra. The key to success in this part of the activity is your ability to continue drawing clues from the students, and continue asking them about what others have said. You are the “Listening Master.” You know what is in the listening, and you know the answer to the mystery, so design your questions and the discussions with the students thoughtfully.

7. Play parts or all of the listening text(s) again.

You will make the decision about how much to play. Pro tip–make notes of at least every 10 seconds on your transcript so you can quickly start at different parts of the listening without searching. If you use a text multiple times with students of the same level, you will start to know exactly which parts you will want to replay.

8. Go through the asking students process again.

So, this is back to steps #4, #5, and #6. Again, your ability to ask questions, to randomly select students, and to discuss the listening is key.

9. Repeat #7 and #8 as desired until you are satisfied with students’ comprehension.

You are the Listening Master. You must decide when this process is sufficient–when the mystery has been sufficiently solved.

10. To end the activity, give or show students the transcript. Ask them about what words or ideas they had trouble hearing but understand when reading the transcript.

Optional but recommended expansion step

11. Now, ask questions that relate to the listening, but are not directly related to the listening text.

This is a chance for you to use vocabulary, phrases, ideas, and other aspects of the listening text in a new context. The key to success of this step is for you to prepare these questions ahead of time. This step resembles the interplay of steps #4, #5, and #6. In other words, ask a question and first have students discuss it in pairs or groups. Then call on individuals. Then talk to other individuals. If the initial student cannot answer your question, ask a second (or third, etc.) student and then come back to the initial student after they hear the student’s answer so the intial student can try again.