The Staffroom Pack

What makes B1 listening hard to teach?

For many teachers and learners alike, B1 listening is one of the hardest aspects of English to master. It’s quite common for us to find that coursebooks, even those without a clear exam focus, give students much more practice of listening comprehension than development of specific listening skills. It might be this fact that lead some to claim that teaching listening is the holy grail of English Language Teaching, and whoever discovers the solution to how to do it will become a teaching superstar.

Let’s put that theory to the test. Who are these people?

From left to right, Sheila Thorn, Richard Cauldwell and John Field, all pioneers of listening in ELT, and likely unrecognisable to most reading this page.

This is not to say that B1 listening is necessarily a Cinderalla skill, so to speak. There’s enough of the work of Field, Cauldwell and Thorn trickling into mainstream coursebooks – for instance, I’ve noticed that recent editions of the Ready for… and Outcomes series have a greater focus on the phonological side of listening and the need to develop skills. They’re great books, but quite possibly not the ones that you’re teaching in your school. So how can you teach B1 listening rather than just test it in class?

Develop B1 listening skills in your classroom

This is a set of four factsheets and a lesson plan to supplement my workshop Developing Listening skills for B1 (and beyond). The first two factsheets delve a little deeper into the differences between teaching and testing listening and recent studies into listening anxiety. The third factsheet gives an introduction to connected speech for listening, and the fourth outlines a variety of ‘hacks’ you can use to bring more of a decoding focus to your B1 listening activities. The lesson plan shows decoding in practice with Open World B1, and can easily be adapted to any teaching material.

When we go to conferences, we often collect oodles of handouts and downloads, but these can so often end up stuffed in drawers or hidden away in someone’s classroom. This one is designed as something to be dipped into when necessary. So print it out and put it in your staffroom so that everyone can get it when they need it.

Audacity tutorial

Looking for the presentation slides?

Want to know how to play or edit audio excerpts in class?

If you’re using the interactive software or app that comes with a modern course book, it’s easy to find specific extracts and play them in class using the script tool on the media player. If you don’t have access to interactive software, you’ll need to use an audio editor to make short recordings of the bits you need. Fortunately, Audacity is free to download and use, compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux, and remarkably easy and quick to learn to use. Here’s a short tutorial to get you started.

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