IELTS Listening Lesson Stages

When you teach listening in class it is better to focus on one listening section rather than all sections in one class. So, in one class you cover section 1, in the next section 2 etc.

Here are the stages you can follow when teaching listening. They are not written in stone, so you can change things if you wish:

1) Lead-in: introduce the section and the task type

2) Strategies: give out the tasks and ask students to read it. In pairs they brainstorm effective strategies to deal with this task. Feedback — elicit/present useful strategies

3) For Weaker Students only: pre-teach potentially hard words from the task

4) Students listen and do the task (give them time to read the questions/task before you play the recording)

5) Paircheck (they compare what they have briefly)

6) Students write up their answers on the Whiteboard (one writes 1 or 2 answers, then passes the marker to someone else). Encourage everyone to write their answers and welcome the incorrect ones.

7) Put a questions mark next to the answer they are not sure of. Even if 2 students out of 10 are not sure, put a question mark.

8) Re-play parts of the recording for students to check/confirm their answers. You could re-play it 2,3,4,5,6 times for them to catch the answer. It's fine, you're developing listening here). Don't re-play if everybody got it correct.

Don't give them the answer yourself, it's their job to catch it.

9) Optional: You could give the script and ask them to find paraphrasing: what's in the task and what's on the recording. This would make them more aware of paraphrasing in listening and reading.

10) Strategies: students in pairs sum up what helped them deal with the tasks/useful strategies/tricks of this particular task.

11) Speaking Follow-Up: ask them to speak about the topic of the listening e.g. Listening Section 4 about The Spirit Bear — tell your partner: do you like bears? Why/why not? Should they be kept in zoos? What's your favourite animal? Students would really appreciate some speaking in the end!