Before doing a listening task with Ss in the classroom I always focus their attention on the topic and elicit any...

Before doing a listening task with Ss in the classroom I always focus their attention on the topic and elicit any background knowledge they may have on,it. Recently with my intermediate Ss there was a listening in the course book I teach about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. I always play the recording twice, and the first time round I pause straight after the answer for the questions to give Ss some thinking time. I feel it’s helpful, what do the rest of you think?

I also try to exploit a listening text as much as I would a reading text by creating a second listening task. Penny mentions them as more in-depth tasks on her slides for this session. For the Zuckerberg listening, I wrote sentences about the text and asked Ss to fill in the gaps with a number. In the following lesson, I put a few of the numbers on the board and asked the Ss if they remembered what each number was about. Another follow-up listening activity is for Ss to take down notes on specific things mentioned in the listening.