Pre-listening Activities
Now we are going to look at some examples of pre-listening activities that you may be able to adapt to your own classes. Then we will ask you to design your own pre-listening activity that you can use in your classroom.
Activity Briefing– Pre-Listening With & Without Sound - Vocabulary List
Click here for the Vocabulary List.
Instructions: Look at this list of vocabulary terms. Some are related to the video we will watch and some are not. Make sure you understand the meaning of all the words. Then watch the video and predict which terms you will hear when the audio is played. Place a check next to the words or terms that you think you will hear. You will view the video without sound. Identify words you think will be used in the video news passage. Place a check next to the words or terms you think will be used.
Now you will play the video again with sound and see if the words and terms you predicted are actually used in the video. Now you will watch the video with sound. Predict what additional information you are going to find out after listening. Now play the video again with sound and check to see if the vocabulary items you predicted are in the passage were said in the video narrative.
Confidence Check
Click here to check your answers for the Vocabulary List activity.
- Which vocabulary words did you guess that relate to the topic?
- What other vocabulary might describe the context of the video?
- What is the main idea of the video?
Activity Briefing – Designing A Pre-listening Task
Now it is time for you to design your own pre-listening activity. You will view a video about traffic in China. Your task will be to design a pre-listening activity for this passage.
Confidence Check
- Does your Pre-Listening activity have elements that set up students’ expectations?
- Motivate the students?
- Give students something to focus on for listening?
- Incorporate top-down and bottom up processing?
- Activate the students’ schemata or prior knowledge of the content or form?