Now you have assured that the process of teaching listening skills is nearly the same. However, there are exercises that distinguish the process of teaching listening skills – preparatory exercises.
They are aimed at developing listening subskills and are often based on a word or sentence level, e.g.:
– developing short-term memory (e.g. Listen to a short text, name all … that you have heard)
– distinguishing sounds (e.g. Listen to a group of words, clap when you hear sound /e/ – bad-bed, lad-led)
– understanding of homophones in the audiotext (e.g. Listen to the sentence and say what word you have heard: hair/hare)
– ability to recognise connected and reduced speech (e.g. Listen to the sentence and count all the words used in the sentence), etc
Preparatory exercises might be isolated and applied on an individual lesson or go just before the pre-listening stage. In this case, it would be better if they are connected with the following audiotext.
Challenges that learners face when listening (listed below) can also be lessened by preparatory exercises: