Handout 1. Listening types and activities Intensive – Intensive listening activities focus specifically on the components of language such as phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers, and others.
Responsive – This is a shorter amount of language that is spoke for the students to listen to, which is usually brief such as greetings, commands, quick comprehension checks, questions, and others, that elicit a brief response.
Selective –Selective listening is a longer activity with language that would span several minutes and may be a short dialogue or passage. The students are then asked to listed or "scan" for specific details. These assessments are used to check the student's comprehension of meaning rather than the various aspects of language. Students may be asked to recall character names, numbers, a specific category of grammar (nouns, verbs, articles, etc.) of they may need to provide a summary response of directions, procedures, or overall facts/events.
Extensive –The mostly lengthy in application, extensive listening is generally similar to a lecture, an entire conversation, or a longer reading. The student is then asked for the main ideas and summarization or to make predictions after listening.
When teaching listening, the teacher checks to what extent he/she helps the students do the following:
know their reason for listening.
activate what they know about the topic
use their background knowledge and context to predict and confirm meaning
recall important words and structures
guess unknown words and expressions
organize what they hear.
discriminate between sounds
use expressions in real life situations
use intonation and stress when saying grammatical structures
