Tips for Being A More Effective Tutor

Teaching Listening Skills

Teaching listening skills is one of the most difficult tasks for any ESL teacher. This is because successful listening skills are acquired over time and with lots of practice. It can be frustrating for learners because there are no rules to follow as in grammar teaching. Speaking and writing also have very specific exercises that can lead to improved skills. This is not to say that there are not ways of improving listening skills, but they are difficult to quantify.

One of the largest inhibitors for adult learners when they are trying to develop their listening skills is often mental block. While listening, a learner suddenly decides that he or she doesn't understand what is being said. At this point, many learners just tune out or get caught up in an internal dialogue trying to translate a specific word. This is particularly true when learners are listening to topics of conversation outside their comfort zones – as topics typical of health settings usually are. If learners perceive the listening segments to be too technical, if they are simply not interested in the topic, their attention will quickly fade.

The key to helping learners improve their listening skills is to convince them that not understanding is OK, and in fact is expected. This is more of an attitude adjustment than anything else, and it is easier for some learners to accept than others. In class, you will be introducing your learners to short audio texts (that you have recorded in advance of the lesson) and you will be spending a lot of time on these 30-second to 2-minute segments as you work through pre- and post listening activities designed to build your learners’ skills. 

To support the work in the tutoring session, advise your learners to listen to English as often as possible (for similarly short periods of time) outside of class. Encourage them to rent a movie, or listen to an English radio station, but not to watch an entire film or listen for two hours. Your learners should listen often (four or five times a week and preferably, repetitively using the rewind function watching/listening to the same clip again and again), but only for short periods of time - five to ten minutes. Remind your learners that they must be patient and not expect improved understanding too quickly. The brain, even a mature one, is capable of amazing things if given time; learners must have the patience to wait for results. If a learner continues this exercise over two to three months their listening comprehension skills will greatly improve.

If you want to learn more about teaching listening and would like to extend the activities we have provided in this unit, please check out the following helpful web resources:

Listening resources for ESL teachers at http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/teacher/listening.html

Listening: Problems and Solutions By Fan Yagang, English Teaching Forum, January 2003 at http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol31/no1/p16.htm

Listening in Language Learning By David Nunan, The Language Teacher, September 1997 at http://jalt-publications.org/tlt/files/97/sep/nunan.html