Aug 8

Improve Your Learners’ Listening Skills

receptive skills
A simple weekly dictation activity...
Want to improve your learners’ listening skills and encourage them to study between lessons? Try this simple weekly dictation activity.
It’s a quick, practical way to develop careful listening and help learners notice features of connected speech, including weak forms, articles and prepositions.
Video transcript

Here’s a great idea for improving your learners’ listening and motivating them to study outside class. Thanks to Jo Taylor, a teacher in France for this idea!

Record a short audio text each week. You can just do this with a voice memo on your phone. The content is up to you but something interesting and not very long. Probably 20 seconds is enough. …

Send it out to your learners as a dictation on whatever platform you share, referably something that goes to them personally like WhatsApp or even email (the file will be small so that’ll work).

Tell them to write down what they hear- exactly- and the following week give them the written text to check.

Great for helping them become more aware of weak forms like articles and prepositions and generally improving their listening comprehension.

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