Listening is something that is very important if people want to learn. Students need to be able to listen to auditory information not merely hear the information. Some students are born with the ability to listen well and others need to be taught.
Those who are born with this ability are most likely auditory learners. They love to listen and this is how they retain most of their information.
Listening well is a skill and students can learn to do it if teachers are dedicated to teaching them how. The trouble is that many teachers don’t have the patience to teach listening to their students.
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There are many different input sources that can be used to teach listening. However, they all boil down to three main sources. They are the speaker, spoken audio, and music. Each of these three input sources activates different parts of the brain.
A live speaker is different than listening to recorded spoken audio and both of those are different than music. Therefore, if a teacher uses a combination of the three of them, they will be able to teach listening to students.
The Speaker
Having students listen to a live speaker is a great way to teach listening. They will learn how to pay attention and will get used to watching someone give a presentation. This is very important because they need to know how to behave when a live person is speaking to them.
Listening to a lecture is very different than conversing with friends. In giving a lecture, a teacher is encouraging students to listen to him or her while presenting the information. They are learning how to watch and listen at the same time. Although this sounds like a basic skill it is something that students must learn. Knowing how to pay attention, and when, will be very important as life goes on.
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A great way to encourage them to work on their listening skills is to have them write down a few things they learned during the presentation. Encourage them to take some notes of things that stand out to them or make them think. Maybe even give them a worksheet ahead of time so that they have some guidance on what they are looking for.
Of course, you will have to coordinate with the speaker to make sure he or she is going to cover what you are placing on the worksheet. Either way, having live speakers available to students is a great way for them to work on their listening skills.
Spoken Audio
Spoken audio is another great way to teach listening. It is different than a live speaker because there is nothing for the student to watch while they are listening to this audio. This is because it is typically in recorded form. Students can either listen to it on their own or a teacher may play it during classroom hours.
Some great examples of spoken audio are podcasts. Podcasts are very valuable in the classroom and can really help with the learning experience. Here is an article about their usage in classrooms.
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One of the greatest advantages of this form of input is that students will be able to listen to it whenever they have a free moment. They can store it on their electronic device and listen without bothering anyone around them as long as they have headphones.
They can learn all kinds of information and really work on their listening skills. Once again, it may be helpful for some students to have some guided note taking so that you can be sure they are indeed listening to the audio rather than simply hearing it.
Music
Music is perhaps the most popular form of auditory stimulus. In addition, it is one of the most effective ways to learn information. Songs are very easy to remember and the tunes often get stuck in people’s heads. As a result, they are learning how to listen. They are remembering the words in the song. Then all they have to do is think about what the song is about.
Of course, it is important to make sure that whatever songs you use in the classroom are songs that you want students to think about. In other words, they need to be clean.
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Songs can be used to teach a variety of information in addition to teaching listening. I wrote about their use in learning in this article. Topics that are difficult to remember like names, dates, geographical items, et cetera can all be placed in song form and they will be much easier to remember.
In addition, if students listen to songs in other languages they may be more likely to remember some of the vocabulary used in those songs. Thus making the language learning experience much more efficient.
Conclusion
There are many great ways to teach students how to listen and get them to remember information. As long as teachers are willing to work with students and teach them how to listen then they will be able to do so.
The important thing to remember is that listening is a skill that needs to be developed. Don’t expect people to simply be good listeners. If they have never been taught then they won’t know how. It is as simple as that.
In addition, it really helps if the students are interested in whatever information they are listening to. If they are interested in what they are hearing then they will be significantly more likely to listen and remember it than if they are not interested.
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