Listening is one of the four essential domains (the others are reading, writing, and speaking) for English learners - and for all students. It’s also a skill that often gets less attention in the classroom.

Here are some instructional strategies educators use to help English learners—and other students—master that critical skill.

You might also be interested in The Best Listening Sites for English Language Learners.

‘I Needed to Directly Teach Listening’

Valentina Gonzalez is a longtime educator and advocate for English Learners who works with schools across the nation and beyond to support multilingual education. Her most recent publications are Equitable Instruction for English Learners in the Content Areas and Welcome to Teaching Multilingual Learners:

It took me awhile to realize that unless I wanted to spend time reteaching and reviewing what I had already covered, I needed to directly teach listening. Here are some ways I try to teach both my English learners and monolingual English-speaking students to be effective listeners:

Direct teach. When I began teaching (in the late 1900s), cellphones were not a concern nor were tablet computers and online games. Kids were still playing and interacting with each other in person. But over the years, that changed. With the development of handheld technology and online gaming, kids’ interaction with one another has become increasingly virtual and less face-to-face, introducing a need for explicit teaching of in-person conversation skills. Suddenly, I had to teach students how to sit or stand near one another, physical proximity. How to look one another in the eye. How to tilt a head and nod as the one person speaks. How to wait until the speaker stops. How to paraphrase what the speaker said or ask for clarification.

Modeling. There are a few ways I modeled listening and speaking protocols. If I had the benefit of a co-teacher or teacher’s aide in the classroom, I would use that person to role-model a conversation. We modeled two examples: one that demonstrated effective listening and one that did not. The class discussed the characteristics of both.

Practice. Providing students with numerous opportunities to practice listening each day is crucial. Yes, we listen all day. However, what I mean here is deliberately selecting specific times throughout the day and lessons to have students pause and intentionally demonstrate listening skills. Kids need practice with listening in a variety of modalities, including listening to:

• The teacher
• An audio
• A video
• A peer
• A group of peers

Each of these requires a slightly different lens through which the listener filters information.

Accountability. Hold students accountable for listening. After a round of listening to someone or something, call on a few randomly to share what they heard, summarize, or paraphrase their understanding. English learners at beginning levels of proficiency in English may need an additional scaffold to participate successfully. They can have time for rehearsal before sharing. You can provide a thinking or speaking frame or have the group prepare the speaker before they share their thoughts.

CAUTION

There are some things I recommend avoiding when it comes to helping English learners develop stronger listening comprehension in English.

• Using technology as the sole source of listening development for English learners. While technology can be a helpful assistant, it should not be the sole or primary source of instruction, especially for English learners. English earners’ listening development cannot thrive if they are not actively participating in rich conversations and interactions with their grade-level peers.

• Winging it and hoping that listening will develop. Listening will develop but at a slower rate and likely not as precisely as it would have had you planned it. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are interconnected; therefore, we must pay attention and invest in English learners’ listening development just as much as we do in the other domains.

Spoken language is different from written language. Listeners have to employ special skills. Sometimes, as experts, we forget how challenging listening (especially in a language we are learning) might be. As the late language scholar Larry Vandergrift wrote: “Second language listening comprehension is a complex process, crucial in the development of second language competence.”

‘Better Listeners Become Better Learners’

Bobson Wong and Larisa Bukalov teach math at Bayside High School in New York City. They are co-authors of The Math Teacher’s Toolbox: Hundreds of Practical Ideas to Support Your Students and Practical Algebra: A Self-Teaching Guide (3rd edition) and winners of the Math for America Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education.

One of our biggest challenges in the classroom is getting our EL students to listen to what we say. We speak loudly and clearly enough for our students to hear us, but too often, our words don’t make sense to them. We face particular challenges in getting students to listen because we teach math, a subject with a highly specialized vocabulary and notation.

Whenever we ask our students why they don’t understand us, they tell us that our words literally sound like a different language to them. In response, we’ve adopted teaching techniques originally designed for English learners because we’ve found that they are effective for all learners in all subjects.

Our strategies are based on research that organizes the process of learning a language into stages. In the earliest stage, learners absorb the new language by listening and understanding. To improve students’ listening skills, we start with techniques that help students to pronounce the relevant vocabulary terms and symbols in each lesson. After all, those who can’t pronounce something will struggle to understand its meaning.

We review the pronunciation of terms and symbols in class, asking students to repeat them in a choral response while we display them on the board. We test recognition of these terms by asking students to copy each term or symbol on an index card. Then we read a text (such as a definition or a word problem) and ask students to hold up the appropriate card every time they hear the term. Students can later convert the index cards into flash cards by writing the definitions on the back.

As students become more comfortable with the language, we use strategies that encourage them to communicate using short phrases. Annotation—a strategy typically associated with reading—can also help students improve their listening skills. We read a text and ask students to follow along with a copy of the text that they have in front of them. As we read, we ask students to summarize each sentence or section in their own words. Students can turn to a partner and state their summaries orally, or they can write their summaries on paper (we leave space in the margin of our handout).

Eventually, we ask students to listen to text without having it in front of them and ask them to summarize it in their own words. At this developing stage, we encourage students to use whatever language is most comfortable for them because we want them to focus on making sense of the text instead of constantly worrying about using proper grammar and syntax.

When students increase their fluency, we use more advanced strategies. For example, we ask students to answer questions orally—either privately or in front of others. Oral questions range from basic definitions (“What is the definition of a rectangle?”) to more challenging topics that require higher-order thinking (“Explain why the mean of a right-skewed data set is always greater than the median”). Students can also work in small groups to discuss a problem. They can alternate between asking questions (“What should we do first?” “Why can’t we do this yet?”) and providing answers using correct formal language.

We find that when students improve their listening skills, we promote a growth mindset. Students realize that they aren’t born with a fixed amount of knowledge, and their confidence increases. They are more likely to take more risks and keep trying. In short, better listeners become better learners.

‘Listen and Do’

Millicent Williams is an ESL teacher of teacher of 10 years and the podcast host of “My Adventures in ESL":

Here are some of the listening lessons that I do that you can try in your classroom.

One of my classroom favorites is Listen and Do. I provide the students with a paper filled with nine pictures. I then instruct them that I am going to ask them to do something with the pictures and that they must listen carefully. For example, I will place a star over the house or draw a cloud above the tree. I noticed when I first did this activity with the students that they were missing a lot of steps. As time passed, they strengthened their listening skills.

The second listening lesson I do with my students is called Listen and Draw. During the Listen and Draw lesson, students listen to a short story (about two paragraphs) about a topic. Afterward, they draw a picture of what happened in the story. You can make this activity more advanced by having the students sequence the events in the story.

Thanks to Valentina, Bobson, Larisa, and Millicent for contributing their thoughts.

Responses today answered this question:

What are instructional strategies and specific lessons you use to promote English learners’ (and English-proficient students) listening skills?

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on X at @Larryferlazzo or on Bluesky at @larryferlazzo.bsky.social

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