August 9, 2007

Five easy CALL Listening Activities

Getting up and running with computers in your language classroom doesn't need to be a chore or even really require lots of technical ability.  Below I've quickly listed 5 ways that you can do listening practice and review with a language class. 

All of them  require very little preparation or technical knowledge to put into use.  #5 is the one exception, but it too isn't overly difficult to get up and running.

  1. use audio or video on a large website (e.g. nationalgeographic.com) as a source of extra thematic content for your language lesson
  2. listen to radio broadcasts from major internet radio providers (cbc.ca, npr.org, bbc.co.uk) and have students take notes
  3. listen for differences in accent and vocabulary between native speakers from a variety of English speaking areas (England, Canada, India, Australia)+
  4. go to any of the many ESL/EFL listening sites and work on provided exercises (Randall's ESL Listening Lab for example)
  5. get students to record their own voice using free software like audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) and…
  • compare to native speaker sample
  • review for 'trouble' spots and attempt improvements
  • develop narations

There are many more ways you can include computer based activities in your listening classes, these are just a few I that I use with my classes from time to time.

Got other ideas?  Add them in a comment for all to benefit.

Cheers,

Eric

 

 

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Filed under CALL Lesson Ideas, Listening by Eric

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