Listening Conversations Describing People Practice for ESL Adults

Looking for some ideas on how to practice listening with your ESL students? These Listening Conversations Describing People activities will help your ESL students come out of their shell.

Here's how I use them!

How to teach listening skills to ESL students

I would usually get the students to listen to the audio first without writing anything then on the second listening attempt, I get the students to write down 'notes' in their notebook after they've read the questions to see which keywords to look out for.

EFL teachers should be aware of:

• The fact that students just didn't hear the words well the first time around.
• What we see as 'listening' to us is more than just sound cues - for ESL learners these sound cues can be confusing for them since they are trying really hard to grasp the words that they are listening to.
• Giving students the chance to write along with their listening activity can sometimes be a real issue for them.
• Sometimes students panic when they come across a word they don't understand or know. They then begin searching their prior knowledge trying to understand what the word is.

Listening Conversations Describing People

Try the following task with your ESL learners, listening conversations describing people. In this task, students get to listen to a simple dialogue, then respond to basic questions after listening.

I've created a full bundle of real-life news stories where students can listen to the video and then respond to the questions after listening - this bundle includes over 20 topics which you can enjoy using with your ESL learners throughout the year. I will also provide more updates to this bundle!

Be sure to:

• Show students what 'listening skills' are by advising them that they shouldn't be writing at the same time as listening, especially on the first listening attempt. 
• Tell the students that they will be able to write notes or responses on the second listening attempt.
• Write new vocabulary or terms you think that your ESL learners will struggle with before starting the listening task.

>> Click here to download this activity and try it out with your ESL students!<<