ESL Lesson Plan: Listening

This is the fourth in the series of lesson plans I promised to put up after my CELTA course. Listening lesson are generally among the easier kinds of lessons we have to teach. Listening is part of the ‘skills lessons’, along with speaking, reading and writing. The other two kinds of lessons – Grammar and Vocabulary – fall into the Language lessons category.

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Generally, Skills lessons are far easier to plan and execute, mostly because students need to do a lot of work themselves and do not need to depend on the teacher for the most part. Of course, the ESL teacher still has to do their part in ensuring the lesson interests the students. Especially in the case of children and teenagers, if the topic of the lesson is not interesting enough, students begin to fidget pretty soon.

I was presenting it to the Upper Intermediate level ESL students at St. Giles International in San Francisco, the same place I did my CELTA course (Read why I chose the CELTA and not one of the hundreds of TEFL/TESOL courses available).

Generally, the Upper Int. students are easier to engage (but harder to please) than the elementary level ESL students. This is because they feel they’re halfway there at learning the language. Every lesson is a challenge for them, and they feel triumphant if they can understand everything being taught. On the other hand, every lesson is challenging for the elementary ESL students. They have to work much harder to hear the (target) language, understand it and use it.

While I would work hard at customizing lessons for the elementary students to make sure the language is graded to their level, I didn’t work too hard in customizing this one. I used to the text straight out of the book and just created some simple activities to peg around it. The listening material was about real-life mysteries and though I knew there would be some difficult vocabulary, I was sure the audio would keep the students hooked.

Note that I used the Test-Teach-Test method of teaching in this lesson. I did not preteach vocabulary as I would have at the elementary level. I’ll write another post to explain the Test-Teach-Test method later.

Here’s the plan:

ESL Lesson Plan 4: Listening

Lesson Aims:
Main Aim: To give students practice in developing listening receptive skills
Sub Aim: To expose students to native speakers’ speech in an authentic context

Personal Aims:
To stick to the time limit.
To minimize TTT.

Aids and Materials:
a) Handouts/worksheets attached? YES
b) Specify book material used: Cutting Edge Upper Intermediate, by Sarah Cunningham and Peter Moor (Pearson Education Limited 1999)

Procedure:

(DO NOT CLICK THE SORTING ARROWS IN THE HEADER ROW, I’m still trying to figure out how to get rid of those)

Time	Stage Name	Aim of Stage	Procedure	Interaction
5 min	Setting a context	To introduce the topic of the lesson's topic – real life mysteries	Stick pictures of Ganesha, Loch Ness Monster, the Elephant Bird, crop circles etc on the board and ask students to talk about what the pictures are, why are they strange. (Introduce the students to the words 'mystery' and 'miracle' – students will come into class in 2s and 3s. Where are the other students? It's a mystery. Here they come. You call came back for my class. It's a miracle.)	SS
1 min	Feedback	To initiate whole class conversation about mysteries of life	Ask 2-3 students to share the most interesting stories from their group with the whole class.	ST
4 min	Test vocabulary	To test students' knowledge of words they will need for comprehension	Give the students a Match the following activity (one per pair). Ask them to figure out the meanings of the words	SS
2 min	Feedback and pre-teach vocab	To make sure students know the required vocabulary	Check answers with whole class feedback. Explain meanings of particularly difficult words, ask relevant CCQs, do oral ICP if it's a difficult word.	ST
4 min	Set gist task + 1st listening	To give students a reason to listen carefully to the tapes	Give students the gist task questions and ask them to read them carefully. Tell them they have to look for answers to the questions as they listen to the tape. Play tape.	SS
1 min	Feedback	Encourage students to reach a consensus on the answers	Students compare answers in pairs. Clarify any questions at this point.	SS
5 min	Set detailed task + 2nd listening	To make students more familiar with the recording	Give comprehension questions. Ask students to go over them. Play the tape again and ask them to take notes so they can do the detailed tasks.	SS
3 min	Feedback	Encourage students to reach a consensus on the answers	Students compare answers in pairs	SS
5 min	Feedback	To make sure all students check their answers	Call on individual students to repeat their answers. Clarify any doubts	ST
2 min	Free Speaking Activity	To give students practice in productive skills (speech)	Ask students to talk in pairs/groups about mysteries and miracles from their own culture. For e.g., there is the ________ in Japan, the _______ in Spain etc.	SS

Click here to DOWNLOAD –>

CELTA Lesson Plan: Listening -

If you’re a current CELTA student looking for help with your assignments, you might want to peek and see what I wrote in my CELTA assignments. They’re all available for free downloads. Drop me a line if these were useful. Cheers!