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Teaching reading and listening — Part 2: Listening
When was the last time your students did a real listening task in English? For many EFL teachers, the answer is “I do not really do listening.” The audio equipment is broken. The CD player has been borrowed. The room is too noisy. The students at the back cannot hear. So we skip listening, or rush through it, or replace it with reading.
But here is the problem: your classroom is the only place your students hear English. If we skip listening here, they get no listening practice at all. Their ears never learn to find meaning in spoken English — only printed English. They can pass written tests but cannot understand a real conversation.
The good news: you do not need a CD player or a perfect classroom to teach listening well. You have something better than any audio device. You have your voice.
In this lesson, we will look at how to teach listening when conditions are difficult — and how the same three-stage approach we used for reading works just as well here, with some important changes.
Q2: Which of these get in the way of teaching listening in your classroom? (Tick all that apply)
- If your audio equipment is unreliable, plan around it — do not let it stop you teaching listening. Your voice, your phone, and clever use of the room are usually enough
- The biggest problem is not poor equipment — it is teachers skipping listening entirely. Even one short listening task per week is better than none
- If you worry about your own English pronunciation: stop. Your voice is comprehensible to your students, and it is far better than no listening at all. Mix in audio when you can for accent variety
- The classroom is the only place your students hear English. If listening only happens in the textbook test, students never build real listening skill
- The same three-stage idea from reading (before / during / after) works for listening — with some specific adjustments for audio realities
The same three-stage structure works for listening — but each stage has different challenges than for reading.
In reading, students can re-read at their own speed, look back, take their time. In listening, the audio is gone the moment it is spoken. Students have to grab meaning in real time. This makes preparation even more important — and makes chunking the audio essential.
The biggest shift: your voice is your audio. You are not a backup for “real” audio — you are usually the best audio your students will get. You can pause when needed, repeat anything, change speed, and check faces for confusion. No CD player can do that.
Many EFL teachers do listening rarely, even though their students need it most. Naming the barrier is the first step to working around it.
- The most honest answer for many teachers is “I rarely do listening because the equipment problems are too much trouble.” That is understandable — but it leaves a real gap in students’ English
- If equipment is the barrier, the answer is to not depend on equipment. Read the text aloud yourself. Use a phone if you have one. Make the audio fit your real classroom, not the textbook’s assumptions
- If noise or class size is the barrier, change where you stand — teach from the middle, not the front. If the classroom is very large, walk while you read. Or read twice, once from each side of the room
- If time is the barrier, build short listening into other lessons — even a 2-minute listening task at the start of a lesson is far better than none
- If you keep skipping listening, your students’ English will be uneven — strong on paper, weak in real conversation. The fix is small, regular listening — not a perfect setup
These are real situations from EFL classrooms. The right answer is the one most likely to actually develop listening skill in your real conditions.
Think about a real lesson next week. The more concrete your ideas, the easier they will be to use.
| Technique | Your specific idea |
|---|---|
| Use your voice instead of audio equipment | |
| Pre-teach 4–5 key words before listening | |
| Break audio into 30-second chunks with pauses | |
| Read transcript aloud first, then play the real audio | |
| Build mini-listening into other lessons |
| Technique | How it can work |
|---|---|
| Use your voice instead of audio equipment | Read the textbook audio transcript aloud yourself. Walk while you read. Use different voices for different speakers. Pause where the audio would pause. You become the audio — reliable, repeatable, and adjustable in real time. |
| Pre-teach 4–5 key words before listening | Look at the audio transcript the night before. Find 4–5 words students need to follow the main idea. Write them on the board with quick translations or examples. Now students start listening with the hardest words already in their head. |
| Break audio into 30-second chunks with pauses | Stop after each speaker, or every 30 seconds. Ask 1–2 simple questions: “Where are they? What is the problem?” Students answer in pairs first, then class. Then continue. Slower — but understanding is real, not faked. |
| Read transcript aloud first, then play the real audio | For unfamiliar accents, read the text yourself first so students get the meaning. Then play the original audio. Now they are matching known meaning to unknown sounds — far easier than the other way round. |
| Build mini-listening into other lessons | Read 4–5 sentences in English at the start of every lesson. Students listen for one specific thing (e.g. how many places are mentioned). Two minutes, but builds steady listening practice across the term. |
Q6. Watch the video below. Think about which change is easiest for you to try first.
Host: We have just looked at how to teach listening when conditions are difficult. Now listen to three teachers. They share their problems first, then the changes they made.
Teacher 1: For years, I just did not do listening. Our CD player was broken. The shared one was always being used. I felt I had no way to do listening properly, so I skipped it. My students were strong on paper but they froze the moment anyone spoke English to them.
Teacher 2: I used to play the whole audio in one go. Three or four minutes. Then I would ask comprehension questions and most of the class had no idea. They had drifted off after the first minute. I thought it was their fault. It was not. The audio was just too long for them to hold in their head.
Teacher 3: I worried my own English pronunciation was not good enough to read aloud as the audio. I felt I was not a real English teacher because I was not native. So I always relied on the textbook recordings — and when those did not work, listening just did not happen.
Teacher 1: I started using my own voice. I read the textbook audio transcript aloud. Walked around so everyone could hear. Different voices for different speakers. The students could understand me clearly. Suddenly listening became possible every lesson, not just on the rare days the equipment worked.
Teacher 2: I started chunking. Thirty seconds, pause, two questions. Thirty seconds, pause, two questions. The lesson took longer, but for the first time my students were actually following. Their answers got better. Their confidence grew. They were finally listening, not just hearing.
Teacher 3: I let go of my pronunciation worries. My students understood me perfectly. I was their best audio. Now I read first, then play the real audio so they can hear the actual accent. They love it. They get the meaning from me, then practise hearing it from a different voice.
Host: None of these teachers waited for perfect equipment. They made listening happen with what they had — voice, phone, walking around, chunking. Their students got the listening practice they could not get anywhere else. That is what matters.
Q7. For each technique, choose the option that best describes where you are now.
Choose a real audio (or transcript) from your textbook. Plan how you will deliver each stage in your real classroom conditions.
- The same three stages from reading apply to listening — before, during, after — but each stage matters even more, because audio cannot be re-read
- Your voice is your audio. You do not need a CD player or perfect equipment. You can pause, repeat, change speed, and check faces — no machine can do that
- Always chunk audio. Thirty seconds, pause, check, continue. Playing 3 minutes in one go = most students lost. Six 30-second chunks = most students follow
- Pre-teaching 4–5 key words and setting context matters even more for listening than reading. Without preparation, students are lost from the first sentence
- The classroom is the only place your students hear English. If you skip listening, they get no listening practice at all. Even 2 minutes of listening per lesson is far better than none
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