Listening is one of the most difficult skills
to learn because students have to understand what someone is saying. Moreover,
they learn a lot of vocabulary and grammar from listening activities, so
teachers must have clear how to present it to their pupils and motivate them to
learn a new language.
In my opinion as a future teacher, the best for
our children is to create an atmosphere where they only listen to the language which
they are learning. Although they don´t understand what are listening at first,
they will deduce the direct orders and the social words and expressions. If these
children are from Kinder Garden School, teachers have to speak them without
fears because they will learn very quickly the vocabulary, grammar and phonetics
without any previous knowledge. It will be well if we know how to introduce
them in a communicative context, where is necessary to learn the language that
is spoken there.
Furthermore, the most important thing that they
have to interiorize in themselves is the sense and the utility of the new
idiom. We don´t get it with the listening activities that, traditionally,
people from my generation have done in schools to learn English. It consisted
in listening to a CD and choosing the correct answer in a paper. By this way, students
have the conception about listening exercises as something difficult, stressful
and stupid. We have to change it and use new kind of activities to support the listening
learning process. For example, it is very useful start with songs and films to
stimulate our children’s audition. They will improve and, little by little,
pupils will understand and catch some words and expressions. In addition, maybe
they will try to sing and say the same as the songs or the movies say. In
relation with that, the “Story Telling” is a fantastic educational resource. In
this case, teachers not only have to speak in the new language. We must use
gestures, change our voice, make different faces and move our hands. Flashcards,
pictures, toys and puppets are indispensable to support the most important
words which we want to focus in. With all of these elements we make our
students participants of the activity. Moreover, depending on the way that we
develop it, we could make use of the story that we have told in class to prepare
a theater play, where all our children will have to performance.
However, all of the listening activities that
we prepare have to consider two important steps: the activities pre-listening,
the activities post-listening. Both kinds of exercises work with listening
skills, too. It is because, as docents, we should be sure about the comprehension
level of each child. So we have to consider other skills that accompany the
listening. Consequently, new technologies like Interactive Digital Whiteboard
are very advantageous. It allows us to create our interactive listening
activities and motivate our scholars to learn and speak a new language.
Concluding, if we have in mind all of the
factors which we could change the way to learn a new language, we will design
activities through improve the listening skills in the learning process of the
new generations.
Gemma Lerma
