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 Resources for teaching listening comprehension 
Students have access to three main resources for practicing listening comprehension: the teacher, other 
speakers of English, and tapes. 
 The Teacher 
You, as the teacher, are clearly the most important resource. Develop an awareness of yourself as the 
primary source of English for your students and tailor your teacher talk to meet their needs. This involves 
monitoring your vocabulary choice, your sentence structure, your speed and volume of voice, and your 
speech characteristics. 
Your vocabulary choice should be appropriate. Ask yourself if you are choosing words which are too abstract 
or too slangy. Try recording yourself as you teach, then listen to the recording to see if your vocabulary is 
appropriate. Check your sentence structure, too. Allow for redundancies, but as a general rule of thumb 
keep to straightforward structures. 
ometimes it may be necessary to slow down your rate of speech. Be careful not to fall into the trap of 
aking your speech sound unnatural when you slow down. Pause between phrases, not after each word. 
ake sure that your pronunciation is distinct and that you project your voice so that it carries to the back of 
resent 
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 Other
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several ways. First, they will give your students the chance to hear other accents; second, they will offer you 
the
; and third, they can motivate 
you
evita
k. Listening to someone else, perhaps 
ker to speak distinctly and to 
a
ou are introducing your speaker, make sure that you are giving 
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aker and that you are also giving a preview of 
wh
e talk, too, and let your students know how long 
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selves. 
rstood is the most important criterion for evaluating accents, and this comprehensibility 
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vel. Be 
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greatest 
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the class.
Make your speech characteristics larger than life. Watch any good teacher at work and you will recognize 
he performance artist in her. Develop this same sense of performance in yourself when you p
t
m terials to your class. Do not be afraid to use gestures and dramatization to catch your students' attention 
d to get your message across. 
 speakers of English 
er source of listening comprehension is other speakers of English. These other speakers can help in 
opportunity to talk about accents and the values sometimes placed on them
students by talking about interesting topics. 
r
In
bly your students will become accustomed to the way you spea
not from the United States, will give them the opportunity to expand their listening skills. It will develop their 
confidence and help reduce their dependence on you. At first they may he disconcerted by the difficulty of 
istening to another speaker, but you can prepare by asking your outside spea
l
p use and check comprehension. When y
r students time to take in visual impressions of the spe
a time limit on th
at your students may expect to hear. Set 
talk will be. This will allow them to pace them
Some students may ask you about the values placed on different accents. What do native English speakers 
think of British, Australian, or German accents? And more importantly, what is thought of local accents in 
English'' In replying to these questions, the basic point to remember is that, in communicative language 
eaching, being unde
t
is
hat you are teaching towards. But you may need to listen to questions on accent at a deeper le
itive to your students' anxieties. Language learners put themselves on the line, and one of their 
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fea
y 
ccented English is not perceived as comical. Therefore, in selecting local speakers of English, choose good 
odels, people who are successful in their fields and who can speak well in public. Your students will 
dles the language well. They might not feel comfortable watching and 
stening to someone who is not proficient in English and difficult to understand. 
k for speakers among the expatriate business 
eople, or representatives of development agencies, or government experts in health, agriculture, road 
our third resource for listening comprehension is tapes. Unless you are teaching a very specialized group 
out 
ot having tapes. Frequently the use of tapes imposes a difficult task with insufficient reward to show for a 
m to draw a picture of it. This description should include 
ems, colors, and activities which can be simply represented by your students. The goal is to practice 
g, as soon as the neighbors' cock begins to crow. The sun is not 
high in the sky and it is still cool. He has to help his parents in their shop before he goes to school. His 
ple is just down the street, and when the monks come clown the 
street in their saffron robes, Uthai tells his brother Tongchai to bring rice to put in the monks' howls. 
At 
y Joan Morley in her book 
Listening and Language Learning in ESL, as shown in the following excerpt: 
"Semi-Serious" Mini-lectures 
"Semi-serious" mini-lectures are intended especially for elementary and low-intermediate students. The 
purpose is to give students experience with lecture-style listening, but on a very simple and very focused 
subject. The lecturer takes a paragraph of "straight" expository writing (even information from an 
encyclopedia, almanac, or similar publication), and ""dresses it up" and delivers it in a true lecture-style 
format. The lecturer is especially careful to use a very large amount of redundancy-saying the same thing 
over several times with slight rephrasing or changes in phrase structure-in order to use alternative but