8.6.2.6. Exercises in estimating types of cohesion

Exercise 1. Listen to the sentence and name the conjunction between its parts:

1) We go to the forest when the weather is fine.

2. Nick is going to bed because he is sleepy.

Exercise 2. Listen to the sentences and name the personal pronoun used instead of the proper name in the 2^nd sentence: Kate is a schoolgirl. She goes to school every day.

Exercise 3. Listen to the sentences and name the personal pronoun in the 2^nd sentence. Say what word it substitutes: There are many stories about wise people. They always know what to do and what to say in a difficult situation.

8.6.2.7. Exercises in telling the main idea in a group of sentences

These exercises help develop a listening skill at the super-phrasal level. Exercise 1. Listen to the utterance and answer the question:

Sp.: Kate is 5. Ann is a pupil. Nick is a student. Who is the youngest?

P.: Kate is the youngest.

Exercise 2. Listen to the sentences and retell their gist in one phrase:

Sp.: Tom did not like to go to school. He did not like to do his homework. He never helped his mother.

P.: He was lazy-bones.

8.6.2.8. Exercises in developing auditive memory and attention

Exercise 1. Listen and repeat: A rabbit

A nice rabbit

I have a nice rabbit.

I have a nice white rabbit.

I have a nice white rabbit at home. Etc.

Exercise 2. Listen to the words and reproduce only those, which are connected with Christmas: celebrate, game, signal, slogan, camp, parade, tribune, cones, illumination, fir-tree, icicles.

Exercise 3. Listen to the sentences and say what is missed in the 2^nd phrase:

Sp.: A well-dressed gentleman was sitting on a bench in the park.

A well-dressed gentleman was sitting on a bench.

P.: In the park.

Exercises, preparing for listening to oral texts, are very important. They provide students with the items at a sentence and super-phrasal level. The better students can cope with the elements, the sooner they will be able to listen to authentic listening material.

8.6.3. Authentic listening material

By the time students are at the intermediate level it is likely that they will be moving towards using ungraded and unscripted listening material.

8.6.3.1. Authentic listening material at the early stages

Generally speaking, listening material, which does include structures and vocabulary beyond the ability level of students, can be selected, providing the task the students have to perform after the listening is within their capabilities. In other words, the activity, and not the material, is graded. However, it does not follow that any kind of authentic material will be successful with a class of 11-year-olds because of the choice of the topic. It is much easier to pay attention to an uninteresting text than to one on an irrelevant topic.

So long as the topic of the text is chosen with care, authentic material can be used even at the beginner stages. The activity must, however, be graded. For example, the teacher can play extracts from different types of radio programmes to the students, who have to identify what type of programme they are listening to (news, sport commentary, etc.). Listening to the news, students can be asked to identify the main news items. If real conversations are used, they can try to identify where the conversations took place and what was happening, or they can try to gauge the attitudes of the speakers – whether they are angry, friendly, happy, sad, etc. Authentic materials are also important as a motivating device. Students get real satisfaction from having made some sense out of real-life language at the early stages. If teachers can show students how easy it is to understand something from authentic material rather than how difficult it is to understand everything, then students are more likely to want to understand more.