Listening skills comprehension
8 Key Listening Comprehension Skills
Listening is key to all effective communication. To improve students’ listening comprehension skills, we need to be able to gather data on their performance, target specific areas of need, and then provide personalized instruction and targeted practice.
At Listenwise, we support teachers by providing instructional support in literacy and other 21st century skills – particularly listening. In order to promote student proficiency in listening comprehension, we have identified 8 key skills, which align to Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced Assessment evidence statements. Listenwise quizzes address the CCSS standards associated with SBAC ELA/Literacy Claim #3: Students can employ effective speaking and listening skills for a range of purposes and audiences.
Using Listenwise Quizzes to Assess Key Listening Comprehension Skills
We have developed multiple choice formative listening comprehension assessments that accompany Listenwise lessons. These assessments include questions related to these 8 key listening comprehension skills, so teachers can analyze student performance data to get a more nuanced picture of listening comprehension strengths and needs. By looking at the quiz data dashboard and analyzing performance by skills, teachers and students can see patterns and identify learning needs, for classes, groups, and individual students, and then design instruction to meet those needs. Teachers who have been using Listenwise report that they are seeing growth in their students’ listening performance on standardized tests.
How did we decide which 8 key listening skills we wanted to assess and track? We identified comprehension skills that are included in reading assessments because we know the important connection between reading and listening. While listening and reading both require comprehension skills, many of which overlap, the application of those skills can vary somewhat across contexts. For example, students need to practice identifying the most important ideas in audio stories, which can be organized differently than print stories.
The natural speech found in these audio stories typically does not follow the structure of a written article with a clearly articulated lead and a linear progression of ideas. When students are listening to a speaker’s voice, they can also pay attention to the tone, emphasis, and pacing of the speech to help them make inferences or analyze the speaker’s argument. Thus, while building comprehension skills through listening can also boost reading comprehension, there are additional benefits to developing listening comprehension skills directly using audio passages that are designed to be heard.
- Recognizing Literal Meaning: Questions about facts, details, or information explicitly stated in the audio story
- Understanding Vocabulary: Questions about the meanings of words as they are used in the context of the audio story
- Making Inferences: Questions asking students to make inferences as they listen to audio stories, interpreting what is said by going beyond the literal meaning
- Identifying Main Idea: Questions asking students to identify the central idea or gist of an audio story
- Determining Purpose: Questions asking students to determine the purpose of an audio story
- Drawing Conclusions: Questions asking students to draw conclusions by synthesizing information in an audio story
- Analyzing Reasoning: Questions asking students to analyze reasoning supporting a claim in an audio story
- Finding Evidence: Questions asking students to identify statements or details in an audio story that provide evidence to support claims or conclusions
The first four basic listening comprehension skills are assessed on all Listenwise quizzes.
The second set of four higher order skills are assessed on a subset of quizzes (those associated with secondary standards-aligned lessons).
Here is an example of a question that assesses the skill of Recognizing Literal Meaning:
Here is an example of a question that assesses the skill of Determining Purpose:
Here is an example of a question that assesses the skill of Finding Evidence:
If you have Premium Listenwise access you can access these quizzes right away. Log in and look for the Quiz icon next to lesson titles. You can use the search feature to filter for stories with quizzes. We are adding new quizzes every week.
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5 Activities For Building Listening Comprehension Skills
You want your kids to be active listeners who understand what others are saying and follow directions well.
To help them accomplish this goal, you can work on listening comprehension skills at home.
Let’s look more closely at what listening comprehension is and explore a handful of fun activities you can use to support your child as they develop these skills.
What Is Listening Comprehension?
Listening comprehension is the ability to understand spoken language. It’s a complex process that involves hearing, understanding, and responding to what’s being said.
For kids, listening comprehension skills are important for following directions at school and in everyday life. Good listening comprehension skills can also help with reading comprehension.
That’s because when kids listen to someone read aloud, they can picture the story in their minds, which helps them understand and remember what they’ve heard.
Hearing and phonological awareness both play a role in listening comprehension, but they are different. Let’s take a look.
The Difference Between Hearing And Listening
Hearing is the ability to detect sound.
You need your ears and auditory system to function properly to hear.
Listening, on the other hand, is an active process. It’s what you do with what you hear. When you listen, you pay attention to the sounds around you, and your brain tries to make sense of them.
You can hear without necessarily listening. For example, you might be in a crowded room and hear many conversations going on at once. But you’re not really listening to any of them because the words all sort of jumble together into a lull.
Hearing and listening are both important for understanding spoken language.
Note: If your child is having trouble hearing, make sure you bring your concerns up with their healthcare provider.
Age-Appropriate Listening Comprehension Skills
Listening comprehension skills develop over time. As your child grows and matures, they’ll be able to understand more and more of what’s being said to them.
From birth to about three years old, children’s listening skills rapidly develop.
They start to understand more words and can follow simple commands. By age three, most children can understand around 1,000 words and complete basic one- or two-step directions.
As children get older, they continue to develop their listening skills. By age four, children can usually understand longer and more complex sentences. And by age five or six, they can usually follow more complicated, multi-step instructions.
However, it’s important to remember that every child develops at their own pace. So, if your child is a bit behind meeting the milestones for their age group, don’t worry. There’s a good chance they’ll catch up in time.
Benefits Of Listening Well
Listening is a critical life skill that allows us to communicate effectively. When you listen actively, you’re more likely to understand the other person’s point of view. This can help prevent misunderstandings and miscommunications.
Listening also allows us to build better relationships and become better friends.
When you take the time to truly listen to others, it shows them that you value their opinion.
Additionally, listening can help resolve conflicts. When we listen to others, we better understand their perspective and find common ground. This can diffuse tense situations and prevent arguments from escalating.
How To Help Your Child Be A Better Listener
There are a few simple things you can do to help your child become a better listener. Before we get to the fun activities, let’s talk about three quick strategies to help your child listen well.
Model Good Listening
One of the best ways to help your child develop their listening skills is to model good listening yourself. When you’re talking to your child, make sure to give them your full attention. Put away any distractions, make eye contact, and actively listen to what they’re saying.
This can be a challenge, especially if you have a lot on your plate. But it’s important to make the effort, as it will set a good example for your child.
If you’re not sure how to actively listen, here are a few tips:
- Repeat back what the other person said to show that you were listening
- Ask questions about what they said to show that you’re interested
- Summarize what they said to make sure you understand
- Avoid interrupting and wait until they’ve finished talking
Work On Vocabulary
Another way to help your child listen better is to work with them on building their vocabulary. The more words they know, the easier it will be for them to follow conversations and understand what others are saying.
Here are a few simple ways you can help your child expand their vocabulary:
- Read books together and talk about the characters, plot, and setting
- Encourage them to ask questions when they hear a new word
- Help them look up words they don’t know in the dictionary
- Tell them stories about your own life and explain any new words
Intentionally Practice Listening Skills
Finally, you can help your child improve their listening skills by intentionally practicing them.
Make practicing listening skills a priority and work on it regularly.
This can be done through fun activities and games that are specifically designed to help with listening comprehension. Keep reading for five of our favorite activities.
Fun Activities To Improve Listening Comprehension Skills
1) Story Detective
As you’re reading aloud to your child, occasionally pause and ask them to be a detective. Based on what they’ve heard so far, what do they think is going to happen next?
After your child makes a prediction, keep reading. Then, stop to talk about what happened. Did your child guess correctly? Did they miss an important clue somewhere in the story? Or was there an unexpected plot twist?
No matter how the predictions turn out, taking time to talk about them can help your child build their listening skills for next time.
2) Gibberty Fun
In this activity, ask your child to figure out what word is missing, using “gibberty” in its place.
For example: “During the race, I gibberty as fast as I could. What’s my gibberty?” Or: “I had gibberty with maple syrup for breakfast. What’s my gibberty?”
Any logical word they come up with for the sentence is a win! And for even more fun, have your child try the game on you.
3) Telephone
To play this game, you’ll need a group of people. One person whispers a phrase or sentence into the ear of the person next to them. That person then whispers what they heard to the next person, and so on.
By the time the phrase gets back to the original speaker, it’s usually quite different from what was said originally. This is a great way to illustrate how important it is to listen carefully and enunciate well when you speak so others can understand you.
4) Name That Sound
Gather a few common household objects and have your child close their eyes. Then, make a sound with each one. For instance, you might tap a pot with a spoon or crinkle a piece of paper.
After you’ve made a sound, ask your child to identify the object you used.
If they’re struggling, give them a few hints.
This activity works on auditory discrimination and memory, both skills that will help with listening comprehension even though words specifically are not part of the activity.
5) Do 3 Things
Ask your child to do three specific tasks, in order. See if they can do them all correctly.
For example, say, “Can you please water the flower, pick up two things from off the coffee table, and then get your shoes on so we can go outside and play?”
Feel free to make it even more engaging by choosing from tasks like these:
- Do 10 jumping jacks
- Hop to the swingset and back
- Make a tower out of the couch cushions
- Drive a toy car to pick up a piece of trash on the floor
- Write your name with your opposite hand
Listening Comprehension In Childhood And Beyond
Use the expert tips above to help your child develop their listening comprehension skills. Your child can become a better listener — it just takes time and practice.
For more fun learning games, check out the HOMER Learn & Grow app. Your child will have a blast playing and will be working on important skills at the same time!
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Formation of listening skills in the process of teaching a foreign language
In the modern educational standard for foreign languages, mastering listening skills is considered as one of the learning objectives in the framework of the development of language competence. Undoubtedly, the skill of listening is the key to the formation of the language competence of students, since listening is also a means of learning.
As you know, listening is a receptive type of speech activity, which is the simultaneous perception and understanding of speech by ear and, as an independent type of speech activity, has its own goals, objectives, subject and result. This is a complex skill that cannot be fully automated, but only partially at the level of recognition of phonemes, words and grammatical structures.
Learning to understand the language by ear is the primary task of every foreign language teacher. No matter how good a student’s vocabulary and knowledge of grammar is, it will not help him much in communication if he listens, but cannot understand the interlocutor.
When developing listening skills, students improve:
Pronunciation. In many ways, our idea of how this or that word should sound and how it actually sounds do not match - this is one of the main reasons for not understanding the English language by ear. While listening to audio material, we hear how a word sounds, how to pronounce certain words correctly, and we can repeat them in parallel with a native speaker. Thus, a habit is developed to pronounce sounds the way the native speaker does.
Intonation. Sometimes it seems to us that native English speakers are too emotional, they speak too expressively. But in fact, for them, this is an absolutely normal tone of conversation, and all English learners need to pay special attention to intonation.
We also hear which parts of speech the speaker makes a logical emphasis, and where you need to pause.
Variants of the use of words. Many words in English have dozens of meanings. This phenomenon is called polysemy. During listening, students have the opportunity to hear how the speaker uses certain words. This way they can learn a natural use case for a new word or learn a new context for a familiar word.
Language guess. This is the ability to guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word from the context. If students hear an unfamiliar word in the recording, they will be able to guess what it means based on the rest of the text of the recording.
There are different types of listening, but traditionally the following main types are distinguished:
Listening with full understanding of the text (listening for detail) listening for learning. Students listen to a recording adapted to their level of language proficiency or slightly above this level.
At the same time, their task is to understand every word, as well as to accurately capture the meaning of the recording. This is the most useful, but also the most difficult type of listening. Usually, before listening, the teacher, together with the students, analyzes new words or the full text of the recording. It is advisable to listen to the recording itself several times, to understand all the new words, cases of their use. It will also be useful to work with grammar: to analyze new constructions and understand why a certain construction is used in certain sentences.
Listening with understanding of the main meaning (listening for gist) - the most enjoyable kind of work with the skill of understanding English by ear. The task of students is to understand the general meaning of what they heard. At the same time, they do not need to understand the meaning of each word, misunderstanding of certain constructions, etc. is acceptable. This type of listening trains language guessing.
Listening for specific information (listening for specific information) is listening to audio material in order to find specific information of interest.
Sometimes there is another type of listening in English, such as guess based on the information heard (inferential listenung). This type of listening implies an understanding of the state of the speaker, his emotional state. This type of listening is not as useful in terms of learning as the previous ones, but it is useful in building relationships between people. The ability to guess the mood of the speaker is quite useful.
Of course, listening is one of the most difficult skills, as this language activity involves several factors: unlike reading, listening requires understanding in real time. There is no way to pause and delve into. Especially if it's an exam where time is very limited. You can't control the content like you can when speaking or writing your own text.
There is no way to bypass unfamiliar lexical units and grammatical constructions, replacing them with more familiar ones. The speaker's speech may have some features that make it difficult to understand the text: a peculiar accent, diction, intonation.
That is why, when teaching listening, it is extremely important to understand the goals of this language skill, namely:
– to form certain skills;
- memorize speech material;
- to teach the ability to communicate;
- to teach students to understand the meaning of a single statement;
- to teach students to highlight the main thing in the flow of information;
- develop auditory memory;
- develop an auditory reaction.
Listening is a powerful tool for teaching a foreign language. It makes it possible to master the sound side of the language being studied, its phonemic composition and intonation; rhythm, accent, melody. Through listening is the assimilation of the lexical composition of the language and its grammatical structure.
At the same time, listening makes it easier to master speaking, reading, and writing. If a student understands sounding speech, it is easier for him to understand graphic speech, i.e., to change what he sees to how it should sound.
In connection with the orientation of the school learning process on the practical knowledge of a foreign language, and for a considerable number of students also on the successful passing of the Unified State Exam, the problem of understanding speech by ear is of great importance.
The Unified State Examination considers listening as a learning objective. The USE in English includes tasks to test the formation of the skills of the following types of listening:
- Extracting the necessary information (task B1-B6).
The purpose of this type of listening is to isolate the necessary or interesting information in the speech stream, ignoring the unnecessary.
- Understanding the main content, with the extraction of basic information (task B8).
The text is listened to in order to hear and fix in memory the most important information, to determine the main idea and the main topic of the message, to separate the essential from the non-essential.
- Complete understanding of the content and meaning (tasks A8-A14).
Thus, listening skills with different objectives (for understanding basic information, for extracting specific information, for full detailed understanding) are complex specific skills. Insufficient formation of these individual frequent skills can affect the success of understanding the sounding text as a whole.
To achieve the desired results in the formation of listening skills, it is necessary to work correctly with audio materials in foreign language lessons. Exercises when working with audio text can be divided into the following groups: pre-text; exercises that are performed while listening; post-text exercises.
Pre-text exercises are performed before listening, their purpose is to facilitate subsequent listening.
These can be exercises to predict the topic of future listening, according to pictures, diagrams, text titles. The purpose of such exercises is to activate the vocabulary of students on the topic, to update their socio-cultural knowledge and background knowledge on the topic of listening. Removal of lexical and language difficulties, as well as psychological stress before listening.
The exercises performed while listening are most often aimed at extracting some information of particular interest to us. Here, the ability of students to navigate in the text is most often checked, to understand in which part of the text to look for information of interest. Correlate printed information and sounding information, quickly search for the desired passage, since such a task plan is given in such a way that part of the information is omitted in printed form. It can be filling in a table, filling in gaps in the text.
Post listening exercises are often of a controlling nature. These are often answers to questions, exercises like true/false.
These exercises test the degree of understanding by students of the information contained in the text, the degree of penetration into the general content or details, as well as exercises for expressing their attitude to what they heard.
It is very important, when starting to work on an audio text, to create a situation of success, to offer students a task that they can definitely complete. Too difficult texts can cause disappointment, deprive students of faith in success. Too light audio texts are also undesirable. The absence of a moment of overcoming difficulties makes the work uninteresting and unattractive, it cannot be a developing factor in the process of learning a foreign language.
Thus, learning to listen is quite an interesting, rich, educational and cognitive process, but in case of proper motivation of students. Possession of this skill ensures the success of communication, which consists in the ability to speak English and understand English speech. In addition to its main goal, listening develops memory, thinking, imagination and perception, that is, it contributes to the comprehensive development of the individual.
References:
1. Galskova N.D. Modern methods of teaching foreign languages: a guide for the teacher. - 3rd ed. – M.: ARKTI, 2004. – 192 p.
2. Elukhina N.V. Overcoming the main difficulties of understanding foreign speech by ear as a condition for the formation of the ability to communicate orally // Foreign languages at school. –1996. - No. 4. – P. 18
3. Klobukova L.P., Mikhalkina I.V. Problems of teaching listening in the mirror of real communication // World of the Russian Word - 2002. - P. 15-16.
4. Kolker Ya.M., Ustinova E.S. Teaching English listening comprehension: Practicum. - M.: Publishing Center "Academy", 2002. - 336 p.
5. Solovova E.N. Methods of teaching foreign languages: a basic course of lectures: a guide for ped students. universities and teachers. – M.: Enlightenment, 2002. – 239 p.
Methods and techniques for the formation of listening skills of primary and secondary school students in English lessons | Methodological development in a foreign language on the topic:
Listening is both a goal and a means of learning.
Learning the semantic perception of speech by ear involves the students performing exercises for the formation of general auditory skills, speech exercises and subsequent educational work with audio text, that is, listening training is aimed at developing and improving the mechanisms of listening. Listening as an active mental activity is a complex process of perception and understanding of sounding speech. Both elements of visual perception (gestures, facial expressions) and intonation, which breaks speech into syntagmas, help to understand speech.
The main tasks of the teacher in the listening lesson:
- prepare the child in listening through a variety of PRE-listening tasks to arouse interest, focus on the topic and update the vocabulary before listening;
- help during listening - DURING-listening, to remove difficulties during listening and to focus on some important points and to teach you to hear exactly the right information;
- discuss, draw conclusions after listening - POST-listening, not only to check how well the content of the audio material is understood, but also to consolidate knowledge, and this is also a motive for listening.
PRE-listening, DURING-listening and POST-listening are three stages of the so-called PDP technique, which allows you to form and improve receptive skills and abilities, reading and listening, and also helps to develop skills in understanding printed or audio text. In addition, the activity in the lesson within the framework of the PDP is organized in such a volume and sequence that students can better understand the content of the text. And I find that the most important part of the PDP is the PRE-listening.
It seems to us that in real life we do not prepare for the perception of speech, but this is not entirely true. Subconsciously, for example, when ordering lunch in a restaurant, we are already ready to hear, and we know approximately what we will answer to the waiter. Or, attending a lecture, we are also ready to perceive a speech on a certain scientific or cognitive topic, anticipating its content. And in the lesson, the student should also be ready to perceive audio material on a specific topic, since the level of his understanding depends on how we are able to prepare students, set them up for listening.
So what are the goals of the first stage - PRE-Listening?
1. Set the situation, the topic that will be discussed - give an idea of what will be discussed.
2. Arouse interest in the topic - perhaps by touching on the topic of the future material to be dried from personal experience. So, if we are talking about animals, talk about the zoo or what animals are found in the forest, in the field, etc.
3. Update knowledge on the topic - What do you know about ...? Where are they…? What it is? What problems do they face? Why are they important?
4. Activate vocabulary on the topic - for example, in the form of a brainstorming microgame “Who knows more words: (verbs, nouns, adverbs) on the topic?”
5. Predict the content - an attempt to guess by the title, topic, illustrations what might be discussed.
6. Introduce new words - unfamiliar words should not interfere with the perception of speech.
7. Check understanding of the purpose of listening - to make sure that students understand the task of listening, have some idea of the content.
In the process of direct DURING-listening, students should:
- determine what is being said, where events take place, etc.;
- pay attention to what is not understood and formulate a question about it;
- confirm or refute your guesses made during the PRE-listening process;
- draw conclusions, evaluate.
Tempo and pauses during listening are important. Pausing while listening, you must:
- summarize - what has happened so far;
- try to guess what might happen next, assuming all predictions are equally probable;
Ask students to explain why they think so, avoiding "right" or "wrong" and using "maybe", "probably".
In order to focus the attention of students during listening, it is also advisable to use handouts - the so-called “Listening guide” (see above)
The POST-listening step is equally important. It shows:
- how deeply the students understood the audio material;
- how much they are interested in him;
- whether their assumptions turned out to be correct.
To do this, you can:
- view and correct the preliminary entries in the “Listening guide”;
- analyze, critically evaluate and draw conclusions from the material heard;
- summarize information, do it in the form of oral statements or presentations, or dramatized dialogues, etc.
The following exercises help this:
- complete the task “Fill in blanks with suitable word” in the text of the audio material;
- Multiple Choice, True/False, Short Answer, Paraphrase/Summary;
- answer questions;
- illustrate an episode;
- make a plan, retell;
- compare with a situation from life, etc.
The teacher's speech also plays an important role and occupies a considerable part of the lesson, so great demands are placed on it. The main ones:
- speak in short sentences;
- speak grammatically in simple sentences;
- intotone speech;
- highlight keywords;
- limit statements within the framework of only one topic, further expanding the range of topics;
- use repetitive words, phrases, sentences;
- paraphrase statements;
- it is obligatory to give pauses between statements;
- increase the size of the statement gradually - first a word, then a phrase, one sentence, several sentences, full text or dialogue;
- organically use facial expressions and gestures, pantomime techniques;
- ask questions to make sure you are understood;
- give clear, correct tasks;
- use visual supports in the form of pictures or, later, text support;
- at the initial stage of the task also illustrate;
- systematically check students' understanding of the teacher's speech;
- observe English speech norms.
