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Listening can be one of the hardest skills to help your students develop, especially as many materials and curricula focus on a fairly narrow set of tasks and methods. Luckily, there are a wide number of new technological tools that can help any language learners you work with develop listening skills. I thought this was a promising path to help learners with, so I did some research and compiled some best practices. Using these technological tools benefits from the right training in strategies, self-awareness, and process.
Having explicit strategies is key to dealing with new listening materials because most authentic listening materials don’t come with handy vocabulary lists or warm up materials or comprehension questions. Learners have to figure out for themselves what they’re listening for! Learners often get the advice to just turn on the TV or radio and do their best, but that constant stream of hard-to-contextualize language gets overwhelming quickly.
You may have already used news websites to help improve your English. The problem with this is that news stories are mostly not designed for non-native speakers. They’re often long and the vocabulary is difficult. The reporter speaks too quickly or has an accent you can’t understand.
For learners at pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate level i recommend BBC short video stories, which are news reports specially modified for English learners. They’re short, and the ‘reporter’ (an English teacher) speaks slowly and repeats words. You also get practice exercises and a transcript.
Try this one to start with – BBC news report: Kill your phone. It’s about how all smartphones in California will be required to have a ‘kill switch’ to help reduce and prevent theft.
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