How to Teach Listening to ESL Students | ESL Listening

If you want to find out how to teach listening to ESL/EFL students, you’re in the right place. Check out these tips and tricks for teaching ESL listening, how to plan an ESL lesson, along with lots of game and activity ideas.

Do you know those listening activities that are in all ESL textbooks? Do you just skip over them, or quickly breeze on through them on your way to other things? I did that for lots of years too.

However, listening lessons can be quite interesting for students, especially those who don’t like talking all the time! Check out this listening lesson plan template for all the tips and tricks you need to kick your ESL lesson plan to the next level.

How and Why to Teach Listening to ESL Students

Listening is an extremely important skill if students want to speak fluently in English. No matter how well you speak, if you don’t understand what your conversation partner said, your answer will be a little awkward at best, or totally random at worst.

In order to help our students, we need to include some practice with it in our English classes. Here’s some basic advice on how to teach listening to ESL students, including a lesson plan template and some ESL listening activities.

ESL Listening Lesson Plan Template

Here are the steps that you can follow when planning a listening lesson plan.

1. Set the Context

This introduces the theme of your listening topic. For example, if your listening is about shopping, you could ask students whether or not they ever buy things without trying them on and whether or not they’ve had good or bad experiences with that.

Or, if your topic is travel, you could ask students what are 5 things that people do while they’re spending time waiting at an airport. It’s best to have students discuss the question for a couple of minutes with their partner and then quickly elicit some answers from the class.

2. Pre-Listening Task

Next, you’ll need to assign students a pre-reading task. Some of my favourites ones are prediction tasks which lead to the next step. For example, in class last week the topic was problems while travelling. I had students think of 5 common travel problems with a partner.

I then elicited some answers and wrote 3 of them on the board. You could also show them a picture and have them predict something based on that. Or, you could introduce some of the vocabulary words from the listening that you think the students won’t know.

3. Listening #1

The students listen for the overall picture the first time. You can have them see if their prediction were true if you did this in step #2. Or, you could give them some very simple T/F questions. Basically, anything that gives them a reason to listen.

Have students compare answers with a partner and then quickly go over them together with the class, but don’t spend too much time with this. You don’t want to give away too many details because they’ll listen one more time in the next step.

4. Listening #2

Give students some more difficult comprehension questions, they’ll listen again, check answers with a partner and then with the class. You can spend a bit more time discussing the answers if necessary than you would in the previous step.

Or, if you’re using a listening passage to introduce a grammar concept, students could listen for that specific item. For example, subject and object pronouns. And then answer some questions about who each pronoun refers back to. Or, you could have students listen for examples of indefinite pronouns.

5. Pronunciation (optional)

If there are some words that are difficult to pronounce, or your students particularly struggle with this, then you may want to focus a little bit on pronunciation.

Do some drills and practice using the words from the listening passage. Here’s some help with teaching pronunciation: English Pronunciation Games. Or, you may also want to check this out: ESL Contractions.

6. Application

Students have to apply the concepts from listening to their own lives in order to make it more memorable. The best kind of thing you could do is something that involves students giving their opinions, such as asking them if they agree or disagree with XYZ.

Or, you could have students do a survey and discuss the answers. Another idea is to have them pretend to be one of the people in the listening while the other one is a news reporter and they interview each other. Get creative and make listening fun and interesting!

7. Follow Up

After finishing this, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can do. You might consider switching over to focus on other skills such as speaking or writing. Or, you could have students do a presentation related to the listening passage. Maybe you can play a game of some kind with them.  Have students take a closer look at some grammatical points within the passage like the 1st conditional. Get creative in terms of how you tie what you do next to what the students have listened to.

To learn more, have a look at this article: How to write an ESL teaching philosophy.

More ESL Listening Ideas

The sky really is the limit and the whole world is open to you if you have high-level students. I’ve used TV shows, movies, and even Podcasts (Serial is great) in my classes before with excellent results.

Students love using authentic material because they’re relevant, interesting and gives them confidence that they can go out into the real-world and understand what people are saying.

Remember that the best things to choose for ESL listening activities are things that are just slightly higher than their level. If you can assist them to understand, that’s how students make gains in their listening skills.

Want to level up on the organization? Have a look at this: teacher carts on wheels.

Where Can I find ESL Listening Passages?

If you want to know where you can find ESL listening exercises, here are a few of my go-to sources.

The Textbook You’re Using

All ESL textbooks these days have listening exercises in them. I know, some teachers are lazy about getting audio up and running in their classroom, but it can be useful to have this option available.

Textbooks are often the best source for listening passages because they’ll be related to the grammar and vocabulary that the students are learning. Plus, in theory, they should be at the perfect level.

Breaking News English

Apart from the textbook, this is my go-to source for listening work. It’s got a huge variety of current events, and best of all, the passages are graded and divided into various levels, compete with exercises. This makes it super easy to use. Plus, the topics lend themselves well to great discussions.

Check it out here: Breaking News English.

Business English Pod

If you teach Business English, then this site is pure gold. There is a paid version, but I’ve found the free version has enough of what I need to make it work.

Their listening passages are excellent and are a nice starting point for further work. Check it out here: Business English Pod.

YouTube

Of course, YouTube is a gold mine for all things listening. They have millions of videos. But, how to find the right one for your students? I usually just search for the topic + ESL. For example, “jobs + ESL,” or, “sports + ESL” and have found what I was looking for in a minute or two.

For more advanced level students, consider using authentic material from YouTube. By that, I mean materials that aren’t specifically designed for ESL students.

Tips for Teaching ESL Listening

Here are a few tips and tricks for teaching an English listening lesson:

• Get familiar with the technology before class. Nothing is worse than a teacher trying to figure out how to play the audio during class time. Come a few minutes early to get things set up.
• 2x is perfect! If the students understand everything on the first run-through, it’s probably too easy. If they struggle to understand the main ideas even on the second time through, it’s too difficult.
• You can plan a whole class around a listening passage. It’s easy to do with this template, so mix things up a bit and give students a break from speaking and conversation, which is what most native English speakers do for the majority of classes.
• The textbook is usually a gold mine in terms of listening passages. Make use of them because they’ll often be at the perfect level of your students.
• Consider listening activities for homework. Perhaps something like watching a certain YouTube video and writing (or speaking) a quick response to it.

Check out this Book on Amazon for ESL Listening Activity Ideas

I hope you’ve picked up a few tips on how to teach listening to ESL students. If you’d like some ideas for speaking and listening games and activities for your classroom, check out this book on Amazon: 39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities: For Teenagers and Adults.

Speaking and Listening Activities

Of course, speaking activities also require listening, so all of these games and activities are heavy on that as well. So, you should be able to find an engaging, interesting listening activity to round our your ESL lesson in under a minute. Yes, it really is that easy.

Step by Step Instructions, and More

Then, each activity has a detailed description, along with step by step instructions that start with what you need to do before the lesson to follow-up suggestions for things to do with your students. Plus, there are teaching tips to help your game or activity go smoothly and you’ll be able to avoid some of the most common pitfalls.

Available in a Variety of Formats

The book is available in digital, print or audio formats. You can keep a copy on the bookshelf in your office for easy lesson planning. Or, take the digital version to your favourite coffee shop for a serious lesson planning session. Finally, you could listen to the book when commuting for some inspiration for your next class.

Where Can I Get It?

It really is that easy to have better ESL speaking and listening lessons. Check out the book for yourself over on Amazon:

Teaching ESL Listening Skills FAQs

There are a number of common questions that people have about teaching English listening. Here are the answers to some of the most popular ones.

How can I teach English listening?

You can teach English listening by following a few simple steps. Before listening, prepare the learners by setting the context and preparing them for what they might hear.  During listening, give students a specific task to complete (something to listen for). After listening, finish with an activity to extend the listening passage and make the grammar or vocabulary found in more memorable.

What are the techniques used in teaching listening?

There are a number of techniques used in teaching listening. Some of these include the use of audio files, answering questions after listening to something, rewriting songs, dictation exercises, watching TV or movies, listening to podcasts, extensive listening, etc.

How can ESL students improve their listening skills?

ESL students can improve their listening skills by doing some of the following things:

• Listening to the same thing 2-3x for new things each time.
• Listening for particular words, phrases or grammatical structures.
• Keep a journal with new words or phrases.
• Take a class focused on ESL listening.
• Use technology for listening outside of class (TV, movies, podcasts, etc.).
• Listen to something in English every single day.

How can I teach listening to advanced English learners?

How do you introduce a listening activity?

Before doing a listening activity, you’ll want to set the context for the students. This can be done in various ways including telling them the headline and asking them to make a prediction, asking them to talk with a partner about a question related to the topic, pre-teaching some vocabulary or grammar, introducing the characters, etc.

What are the five steps of the listening process?

The five steps of the listening process are receiving, understanding, evaluating, remembering and then responding. Active listening requires the last step, feedback in order to respond to what has been said.

How to Improve English Listening Skills: Top 3 Tips

If you’re looking to improve your English listening skills, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to share three of our top tips with you today. You’ll also get a link to a resource with even more tips for how to practice English listening.

What’s your Motivation for Improving your English Skills?

Maybe you want to improve your conversational English and make some new friends. Perhaps you want to be able to travel confidently. Maybe you want to understand English TV or movies, instead of relying on subtitles.

You might want to get a higher score on something like the TOEIC listening test to get a better job. Finally, you might want to go to graduate school in an English speaking country and you need to improve your English listening skills in order to understand the lectures.

There are Lots of Different Reasons

There are plenty of reasons why someone would want to improve their English listening skills. Whatever the case for you, our tips will help you practice English listening in a fun, interesting, and varied way.

Are you ready to get better at English listening? We hope so! If not, stop reading right now!

English Listening Tip #1: Listen for One Specific Thing

It’s really easy to feel overwhelmed when you’re listening to something a little bit difficult. We’ve all been there. The words are washing over you, but you’re not really taking anything in besides a few random words you might understand. You probably felt extremely frustrated.

However, by listening for one specific thing, you can improve your English listening skills even if the audio is a little bit above your level. Check out this article for how to do it, and some ideas of the specific thing that you can listen for.

Listen for One Specific Thing

English Listening Tip #2: Check out Podcasts

Podcasts are this amazing, free resource that you’re really missing out on if you don’t know about them already. We really hope you’re currently using them to improve your listening skills.  But, if not, don’t worry. It’s not too late. You know the secret now!

What’s the Best Thing about Podcasts?

The best thing about podcasts is that it’s super easy to listen to them on the go. You can get them on your Smartphone or tablet and then listen when you’re exercising, on the bus or subway, or in between classes. They’re entertaining, and you can find a podcast for any interest you might have.

If you have a difficult time understand what the people are saying, use the player and go 3/4 speed. 1/2 speed is too slow and the pronunciation will sound very strange.

If you still have a hard time understanding, use some podcasts designed specifically for ESL/EFL students. The language is much simpler and the people talk more slowly.

Check out this article for our favourite podcasts for ESL/EFL students:

Use Podcasts to Improve your English Listening

English Listening Tip #3: Watch TV and Movies

The final tip about improving your listening skills is about using TV and movies. I’m sure you know this one already! However, there is a way to do it wisely, and there is a way to waste your time.

Check out this article for some tips to consider when choosing what to watch. Also find out where to get English subtitles, and whether or not you should use them.

Watch TV and Movies to Improve your English Listening

Planning an ESL Listening Lesson: Join the Conversation

What steps do you follow when planning a listening lesson? Did you know how to plan a listening lesson plan already? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear from you.

Also be sure to give this article a share on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. It’ll help other busy teachers, like yourself find this useful resource.

Last update on 2025-05-14 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API