Activities for listening practice and communication

Sound discrimination. Provide students with many similar contrasting sounds and ask them to discriminate which is which.
Word stress discrimination. Read words (con’trast, ‘contrast; re’cord, ‘record …) and ask them to identify the stressed syllable.
Sentence stress discrimination. Read a sentence with varying word stress and ask students to identify which word is emphasized.
Dictation. Provide students with sounds, words, sentences, songs, and/or texts and ask them to write what they hear. This is a very effective measure of comprehension.
Close exercises.
Songs: Transcribe a song and take out every 5th (6th, 7th, 8th …) word. Play the song and have the students fill in blanks.
Texts: Similar to above. Read or play a tape-recorded text and have students fill in the blanks on a transcript of the text.
Comprehension questions (provide before listening). These can be multiple choice; true/false; or open-ended.
Identifying/describing emotional tones. Prepare texts showing anger, excitement, sadness, fear, joy, confusion, etc. Compare and contrast them and ask students to identify and describe what they hear.
Progressive listening. Students listen to a recorded passage several times. First time through they listen for major divisions in the passage (How many people did you hear speak?). Second time through they answer the questions which have direct answers from the passage. (What did the man think about the woman’s new dress?). Third time involves more abstract questions or inferences. (How do you think the woman feels?)