One thing that many teachers and students forget to do is practice passive listening….that is listening just for the sake of listening

While I will always be a strong believer in active listening practice (that is listening with an activity or action required as part of the process, there is still good value in just listening for the sake of listening.

So, what is passive listening?

Well, it is listening to something with no real play to do anything with the information later.  No activities, no discussion groups, no summaries to write, nothing.  Perhaps the simplest examples of this are watching TV  or listening to the radio for an hour just for 'fun'.

Passive listening helps to tune your ears into the rythm and flow of native English without having to worry too much about understanding everything or having to respond which both help to reduce learner stress to some degree.

The nice thing about passive listening is that you can do it anywhere since all you need are your ears and a little attention.

Here are a few ways that you can work on passive listening in an ESL class

• play a soap opera in class 30 minutes 2x/week
• have regular radio listening sessions.  Perhaps a weekly recording of a radio show on science or the "arts"  15 minutes several times/week is good
• bring in regular episodes of TV Sitcoms or Drammas
• play a book on tape over a term
• find a good podcast series (CBC, BBC, etc.) via iTunes or odeo.com
• Find and watch videos on youtube.com and ourmedia.org

Outside of the ESL classroom ESL students can work on passive listening just about anywhere they go.

• listen to a bus driver talk with bus terminal
• listen to people on the bus
• listen to another customer speak with shop assistant
• watch TV daily
• listen to the radio daily
• listen to iTunes podcasts daily
• listen to any other person's conversation
• watch videos on youtube.com and ourmedia.org

The goal should just be to listen to as much natural English as possible while trying to understand as much as possible.  We are looking to increase how much English our ESL students are listening to without adding in the pressure of using the language after listening.

Add in an element of passive listening to your classes and encourage your students to do the same on a regular basis and their English listening skills will increase drammatically.

Cheers,

Eric

The ESL Coach