Introduction

Listening comprehension begins at a young age and learners interact with people around them. The importance of developing listening comprehension and the process of teaching the same for the students of class 4, using the relevant Learning Principles of BC Curriculum are discussed in detail at this phase of the inquiry project.

                                Topic exploration

Key Highlights and Key Questions

Listening comprehension encompasses the multiple processes involved in understanding and making sense of the spoken language. The main purpose of this inquiry-based project and classroom activities are to help learners to master listening skills through activities which help them to listen for appreciation, listening for comprehension, listening to show support and critical thinking. Listening for appreciation helps to enjoy something and an example could be listening to music while exercising. Listening for comprehension is learning something new. Listening to support means to understand what others speak and contribute accordingly. Critical listening is to evaluate the matter, using careful and systematic thinking and reasoning.

The following are the key questions for inquiry within the topic of study:

-How to gain better comprehension (largely controlled) through listening?

-What are the practices that contribute to the ability of identifying difficult sounds, words and phrases to support listening comprehension?

-How to develop language competency through listening?

-What are the ways to develop listening confidence?

-How to overcome poor listening?

-How to improve concentration during listening activity?

Here when students learn through inquiry, they ask their own questions, gather multiple sources of information for a purpose, think critically, actively make connections and establish new understandings and knowledge. It provides the learners with the opportunity to explore subjects, concepts, and ideas in a way that uniquely sparks learning in each individual student. Inquiry is our quest for meaning or sense-making, value, purpose, perspective, and awareness (Heesoon Bai,2005).Learning to listen carefully builds the ability and confidence in the process of language acquisition as well as in real life. The main aim of the activities is to help students gain knowledge of what looks like and feels like to be an active listener, engaged and responsive to a speaker, and able to complete a task by following directions. According to Wiggins and McTighe (2013 ) Successful inquiry leads us to ‘see’ and ‘grasp’ and ‘make sense’ of things that were initially puzzling, murky, or fragmented: thus questioning is meant to culminate in new and more revealing meaning.

  Learning activities

Listening activities would be handled effectively so that the students need to focus on instructions given and they must be able to integrate it with other skills. Given below are some of the classroom activities which are appropriate to their age and help them to master the skill through fun and games. These are some tried and tested listening activities for group lessons or large classes.Learning ultimately should help students see that things can be other than as they seem, other than as they are. Learning entails a commitment to human freedom, to “the capacity to surpass the given and look at things as if they could be otherwise…the capacity to choose and the power to act to attain one’s purposes” (Greene 1988).

Sound Vocabulary

If the lesson is about a vocabulary unit on animals, modes of transportation or anything else that leads itself to specific noises, students have to match sounds to words. The vocabulary words will be provided on index cards or in a number list. Now sounds associated with each word, such as sounds that the item makes, sounds that they hear at a place, or conversation that might happen in association with the words. Then students match each sound clip to the appropriate vocabulary word. This is a perfect activity to start with as it is simple and this activity can be done in small groups as they get the opportunity to share the ideas and ask possible questions to their teacher and friends, and reach conclusions. This is a sample worksheet of the activity where students can categorise the sounds and mark them.

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Audio listening activity

In this activity students can constantly listen to the audio files provided. A worksheet will be provided with some questions and they need to write the correct answers after listening. This allows students to gauge how they are doing. In between the teacher pauses the audio after each session and allows students to make comments, share ideas or ask questions related to pronunciation, content or accent of the played matter.The curiosity of the students will be aroused as they listen to a variety of listening activities

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https://youtu.be/nouJPZMl1Mk( Listening audio)

(Worksheet of the above audio)

Back-to-back interview

What better way to improve listening skills than to listen to each other? This is a great activity for practicing listening without relying on lip reading or actions. It also incorporates speaking practice, thus killing two birds with one stone. This activity can be used to introduce famous people you want to talk about during your lesson.

Pairs of students sit back-to-back, one as the interviewer with a list of questions. The interviewee is given a famous person to role play, with a list of answers. (This can also be done as an exercise to learn more about each other personally. For example, at the beginning of a course when students don’t know each other well). The interviewer asks the questions, writing down the answers as they go along. The fastest interviewer to work out who they’re talking to wins!The activities help the students to activate prior knowledge, making predictions, setting a purpose, making connections, asking questions, previewing written text, making inferences, drawing conclusions and using context clues.

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Story Listening

Read students a story. Students may ask questions regarding the story that was read by the teacher. After the story, summarize the story as a group. Call on one student to tell the first significant event in the story, then another student for the next and so on. The students will have to work hard to listen so as not to let their classmates down. During the activity students get ample chances to modify, improvise and explain the actual text that promotes the creativity.Questioning what they hear, read and view contributes to their ability to be educated and engaged citizens

Telephone

This is one of the oldest games in the book, but it’s still a fun one! Have students get in a circle. One person will start the “phone call” by whispering a secret message in the ear of the person next to him/her. That person then whispers it to the next and so on. The listener only gets one chance to hear the message correctly; he/she has to pass on whatever was heard. Once the message goes all the way around the circle, the last person repeats the message out loud. Usually, it will be a scrambled-up version of the original message.The students access and integrate information and ideas to build understanding.

Possibilities of the project

The activities are designed in a way to motivate young learners and involve in the activities curiously. The primary aim of the activities is to improve accuracy and there by gain better comprehension over the matter.The students might discover that listening comprehension is a hard and challenging skill to master. It is at this stage that teachers are expected to affect a change and come up with listening exercises that are more interesting and effective. In this sense the activities should exploit listening strategies such as pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening, predicting and asking for clarification.We get into inquiry because of our desire to see and understand differently, with better insight and creative possibilities of interaction, the particular situation and people that one encounters in one’s life, and one’s own reactions to them. In other words, inquiry is not an abstract exercise but a living practice. (Heesoon Bai)

  Concerns

Since hearing information is the best way for an auditory learner to absorb information, a student in a classroom needs to whisper or read review materials out loud. This might not be advisable if other students are present and reviewing at the same time since the person who learns by listening can disturb other students. Auditory learning might be effective for other people but not for some. This technique also comes with distractions that can impact the learning process. Say, in a classroom setting.

Learning Principles from BC Curriculum
K-12 core competencies

The curiosity of the students will be aroused as they listen to a variety of listening activities. The activities help the students to activate prior knowledge, making predictions, setting a purpose, making connections, asking questions, previewing written text, making inferences, drawing conclusions and using context clues.

Big Ideas

Exploring various activities helps the students to understand themselves and make connections to others and to the world. They can understand the provided matter from different perspectives and help them to understand how language works. Questioning what they hear, read and view contributes to their ability to be educated and engaged citizens.

Learning Standards for Curricular Content

The students access and integrate information and ideas to build understanding. They use a variety of comprehension strategies before, during and after listening to deepen understanding of the given matter. They recognize the role of language in personal, social and cultural identity.

First Peoples principles for learning

The teaching strategies should be designed according to the capacity of the individuals. The teacher should have an idea about their prior knowledge and then plan the next level activities accordingly. The various aspects of language like vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation etc should be taken care of and the activities should be designed in such a way to deepen the knowledge in order to develop listening comprehension.

                                Conclusions

Through this project students get the opportunity to ask and answer questions, solve problems and conduct investigations and research. Along with this help the project helps to respond to the situations in personal and creative ways. Inquiry is part of human nature, but one can benefit from learning how to be a good inquirer.