What kinds of listening tasks are appropriate?
There are numerous activities to choose from for developing listening skills. Lund (1990) has categorized them according to 9 responses that can be observed as comprehension checks:
1. Doing: the listener responds physically such as in TPR;
2. Choosing: the listener selects from alternatives such as pictures, objects, texts, or actions;
3. Transferring: the listener transforms the message such as drawing a route on map, or filling in a chart;
4. Answering: the listener answers about the text;
5. Condensing: the listener takes notes or makes an outline;
6. Extending: the listener goes beyond the text by continuing the story or solving a problem;
7. Duplicating: the listener simply repeats or translates the message;
8. Modeling: the listener performs a similar task, e.g., gives instructions to a coworker after listening to a model or;
9. Conversing: the listener is an active participant in a face-to-face conversation.
A listening component can be built into an adult ESL lessons based on these activity response types in concert with the guidelines mentioned above. For example, choosing as a response may be used to develop bottom-up skills as learners listen to a series of sentence patterns with rising and falling intonation and check column 1 (rising) or column 2 (falling) according to the pattern heard; or, the top down skill of getting the gist of the message may be developed as learner hear sentences describing a work task and select the appropriate picture (Peterson, 1991). An activity involving conversing might be to set up projects which call for learners to conduct interviews with native speakers outside of class on a theme related to a particular unit of study. For example, in a unit on problem-solving on the job, learners might ask questions about where and to whom coworkers go for help when they have a problem with a piece of equipment or with another worker or with understanding internal memos.
(See Nunan and Miller (1995) and Rost (1991) for descriptions of listening tasks.)