Hello colleagues, I've been thinking that it would be great to have some fresh ideas for teaching and assessing listening skills. I've long relied on Total Physical Response (TPR) as a tried and true method. If you are unfamiliar with TPR, check out this ProLiteracy demonstration of a foreign language lesson with TPR.
Another technique I have used is a listeninng cloze. In case you are unfamiliar with this technique ... to engage learners in a listening cloze, the teacher provides a text with some words deleted. The students listen to the text and write in the missing words. Texts the students are already familiar with work well for a listening cloze. I've also used song lyrics for this activity. Here's a website with lots of listening cloze exercises with song lyrics.
I came across this interesting English Teaching Forum article by Juan Pablo Zúñiga Vargas in which he describes a hybrid activity between a listening cloze and an information gap. This article features some innovative ideas-- as the author suggests-- to "exploit listening materials."
Let us know your thoughts regarding the instructional strategies in Zúñiga Vargas' article as well as any ideas and questions you have about teaching and assessing listening skills.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP