Planning Listening
What is the most crucial stage which guarantees you 50% of successfully executed listening?
Pre-listening
What is top-down processing in listening?
Top-down processing is a holistic, meaning-focused way of listening that starts with the BIG picture and moves to details, using prior knowledge, context, prediction, and inference.
EXPLANATION: Learners rely on what they already know about the topic and situation to form hypotheses about what they hear, then confirm or adjust those hypotheses as the listening continues.
What is linking in connected speech?
Linking is when sounds connect smoothly across word boundaries, especially between consonants and vowels.
EXPLANATION: In phrases like “go out” or “look at,” the final consonant of one word runs into the next vowel, so students hear one continuous chunk rather than two clear words.
What is the All–Most–Some framework in mixed-level listening lessons?
It is a tiered outcome system where all students reach gist, most get key details, and some go deeper into inference and discourse.
EXPLANATION: This framework removes one-size-fits-all expectations and ensures success and challenge for every learner in the same lesson.
Your A1 student can read the word "photograph" but doesn't recognize it when heard in a sentence. She says, "I know this word when I see it, but not when I hear it!" What is the root cause, and what solution should you implement?
A bottom-up processing gap—lack of automated sound-to-meaning connection for speech? Solutions: 1) Repeated exposure: hear the word in 5 different sentences; 2) Phonetic notation: teach actual pronunciation /ˈfoʊtəɡræf/; 3) Minimal pairs practice: photograph/biography, compete/complete.
EXPLANATION: This troubleshooting addresses the common issue where students "know" words in writing but miss them in speech because they haven't developed automatic sound recognition.
What are the vital stages of any listening activity that must be included in proper lesson planning and why?
Every effective listening activity should include all three stages to maximize comprehension.
What is bottom-up processing in listening?
Bottom-up processing is building meaning from the smallest units upward, starting from individual sounds and phonemes, then words and grammar, and combining them into a full message.
EXPLANATION: This approach focuses on accurate decoding of linguistic elements (sound discrimination, word recognition, grammatical forms), so understanding grows step by step from sound to sentence.
What is reduction in connected speech and why does it matter for listening?
Reduction is when vowels in unstressed syllables weaken, especially in function words like “to” or “and.”
EXPLANATION: Words such as “to” (/tu:/) become “tə,” and “and” can sound like just “n,” so students must learn that many small words almost disappear in fast, natural speech.
What does “Teach to the Middle, then differentiate” mean in listening lessons?
It means present the same core A2–B1 level audio to everyone, then vary the tasks by level.
EXPLANATION: All students share authentic input for cohesion, but easier or harder tasks are assigned so that weaker and stronger learners can both work at an appropriate challenge level.
You're teaching a mixed-level group (A1-C1) the same listening material. How should you differentiate the pre-listening vocabulary instruction for each level, and what is the core principle guiding your decisions?
A1-A2: pre-teach 5-8 key content words with visuals, gestures, and pronunciation drilling; B1-B2: pre-teach 3-5 key words/phrases focusing on collocations; C1: pre-teach only 1-2 advanced or idiomatic expressions, encouraging context clues? Core principle: Teach only essential vocabulary that blocks comprehension, not every unknown word.
EXPLANATION: Different proficiency levels require different amounts of scaffolding. Over-teaching vocabulary to advanced students removes the challenge of contextual guessing, while under-supporting beginners causes frustration.
What is the most common mistake that teachers usually make when they hold a lesson with a listening activity?
Giving transcripts too early converts the listening activity into a reading task, defeating the purpose.
What are the advantages of these two approaches?
They help learners use both context and precise decoding to understand more.
EXPLANATION: Top-down lets students predict and infer meaning, while bottom-up trains accurate sound and word recognition, and together they lead to faster, more reliable comprehension.
What is assimilation in connected speech?
Assimilation is when a sound changes to become more like a neighbouring sound.
EXPLANATION: For example, “ten books” can sound like “tem books” because /n/ changes towards /m/ before /b/, which confuses learners who expect the clear /n/.
How many key vocabulary items should teachers pre-teach for different levels before a listening task?
About 5–8 words for A1–A2, 3–5 for B1–B2, and only 1–2 advanced items for C1.
EXPLANATION: This prevents overload: beginners get more support with visuals, intermediates focus on useful chunks, and advanced learners rely mainly on context.
Your B1 students panic and stop listening the moment they encounter an unknown word, missing all the content that follows. What is the root cause of this behavior, and what three solutions should you teach them?
Over-reliance on bottom-up processing with weak top-down compensation strategies? Solutions: 1) Teach gap-bridging: "It's okay not to understand every word"; 2) Practice contextual guessing to infer meaning; 3) Give permission to miss words: "70-80% comprehension is sufficient for understanding."
Name at least 3 of the 5 types of listening tasks that should be incorporated into different stages of a listening lesson.
Listening for gist, listening for specific information, listening for detailed information, predicting, extensive listening
What are the main disadvantages of relying too much on either top-down or bottom-up processing in listening?
Overusing top-down processing leads to over-prediction and missing what is actually said, while overusing bottom-up processing makes learners panic about unknown words and lose track of the message.
EXPLANATION: Too much top-down means students trust their expectations more than real input, and too much bottom-up creates cognitive overload because they try to decode every word instead of using context to keep listening.
What is elision in connected speech?
Elision is when a sound disappears completely in fluent speech.
EXPLANATION: In phrases like “next day,” the /t/ is often dropped (“nex day”), so students may not hear the word as they see it in the dictionary.
What is the Compulsory Core + Optional Extension principle in mixed-level listening?
It sets a minimum required task for everyone, plus optional harder tasks for those who are ready.
EXPLANATION: For example, all students answer 3 of 6 questions, while stronger learners answer the remaining and an inference question, which reduces anxiety and keeps everyone challenged.
You're conducting a listening lesson, and A1 students give up within 30 seconds looking defeated. List at least four specific modifications you should implement to reduce students' frustration .
1) Shorten audio to 30-60 seconds maximum; 2) Provide visual support (pictures, gestures); 3) Allow 3-4 listenings; 4) Use "listen and draw" activities; 5) Pre-teach ALL key vocabulary; 6) Pair with stronger student
What should you do if students get stuck during a listening task?
Play the recording again with a clearer, narrower focus instead of giving them an answer.
EXPLANATION: Give students another listen with a simpler goal (e.g., just find the topic or one number), briefly clarify key vocabulary, or pause at difficult spots so they can process, which supports learning without turning it into a reading or translation exercise. If they still struggle, work with a transript and connected speech features in order to understand what caused such a difficulty.
What is the interactive listening model and why is it important?
The interactive listening model is a five-step cycle where listeners activate prior knowledge, decode linguistic elements, synthesize both sources of information, continually update predictions, and use context to fill gaps.
EXPLANATION: This model is crucial because combining top-down and bottom-up processing leads to 40–50% faster comprehension improvement, better performance with unfamiliar topics, more successful handling of natural speech, and stronger long-term retention.
Why should connected speech be taught differently at A1–A2, B1, and B2+ levels?
Because beginners need awareness, intermediates need recognition, and higher levels need production and analysis.
EXPLANATION: A1–A2 focus on noticing features in simple phrases, B1 learners identify them in authentic texts, and B2–C1 students practice using them in dialogue and shadowing tasks.
What are some effective activities teachers can use to improve listening skills in mixed-level groups?
Activities like Listening Carousel (stations), dictogloss, jigsaw listening, and three-level question sets are especially effective.
EXPLANATION: These tasks let all students work with the same audio but at different difficulty levels, combining collaboration, repeated listening, and differentiated questions to boost comprehension for A1–C1 learners.
Design a complete 30-minute listening activity for elementary (A2) students that integrates both top-down and bottom-up processing, with clear stages, timing, and group work to support better retention
Use a three-phase lesson: top-down pre-listening, focused while-listening, and bottom-up plus communicative post-listening.
EXPLANATION: Example 30-minute plan:
Pre-listening (8 minutes, whole class → pairs):
Show 2–3 pictures on a familiar topic (e.g., “Daily routine”).
Elicit 5–8 key words and put them on the board.
Students in pairs predict 3 things they will hear in the audio (top-down activation).
While-listening (15 minutes, individual → pairs):
First listening (3–4 minutes): Students choose the correct picture that matches the main idea (gist focus).
Second listening: Students answer 4 simple A2-level questions about names, times, and places (specific information).
Third listening: Short replay of two key sentences; students complete a 6–8 word gap-fill transcript focusing on high-frequency words and basic connected speech (bottom-up decoding).
Post-listening (7 minutes, pairs → whole class):
Pairs compare answers and reconstruct one short sentence from memory (mini-dictogloss).
Volunteers share orally what the person in the recording does in their day using 2–3 target words from the board (listening–speaking bridge).