Listening Skills with practice

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 2

Listening skills

How to listen strategically

I think listening is the easiest skill / Listening tests are easy to pass

TRUE

FALSE

Lesson overview

Review of listening

Types of questions in a listening test

How to answer each type of questions?

Check your knowledge

Practice your listening

Learning Goals

• I know what ERK-level I should have for listening
  
• I can list the different types of questions
  
• I can answer different types of questions
  

When do you use listening? List every moment you can think of

Listening vs. Listening (on a) test

What do you think is the difference?

B1 Listening Skill 

I can understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. I can understand the main point of many radio or TV programmes on current affairs or topics of personal or professional interest when the delivery is relatively slow and clear.

Which types of questions do you know?

Types of Questions

There are 5 main question types that you may encounter:

• Short answer questions
• Multiple choice questions
• Matching
• Complete the sentences or summary
• Direct and indirect questions

Short answer question

Write a short phrase or sentence to answer the question.

For example: "Which reason did Mary give for her choice?"

• Do's : Pay attention to your spelling, answer with information from the audio.
• Don'ts: Answer with your opinion, go over the number of words you can write (if they specify it).

Practice short answer

Why is Sally concerned that a Chinese company owns TikTok?

01:10

Why is Sally concerned that a Chinese company owns TikTok?

Multiple choice question

Select one of the answers given. Example: "Why did Mary make that choice?"

A. Because she felt pressured to do so
B. Because her friend did it too
C. Because she had always wanted it

• Do's: Read the question carefully. If you struggle with finding an answer, look at the ones that cannot be the answer first.
• Don'ts: Guess, or choose the "longest" answer.

Practice MC question

Why did India ban TikTok?

Why did India ban TikTok?

1. Because of it's popularity
2. Because it conflicts with religion
3. Because of security reasons
4. Because children spend too much time on it

Matching

Example: Match the item in the store with the person who wants to buy it:

A. Mary               ... Apples                   

B. Eric                 ... Toothpaste

Do's: Read the instruction really carefully. What are they really asking you to match? Make sure the letter is readable! 

Don'ts: Make lines or other symbols. 

Practice Matching

Countries with a ban 

Countries without a ban

Countries with a ban

Countries without a ban

Australia

USA

India

Complete the sentences or summary

Example: Complete the sentences with no more than two words

"Mary decided to go to the supermarket because ....... told her to. She needed to buy ..... and ..... ".

Do's: Pay attention to your spelling, answer with information from the text or video

Don'ts: Add your opinion, exceed the number of words indicated.

Practice complete the sentence

Complete the sentence:

When you first open the ... , my software counted 210 ... requests.

Complete the sentence:
When you first open the ... , my software counted 210 ... requests.

Direct and indirect questions

Direct questions: the answer to the question is given within the audio fragment.

Indirect questions: you need to interpet the answer based on what you have heard. 

Indirect questions

Example: What's the attitude of the speaker towards using public transport?

Do's: Listen to what is said; is the speaker positive or negative?

Don'ts: Add your opinion

Practice indirect questions

What's the attitude of the speakers towards the ban of TikTok?

What's the attitude of the speakers towards the ban of TikTok

1. Positive
2. Negative

In your opinion, which type of question is the most difficult one? Why?

Practice and check

When answering a listening test I need to add my own opinion

1. Yes
2. No

I can write as much as I want when completing a sentence in a listening test

1. Yes
2. No

I always need to read the instruction very carefully, because some questions are tricky

1. Yes
2. No

Time to practice! 

Answer the questions as they appear in the video.

Do this task on your own!

00:30

What is the intention of the video?
Multiple answers can be correct.

1. Complain about the addiction to mobile phones
2. Inform about how addictive mobile phones can be
3. Help people overcome addiction to mobile phones
4. Convince people that they are addicted to their mobile phones

01:04

What is the man's job?

1. He works for Google
2. He has a foundation that helps people be aware of phone usage
3. He helps Google make better devices
4. He makes videos

01:42

Complete the sentences:
- You should turn off all your notifications, unless a ... is trying to communicate with you

02:25

Why are slot machines so addictive?

1. Because they are unpredictable
2. Because they are predictable
3. Because people earn money
4. Because they are similar to phones

03:27

Why should you greyscale your screen?

Info

The correct answer represents the idea only. If you wrote the same but in other words, it is also ok!

04:32

Why is it said that those apps have "infinite scrolling"?

05:45

Exc. Direct Messages

Instruction

Drag and drop the items where they belong. According to the video, should you have the notifications "on" or "off" for that app?

Notifications ON

Notifications OFF

04:32

Which apps should you NOT have in your home screen?
Multiple answers are correct

1. Instagram
2. Snapchat
3. Calendar
4. Calculator

Well done!

Now you should ace your listening.

Remember that it is not always possible to read the questions before, but as long as you know the types of questions and what to do, it will be fine!

If you need more help or practice, these are helpful links:

British Council - Listening B1

British Council - Listening A2

Cambridge - Short Practice