Using Technology to Make Listening More Interactive

There are four strands of English that educators focus on: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Of course, I haven’t forgotten kinesthetics either but in college classrooms, lecturers do not play a lot of Simon Sez. Well, my classroom does with the sports and PE majors, but that’s another story. One particular strand that students have trouble with is listening. 

In a recent presentation, Prof. Nicole Shiosaki took a look at one of the reasons why listening activities have fallen behind the curve and how to improve them in our classrooms. Part of the issue that she encountered with the students was the required listening tests. These tests were almost universally disliked by the students. She heard from them that the listening dialogues were boring (1:15) and the tests were too complicated (1:20). Considering these issues, she wanted to help students perform much better in the class and came up with some new approaches to listening that we get to learn about today.

One of the better approaches to covering listening is to not separate it out as a focal strand in the first place. To do this, teach all of the strands of English together in the same lesson. This approach favors using listening and speaking together, as in a conversation in one example. A teacher can teach a subject of interest (basic science, culture, etc) and deploy listening sources that relate to the subject. My example; in a sports lesson, students listen to a portion of a  baseball inning and note the number of times the word ‘base’ is said. Then the teacher asks them where the hitter hit the ball to, or other ideas to check comprehension. In her research and implementation, she found that students were better motivated and interested in the class with this approach. Furthermore, she stated that teachers liked the multiple strand approach since it was far less time-consuming to make lessons than those of a single strand. Finally, she mentioned that the multiple strand approach can be adapted for student-centered teaching. 

One of the newer trends in teaching involves CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning). Listening, particularly listening comprehension can greatly benefit from CALL due to the decentralized model of technology. For example, students can perform CALL listening activities at home for homework or practice. Teachers should note that CALL is more of a broad term. It applies to anything from Educational-focused software, Ted Talks to personal assistance software. She cited several other research papers that praised CALL materials, which especially noted increased motivation and fun activities. One of the reasons behind increased motivation was that students with devices (cell phones, tablets, etc) could get the same listening file the teacher has and play it for themselves at a speed/repetition that they were comfortable with. I wish I had thought of that for my middle school listening activities. My classroom only had the one functional speaker and students could not use their cell phones during instructional time. I was able to replay fast speaking listening files to assist listening comprehension, but I frequently found that students did not want to slow the pacing of the class for repeated listening files. Of course, this frequently led overconfident students to get follow-up questions wrong. In any event, Prof. Shiosaki cites Bingham and Larson’s 2006 work on the need for activities to contain consistency and repetition. Students need to practice skills learned in previous lessons and I interpret that to mean teachers should find listening files and activities that contain elements students will be reasonably familiar with. Also of importance is that CALL activities can be made homework activities very easily. With online classes the norm for the foreseeable future, students can receive listening files and play them at their own pace and complete assignments without much teacher control/guidance. 

One activity she mentioned for a classroom involves “Cut-up comprehension questions”. This is a “Jigsaw” style of listening where students each have a separate section of the listening file and have to piece the entire listening together by talking to their partners. At 7:39 she explains the procedure involving the original file, the file cut into smaller pieces, and a worksheet. Students have to listen to their modified file, answer the comprehension questions in the worksheet section they just listened to, then talk to the other students to get the answers to the other parts of the worksheet because their file doesn’t cover that part of the original listening file. 8:08 describes how to set up the class and whether headphones are necessary. 

Variant 2 is called Order the section (10:25). In this activity, students receive misnumbered audio segments of the original file and have to re-order them properly. It is not too complicated- they have to be split into groups and they have to write a summary of the listening file then read it out loud to the class. At the end of the activity, the teacher will play the original file so students check if they got the order correctly. 

Variant 3 is called Eavesdropping (13:00). To start, the teacher cuts out one speaker entirely by using an editing program’s cutout feature or replacing the speaker’s speech with a sound effect or a blank. In order to do this activity, students need to understand the schema of the listening so they know how to replace the missing parts. Students will write down the missing parts of the conversation. Another group of students has the second part of the conversation file but with the first speaker edited/cut out. They also must guess what the conversation’s missing lines will be and write those lines down. Next, students listen to each other’s lines to see how correct they are. Finally, the original file is played to show students what they got right and the teacher can ask why they made the writing choices they did.

To set up the files for this activity, she used the famous program Audacity, a free audio recording and editing program for Windows, OSX, and Linux. Audacity is not available for Android or App store (at this time), but there are similar programs in the various app stores out there. A download link is in the video at 15:55 and you can see a demonstration of how to make the jigsaw clips from that point in the video.

Another activity Prof. Shiosaki came up with was student-generated comparisons (20:12). In this activity, students with teacher guidance write a script or roleplay that’s related to the lesson. Then record themselves speaking outside of the classroom. These audio or video clips are uploaded to a secure site of some sort (she mentioned Flipgrid), where students listen to the activity and then answer questions on a teacher-generated worksheet. She states that teacher guidance is essential to this activity so students produce content that can be compared or contrasted. She mentioned that one of the benefits was students being able to listen to their own voices. 

The final activity followed the same concept we discussed above. Called Student-generated directions, at 24:25 in the video, the steps are about the same, but a kinesthetic aspect is added. Students write a script in which they give directions to a place (on-campus or otherwise). Other students use the directions to go to the place that the students told them to in the listening file. Finally, students upload a response video showing the location they went to based on the instructions they received. One key thing she mentioned in the instructions is that students have to set a defined start point, and not mention the exact endpoint- only how to get there from the start point.

At 27:00, she explains how Filipgrid works and the need to get student permission to share videos outside of the classroom due to privacy laws. Your region might have different laws so it is wise to consult with your educational institution (provided they are reliable) before attempting. Flipgrid can be connected to Google Classroom if this is your preferred LMS, which makes assigning grades and sharing links a bit easier. If you’re curious about Flipgrid, she included a few examples of lessons on the platform at 30:00. At the end of the video, she noted that the students she taught really enjoyed using Flipgrid. 

In conclusion, I’d like to note that these lessons work well for the online-only classroom. Some like the jigsaw lesson work best in the offline classroom where students can contact each other directly and quickly without interrupting the main classroom. These lessons have certainly given me ideas on how to improve my listening lessons. I’d like to hear from other teachers how they have developed and improved their listening activities, so feel free to leave a comment down below. Together, let’s make our listening activities less of a chore and more exciting!