Activity: The While listening stage

Name: Justo Mejia Marin

As teachers we need to develop students awareness of the processes they use in their own
learning encouraging the use of a variety of effective strategies through the design of appropriate
tasks. In teaching listening it is important to help learners know what to pay attention to and use
what they already know in order to understand what they hear, and this can only be achieved by
developing the three listening stages pre, while and post listening activities. The advantages of
focusing listening activities in order to enhance the while listening stage are:

 a well provided scaffolding

 activate their background knowledge and prepare them to what is going to be said
 anticipate the content and involve them by making the listening task meaningful and
interesting
 creating expectations about language so that the learners can better understand what is
going to happen
 giving learners a reason to listen
 motivating students to read and listen
 involving learners by asking for their ideas or knowledge about the topic
 introducing or pre teaching vocabulary or difficult language which might otherwise
prevent learners from understanding

Here are some examples of while listening activities

Task Type Skills

Inferring Guessing

Selective Listen for specific

information
Activity: The While listening stage
Name: Justo Mejia Marin
Global Identifying

Inferring Recognize
information

Selective Listening for details

Activity: The While listening stage
Name: Justo Mejia Marin
Selective Ordering

Selective Confirming and

making predictions
Activity: The While listening stage
Name: Justo Mejia Marin
Selective Identifying

Selective Answering specific

information