1. Although listening is a receptive skill, the students are not and should not be passive while listening; in other words, they should be engaged and/or work in the listening task actively.
2. The students should be engaged with different listening tasks according to their age, learning style, listening capacity and phonological awareness.
3. The language teachers should train the students to listen to the English sounds carefully.
4. The teachers should train the young learners to follow simple instructions to get them ready to develop other language skills.
5. Different listening tasks should be addressed in class:
Listen & Do
Listen & Draw
Listen & Colour
Listen & Mime
Listen & Predict
Listen & Respond
Listen & Write (needs literacy)
Listen & Identify (may need literacy)
Listen & Match (may need literacy)
Listen & Complete (needs literacy)
Listen & Read (model for pronunciation)
6. The students should be given a different task each time they listen to the same text. (i.e.:First, listen to have a general idea; second listen to complete the blanks; third, listen to check your answers) 7. Input through tapes, videos or teacher modelling should be provided; the audio tools should be in good quality. 8. The teachers should be aware of the importance of familiarity (with the context, language, task, voice ...etc.), difficulty (what is expected as the output) and teacher’s language (repeating, simplifying, and using gestures, intonation and formulaic expressions that help children to figure out the intended meaning) 9. It is important to embed listening into stories, games, routines, rhymes, songs. They may not understand every word, but they can understand the meaning from the context, visuals, and gestures as in real life. 10. Both bottom-up (requiring linguistic knowledge) and top-down (requiring world knowledge)listening should be addressed.
