As teachers, we know listening isn’t passive. It’s crucial for understanding, especially in classrooms. If you’re in the classroom, you know that students struggle to grasp what they hear. It’s why they struggle to follow directions. This is why listening comprehension strategies are so essential. These aren’t just about hearing; they’re about processing, interpreting, and using information well. This post explores listening comprehension strategies you can use with your students today.
Why Listening Matters
Effective listening comprehension skills impact students in many academic areas, from following directions to understanding literature. They’re also crucial for social skills. Imagine a student misunderstanding directions or social cues—listening challenges create real-life difficulties.
The Building Blocks of Listening
Listening comprehension relies on foundational skills: vocabulary, inference, and background knowledge. A limited vocabulary makes understanding instructions difficult. Inferencing helps students understand implied meanings. Background knowledge lets students connect new information to what they already know. You can’t teach academic content well without some type of background knowledge to tie it to.
Practical Listening Comprehension Strategies
The “I Do, We Do, You Do” model effectively teaches listening comprehension strategies (check out an example here from Classwork.com). This involves instruction, modeling, guided practice, and independent application.
Activating Prior Knowledge
Before a new lesson, discuss what students already know. Use visuals or brainstorming to activate background knowledge. This “top-down listening” (UNC Learning Center) strategy improves engagement.
Activating prior knowledge makes learning more relevant to students’ lives, improving their listening comprehension.
Visualizing
Teach students to create mental pictures as they listen. Visualizing makes words concrete. Read a descriptive paragraph, then have students create a quick sketch what they hear.
The Lindamood-Bell program offers structured visualization practice, especially beneficial for language-disordered students.
Consider providing visual aids, like graphic organizers or charts, to help with visualization.
Self-Talk and Questioning
Model self-talk during listening. Think aloud: “Who is speaking? What’s the main point?” This breaks information into smaller parts, making it easier to locate core concepts.
Encourage students to ask questions, especially “who, what, where, when, why, and how” questions. Teach them how to use listening comprehension strategies to find the answers within the text.
It’s important to remember that many of our students lack good reading comprehension, they simply don’t get as much practice in their daily lives anymore. And the listening skills that we take for granted are often lacking as students become more isolated in their interactions with others.
Making Connections
Understanding isn’t enough. Learning sticks when new information connects to old information. This connection promotes retention and application. Help students connect information by showing real world examples.
Note-Taking
Taking notes (UNC Learning Center) is great for processing information, especially in academic settings. Students learn to identify and record key points. If you haven’t yet, consider letting them use digital formats for note taking, as this is widely accepted across universities today.
Provide explicit instruction on effective note-taking methods, such as using abbreviations, symbols, and different formatting styles.
Additional Strategies for Diverse Learners
Learning happens everywhere, so resources for improving listening comprehension come from various sources (Adlof & Catts, 2007). Recognizing different learning styles, offering freebie visuals and resources from companies such as Boom Learning Stores can increase students’ listening comprehension skills.
Or go out and create your own key listening activities and strategies. I personally love to use a tool like Perplexity to create activities that not only fit my topic I’m teaching, but also can hit on the strategies I want to implement. (I know that I bring this tool up a lot, but it really helps!)
Engaging Different Learning Styles
Use diverse materials to teach basic listening comprehension strategies: audio stories, podcasts, videos. Listenwise has great podcast resources.
Pair visuals with audio clips to reinforce learning. Provide opportunities for students to work together using these listening comprehension strategies.
Modified Activities and Assessments
For students needing modifications, try interactive exercises with visuals. Of Mouth and Mind offers excellent resources. Break long passages into smaller chunks. Working together can add gestures and social studies lessons into activities.
Provide options for students to demonstrate their understanding through different modalities, like drawing, acting, or oral presentations.
And for those that require motor movement, here’s a list of listening comprehension resources to help cover that as well:
- Simon Says: the classic game where students have to pay attention to audible commands.
- Directed Drawing: students race to draw based on verbal directions from their team.
- Listening Stories with Movement: during a story, students perform an action when they hear specific words or cues.
- Listening Bingo: create bingo cards and have students mark them when they hear words or phrases you designate.
Assess and Refine
As you try different listening comprehension strategies, collect student performance data. Standardized tools and formal methods provide detailed diagnostics to help you improve student listening skills. Consider informal activities and observation to improve listening comprehension skills.
Regularly review and adjust your teaching strategies based on student performance data.
FAQs about listening comprehension strategies
What are the 5 listening strategies?
Five core listening comprehension skills are: focus (minimize distractions), organization (identify main ideas and details), connecting (link new information to prior knowledge), visualizing (create mental pictures), and questioning (ask clarifying questions).
What is a listening comprehension strategy?
A listening comprehension strategy is any method used to improve understanding of spoken language. This includes focusing attention, using background knowledge, taking notes, and summarizing main points.
What are the three types of strategies in listening comprehension?
Three key strategy types for comprehension skills include: cognitive (e.g., focusing, visualizing, organizing), metacognitive (planning, monitoring, and evaluating one’s own listening), and social-affective (managing emotions, seeking clarification, and cooperating with others). Help students practice each of these types of listening comprehension strategies.
What is a comprehensive listening strategy?
A comprehensive listening strategy is a holistic approach, combining multiple listening comprehension strategies. These might involve focusing, activating prior knowledge, visualizing content, making inferences, asking questions, and drawing conclusions. This also includes note-taking and evaluating which strategies work best (Garcia & Cain, 2013).
Conclusion
Listening comprehension strategies are essential for academics and life. Teaching these strategies equips students for effective learning, knowledge development, self-management, social interactions, and emotional growth. Encourage trying different strategies to find what works for each student.
If you are looking to learn more, consider taking one of our graduate classes here at MTI. We believe that you work hard for your money, so you shouldn’t have to spend a lot on your professional development.
Unlike other companies, we have zero hidden costs, and we provide the syllabus before you sign up. Some surprises are good, but they shouldn’t involve your money or time.
And if you’re interested in teaching with us, feel free to reach out via any of our social media links, or send an email to [email protected] for more details. We’d love to work with you to develop a course on listening skills!
