Section 5: Teaching Skills

Chapter 33: Teaching Listening

When it comes to teaching listening in the classroom there is no specific strategy or one way that is best for the students to learn the listening skill. The best way to facilitate listening in your classroom is to constantly use both media and yourself as a way for your students to constantly hear a strong voice in the classroom. Using foreign English based media such as videos, articles, or music is imperative in the English classroom. Media can be used when students are feeling a bit tired or frustrated and allows them to build English skills in a natural way through hearing media that other people in native countries hear and experience. In addition, it is important that you always try to be a strong voice in the classroom in order to give your students a baseline to go off of when it comes to developing their listening skills in English. Just remember that you will most likely be providing your students with all the input they will be getting (often students won’t be able to hear English at home unless their parents are very motivated or involved in their learning or school life) and that you should look to expose them to as much English content as possible on a reasonable scale along with your own strong voice in the classroom.