TEACHING STRATEGIES

Teaching Listening Skills to EFL Students: Best Practices for Teachers

4 April 2025 / By Zineb DJOUB

Teaching listening skills can be frustrating. You press play, your students listen, and then—nothing. Blank stares. Someone says, “Too fast!” Another replies, “I didn’t understand.” You replay it and slow it down—but they’re still lost.

Listening in a second language isn’t easy. Pronunciation can be difficult to decipher, and the “listen and answer” routine may not be particularly engaging.

But here’s the good news: With the right strategies, you can transform your listening lessons into engaging, effective learning experiences. I’ll show you how to unlock the full potential of your lessons—so your students don’t just hear English, they understand it.

But first, let’s explore the process of listening.

What is listening?

Listening is much more than simply hearing words; it is an active and dynamic process.

Skilled listeners predict, infer, analyse, and interpret what they hear, consistently engaging with spoken language to comprehend it.

Listening comprehension consists of two key processes:

1. Decoding – Breaking down the sounds in speech to recognise words, phrases, and sentences.
2. Meaning Construction – Interpreting language while considering context, prior interactions, and nonverbal cues.

 

Therefore, listening aims to extract meaning from speech, which involves understanding various layers of meaning, including:

• Phonological – Recognising sounds, stress, and intonation patterns.
• Syntactic – Understanding sentence structure and word order.
• Semantic – Grasping word meanings and relationships within a sentence.
• Pragmatic – Interpreting language based on context and intent.
• Kinesic – Deciphering nonverbal communication, such as facial expressions, gestures, and eye contact, especially when videos and real-life interactions are included in listening activities.

 

Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down Listening: How learners process spoken language

When teaching listening skills, it is essential to understand the two primary ways listeners process spoken language: the bottom-up and top-down approaches. Both play a crucial role in comprehension but function differently.

Bottom-up listening: Constructing meaning from sounds

To construct meaning, the bottom-up model emphasizes breaking speech down into smaller components—phonemes, syllables, words, and grammatical structures. Listeners rely on their linguistic knowledge, which includes:

• Phonological awareness (sounds, stress, and intonation)
• Lexical knowledge (vocabulary recognition)
• Syntactic knowledge (understanding grammar and sentence structure)

 

While decoding speech is vital, effective listening requires more than merely recognising words—it also depends on the listener’s ability to comprehend the message using prior knowledge.

Top-down listening: Using prior knowledge to interpret meaning

Unlike bottom-up processing, the top-down approach involves interpreting speech by applying background knowledge and context. This includes:

• World knowledge (familiarity with the topic)
• Pragmatic knowledge (understanding meaning beyond words)
• Cultural knowledge (awareness of language-specific norms)
• Discourse knowledge (recognising text structures and organisation)

 

Top-down processing enables listeners to predict, infer, and fill in gaps when they do not catch every word.

What approach is most effective for teaching listening skills?

Research indicates that effective listening requires both bottom-up and top-down processes. Relying solely on one can be limiting; listeners may struggle to keep pace with speech or lack the necessary background knowledge to fully comprehend the message.

How to utilize both approaches in teaching:

• Beginners benefit more from bottom-up skills (phonetics, vocabulary recognition, sentence structures).
• Advanced learners should concentrate on top-down strategies (interpreting meaning, making inferences, using contextual clues).
• The purpose of listening matters: When verifying a detail (e.g., a price or address), bottom-up processing is key. When understanding the main idea of a news story, top-down processing is more advantageous.

 

By integrating both approaches, teachers can assist students in developing a more balanced and effective listening ability.

Teaching listening skills effectively: A step-by-step approach

Teaching listening involves three key stages: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening. Each stage plays a crucial role in helping students develop strong listening skills.

1. Pre-listening

The pre-listening stage prepares students for what they will hear, making the task more manageable.

A key part of this stage is activating students’ background knowledge (schemata) to help them predict content.

Here are six effective ways to do this:

• Brainstorming – Have students jot down ideas related to the listening topic. They can create mind maps, posters, or KWL charts (Know, Want to Know, Learned).
• Using visuals – Show relevant pictures, film clips (without sound), or illustrations and ask students to guess what’s happening. Younger learners can even draw what they think the topic is about.
• Realia (Real Objects) – Bring in objects related to the topic, such as photos, maps, menus, or magazines, to spark curiosity and predictions.
• Text & word clues – Provide key vocabulary words, headlines, or short reading passages and ask students to predict the story. You can also use gap-fill exercises with missing words to encourage guessing.
• Quotations & discussion – Share relevant quotes and have students discuss their possible meanings before listening to the passage.
• Situational clues – If the listening task involves a common situation (e.g., answering the phone or ordering food), have students anticipate what might be said in that context.

 

Once our students’ schemata have been activated, we need to give them a purpose for listening. This keeps them engaged and helps them focus on understanding the passage.

Here’s how you can set a strong listening purpose:

• Make it realistic – The task should reflect the type of listening students will encounter in real life.
• Keep it achievable – Ensure the goal matches students’ proficiency levels.
• Encourage active involvement – When students invest effort and thought into the material, they are more likely to listen attentively and successfully.

 

A great way to establish a reason for listening is to ask higher-order thinking questions that encourage students to reflect on the topic before listening.

Should you pre-teach vocabulary in the pre-listening stage?

While pre-teaching key vocabulary may seem helpful, research suggests it can sometimes limit comprehension. Instead of focusing on the overall meaning, students may become fixated on specific words.

So, you should consider which words to pre-teach, how to pre-teach them and whether the meaning of unknown words can be inferred and checked in the post-listening phase.

2. While-listening

Since listening is an active skill, students should remain focused and engaged throughout the listening task.

The students hear the input more than once during the listening activities. These activities should encourage them to process information, think critically, and interact with the material.

While-listening activities include:

Productive responses that require students to actively respond to what they hear; for example, note-taking, writing answers to questions, correcting errors, and completing tables, charts, diagrams, and sentences.

Recognition responses that help students identify and process information. Examples include answering multiple-choice and true/false questions, marking words and phrases they hear, and matching or choosing pictures.

Some engaging while-listening activities include:

• Listen for gist – Ask students basic questions about the passage: Who? What? Where? When? Why?

• Sentence ordering – Give students jumbled sentences from the passage. They listen and arrange them in the correct order.

• Pause & predict – Stop the audio at key points and ask: What do you think will happen next? Why?

• Truth or Lie – While listening to a story, students take notes in two columns: Truth (if they believe a statement is true) and Lie (if they think it’s false).

• Chart summary – Students fill in a simple chart summarizing key details (e.g., main idea, supporting facts, conclusion).

• Grab the word – Write 15 keywords from the passage on cards and spread them around the room. Students listen carefully and grab each word as they hear it in the recording.

• Partial dictation – Provide a transcript with missing words. Students listen and fill in the blanks as they go.

-Listen and draw—Students draw what they hear (e.g., a map, a scene, or a character from a story).

3. Post-listening

The post-listening stage helps students reflect on their listening experiences, address difficulties, and respond creatively to the content. This phase is essential for reinforcing learning, building confidence, and encouraging a deeper understanding.

Here are some engaging and interactive post-listening activities:

Reflect & discuss

listening reflection – Students identify where they faced challenges, what aided their understanding, and how they have improved.

Think-Pair-Share – Students start by contemplating their experiences individually, then discuss with a partner before sharing with the class.

Discussion circles – Students engage in conversations about key ideas, their opinions, and how the listening aligned with their expectations.

Creative activities

Genre transfer – Students convert the listening passage into a different format, such as a letter, diary entry, or social media post.

Role play – They reenact a scene from the listening passage, expressing it in their own words.

Illustrate the listening – They create an image that represents what they heard and describe their artwork.

Collaborative activities

Jigsaw listening – One student listens to Part A, while another listens to Part B, and then they exchange their insights to piece together the complete story.

Reconstruct the dialogue – Students listen to a dialogue, then try to recreate it from memory with a partner, as the teacher gradually removes keywords, challenging them to recall more.

Key takeaways and practical tips for teaching listening skills

To create an engaging and effective listening experience, keep these essential tips in mind:

Balance bottom-up and top-down processing – Help students recognize sounds, words, and structures (bottom-up) while also focusing on meaning and context (top-down).

Use authentic materials – Integrate real-life listening sources such as podcasts, interviews, movies, songs, and news clips to maintain relevant learning.

Consider the length – Use brief clips for beginners and gradually introduce longer, more complex audio as students progress. Balance intensive (focused) and extensive (general) listening activities.

Teach listening strategies – Instruct students to predict content, identify key information, and tackle unfamiliar words rather than simply playing the audio.

Support with scaffolding – Provide transcripts, key vocabulary, guiding questions, or visual aids to enhance comprehension.

Integrate listening with other skills – Link listening to reading, speaking, writing, and grammar to accommodate diverse learning styles.

Seek student feedback – Frequently inquire about students’ listening experiences—what they find helpful, challenging, or enjoyable—to enhance your teaching strategy.

Use formative assessments – Monitor progress through checklists, listening diaries, portfolios, quizzes, and reflective discussions.

Encourage listening beyond the classroom – Inspire students to engage with English outside of class through music, podcasts, YouTube videos, and audiobooks.

By integrating these strategies, you’ll make listening lessons engaging, effective, and enjoyable for your students!