Helping Novice Learners Succeed at Listening

Language learners often struggle to understand target language speakers. Here’s how teachers can help!

I was using one of my favorite songs in my French 1 class, Black M’s “Le Plus Fort du Monde”. 

After we listened, I asked my class, “Did you hear any words you recognized?” I was expecting the kids to mention our current vocabulary; words like “Papa,” “fort,” or “le chef”.

Instead, Jacob enthusiastically told me, “I heard them say “Jumanji”. 

“Jumanji?” I hesitated. “No, they didn’t say that. “Jumanji” isn’t a French word.

“I heard it too!” Max blurted. “They said Jumanji.” Several other students agreed. 

I was confused. “OK, let’s listen to the song again,” I told my class. “You tell me when you hear ‘Jumanji’”. 

It took a few listens before I understood what my students were hearing.  They were blurring three French words (across a sentence break).

“...du monde. Il….”  in my kids’ minds became “Jumanji” (at the :10 second mark and elsewhere in the song).

As an advanced French speaker, my brain identified these sounds as three separate words, meaning “...in the world. He…”   My students, on the other hand, were trying desperately to pull identifiable words out of the “stream” of language. Their brains latched onto these semi-familiar sounds and came up with… Jumanji.

This silly classroom anecdote demonstrates that there’s more to understanding speech than just listening to sounds; your brain has to divide those sounds into words and interpret those words to construct meaning. When listening in a new language, your brain has a lot of unknown stimuli to interpret. That’s why sometimes students think they hear words from their first language that aren’t really there; their brain is trying to pick out known words from the stream of speech. 

It’s important for students to understand how and why listening in the target language is different from listening in English. L2 listening is a process of constructing meaning, and there are specific strategies they can bring to the task. Teaching these strategies at the beginning of students’ language-learning journey will establish good habits and realistic expectations.

1. You don’t have to understand everything.

This is a big hurdle for our students. When they listen in their first language, they typically will understand most of what they hear, with perhaps an occasional unknown word thrown in. Working in the target language is the opposite; most words are unknown, with perhaps an occasional known word (at least for beginners). This shock can be quite discouraging for novice speakers. The first step is to reassure them that it’s OK - normal, even - to not understand everything. 

One way to do this is by providing lots of exposure to texts where students are clearly not expected to understand everything, but instead need to complete a manageable task. My favorite technique is to play students a target language music video, then ask them to discuss their opinion of the song. Every student can share their point of view, no matter how much target language they understood.

2. Focus on the task

Students don’t have to understand everything, but they should understand enough to complete the task. A big part of our job as language teachers is crafting scaffolded tasks the students can accomplish at their current proficiency level. 

For example, the teacher may ask novice students to watch a video of students discussing their class schedules. The teacher might provide these scaffolded tasks for three consecutive viewings of the video.  

First viewing:

• What is this video about?  

• Could you figure out anything they said?  (either the exact target language words, or just the main idea of what they said?)

Second viewing:

• Circle the class each speaker mentions. 

• Does each speaker feel positive or negative about the class they discuss?

Third viewing:

• Match each speaker to the reason they give for their opinion. 

“It took a few listens before I understood what my students were hearing.  They were blurring three French words (across a sentence break). In their brains, the words “...du monde. Il….”  became “Jumanji”.  ”

These tasks are scaffolded, with each requiring students to understand a bit more detail. In between each viewing, the teacher may have students discuss in partners and then with a full class the points they noticed and what cues (both visual and auditory) they used to complete the task. For novice speakers, matching or multiple choice questions can be very effective here: these closed-ended tasks help narrow the range of language students must listen for. With each subsequent viewing, students will notice and understand a bit more. This leads to point three:

3. Listen multiple times

In students' L1, watching a video once may be enough. In L2, students should plan to listen to an audio assignment multiple times to construct meaning from the audio text. This may be quite different from students’ other classes, so the teacher should set the expectation and hold students accountable to take time and embrace the process. It can be very helpful to work through listening texts as a full class when students are beginning to learn language: this allows the teacher to model and coach students in adopting good listening strategies.

4. Pause the video!

It’s very common for students to hear something they recognize, but the video continues and their brain is overwhelmed with stimuli, so students can’t process what they heard. In this case, it’s very helpful to pause the video right after a key piece of information. This gives the brain space to absorb the new bit of information. The teacher can help by isolating bits of the audio and repeating it until kids are able to hear the answer.

5. Slow down the text

Most YouTube videos can be slowed down to .75 speed; this can help learners a lot. Just be sure to replay the audio at full speed once students have practiced a few times.

6. Teach kids to monitor their own comprehension

When working through an audio text, I’ll sometimes ask students “Give me a thumb’s up if you can hear her say what she thinks about her Geography teacher. Give me a thumb’s medium if you can kind of hear it, and a thumb’s down if you can’t hear it yet”. Then I scan the class to see if most kids are getting it, or if students need more support. Many students are reluctant to rate themselves as a “no”, so the thumb’s medium is an important option. If I see a lot of kids in the medium range, I know they need more instruction. Teach students to be aware of their own comprehension: if they listen to a text and “don’t get it”, they shouldn’t throw up their hands and quit! They need to go back and apply strategies one-five to improve their comprehension. 

Listening may be the most challenging skill to teach in world language classes, but with these six strategies, appropriate texts, and achievable tasks, your kids can do it!