How to Teach Listening Skills to ESL Students
ESL listening skills are perhaps one of the hardest things to teach and learn. Speech patterns among English speakers vary widely, with different accents, speeds of talking and regional dialects. Still, you need to teach listening skills to ESL students if you want them to be successful English speakers. Focus on appealing to their specific needs and interests, which can help to improve learning.
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Instructions
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Practice standard conversational patterns. There are a number of standard questions and answers that people use in speaking English. For example, at the doctor, you might hear the questions "What's wrong?" or "Where does it hurt?" and at a restaurant, you may hear "What would you like?" or "How about dessert?" When you practice these conversational patterns over and over, it becomes easier for your students to recognize the phrases in real life situations.
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Use English media that appeals to your class. Every class is different. Some classes may like to listen to songs while others like watching movies. Choose resources that are appropriate for your class. You may, for example, use the TV show "Sesame Street" for young ESL speakers and "Friends" for older ones.
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Allow class time for conversational practice. You should spend the majority of your class time letting students practice their speaking and listening skills. Do this through conversational games or role playing practice.
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Teach words and phrases that might be confusing. People that speak different languages face different challenges when learning English. Japanese speakers, for example, have a hard time differentiating the "l" and "r" sounds because these sounds do not exist as separate phonemes in the Japanese language. They also can struggle with grammatical structure, which is opposite from that of the Japanese language. Focus on the types of speech that may be difficult for your particular class.
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Do ESL listening exercises as a group. A shy student may feel embarrassed when forced to do a listening exercise by herself. When teaching new concepts, it's a good idea to do group exercises, like watching a movie and discussing what happened.
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Test students individually for listening skills. It's easy for students that don't really understand the English being spoken to pretend that they have grasped the concept when working in a group. Take the time to ask students individual questions to be sure that they understand and to cause them to focus harder.
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