Listening activity (example)

Now you will watch a video about the song called “skater boy” from Avril Lavigne while you are listening to her you will have to fill the gaps with the correct words and complete the song.

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajMpx55A_nY


He was a (1)_______, she was a (2)______
Can I make it anymore (3)_______?

He was a (4)_______, she did (5)_______
What more can I say?

He wanted her, she’d never tell
(6)____________ she wanted him as well.

But all of her friends (7)_______(8) _____ there nose
they had a problem with his(9) ________clothes.

He was a (10)_________ boy, she said see ya later boy
he wasn’t good enough for her
She had a pretty face, but her head was up in space
she needed to come back down to (11)________.

(12)_______ years from now, she sits at home
(13)___________ the (14)_________
she’s all alone

She turns on (15)______
guess who she sees
skater boy rockin’ up (16)_______.

She calls up her friends, they already know
and they’ve all got (17)________ to see his show

She (18)__________ along and stands in the crowd
looks up at the man that she (19)_______ (20)_________.

He was a skater boy, she said see ya later boy
he wasn’t good enough for her
now he’s a super (21)_________
slamin’ on his guitar
does your pretty face see what he’s(22) _________?

Sorry girl but you (23)________ (24)______
well (25)_______ luck that boys (26)_______ now

we are more than just (27)_________ (28)____________
this is how the (29)________ (30)_______

Too bad that you couldn’t see
see that man that boy could be

there is more that meets the (31)_______
I see the (32)________that is inside

He’s just a boy, and I’m just a girl
can I make it (33)__________obvious?

we are in love, haven’t you heard
how we (34)__________ each others world

I’m with the skater boy, I said see ya later boy
I’ll be back (35)______ after the show
I’ll be at a (36)_______
singing the (37)______we wrote
about a girl you (38)________ to know

Listening activities (Second Part)

There are some listening activities, that you can apply during your English classes.

• Pictureless listening (language): The teacher covers the screen, turns the monitor away from the students or turns the brightness control right down. The students then listen to a dialogue and have to guess such things as where it is taking place and who the speakers are. Can they guess their age, for example? What do they think the speakers actually look like?
• Pictureless listening (music): Where an excerpt has a prominent music track, students can listen to it and then say – based on the mood it appears to convey - what kind of scene they think it accompanies and where it is taking place.
• Pictureless listening (sound effects): In a scene without dialogue students can listen to the sound effects to guess what is happening. For example, they might hear the lighting of a gas stove, eggs being broke and fried, coffee being poured and the milk and sugar stirred in, they then tell the story they think they have just hear.
• Picture or speech: We can divide the class in two so that half of the class faces the screen and half faces away. The students who can see the screen have to describe what is happening to the students who cannot. This forces them into immediate fluency while the non-watching students struggle to understand what is going on, and is an effective way of mixing reception and production in spoken English. Halfway through an excerpt, the students can change round.
• Subtitles: There are many ways we can use subtitled films. John Field suggests that one way to enable students to listen to authentic material is to allow them to have subtitles to help them. Alternatively, students can watch a film extract with subtitles but with the sound turned down. Every time a subtitle appears, we can stop the film and the students have to say what they think the characters are saying in English, with DVDs which have the option to turn off the subtitles, we can ask students to say what they would write for subtitles and then they can compare theirs with what actually appears.
  Subtitles are only really useful, of course, when students all share the same L1. But if they do, the connections they make between English and their language can be extremely useful.

Bibliography:

Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English Language Teaching (4th Edition). Pearson Longman, Pearson. Page 309.

Listening activities

When you as a teacher want to apply different activities, you have to:

1. Explain before or after the activity which is the objective.
2. Introduce the topic, for example with questions like: Do you know about...? What kind of...? What is your favorite...? Did you ever hear about...? What do you thik about...?...
3. Give correct instructions.
4. The activity has to be organized and clear.
5. Show confidence about the topic.

There are some listening activities, that you can apply during your English classes.

• Fast Foward: The teacher presses the play button and then fast forwards the DVD or video so that the sequence shoots past silently and at great speed, taling only a few seconds. When it is over, the teacher can ask students what the extract was all about and whether they can guess what characters were saying.
• Silent viewing (for language): The teacher plays the film extract at normal speed but without the sound. Students have to guess what the characters are saying. When they have done this, the teacher plays it with sound so that they can check to see if they guessed correctly.
• Silent viewing (for music): The same technique can be used with music. Teachers show a sequence without sound and ask students to say what kind of music they would put behind it and why. When the sequence is then shown again, with sound, students can judge whether they chose music conveying the same mood as that chosen by the film director.
• Freeze frame: At any stage during a video sequence we can “freeze” the picture, stopping the participants dead in their tracks. This is extremely useful for asking the students what they think will happen next or what a character will say next.
• Partial viewing: One way of provoking the students´curiosity is to allow them only a partial view of the pictures on the screen. We can use pieces of card to cover most of the screen, only leaving the edges on view. Alternatively, we can put little squares of paper all over the screen and remove then one by one so that what is happening is only gradually revealed.
  A variation of partial viewing occurs when the teacher uses a large “divider”, placed at right angles to the screen so that half the class can only see one half of the screen, while the rest of the class can only see the other half. They then have to say what they think the people on the other side saw.

Bibliography:

Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English Language Teaching (4th Edition). Pearson Longman, Pearson. Page 309.