Here is a link to a Kahoot on IELTS Listening that I found useful for my class: IELTS Listening Test by HennoK. In my class, I used this to supplement Listening Section 1 p.12 of Expert IELTS 6.
Showing posts with label IELTS Listening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IELTS Listening. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Ways to Make IELTS Listening Lessons More Interesting
[I got a request from a teacher for advice on how to make IELTS Listening lessons more interesitng. Admittedly it's an uphill battle, but I threw together all the ideas I had, and sent off an email. And then I decided to put it on this blog as well. If anyone has any extra ideas, please leave them in the comments section.]
I got a request from a teacher for ideas for more dynamic activities for IELTS listening. I went through my archives to find all the activities I had for IELTS listening lessons, and I thought I'd share them below.
I've only got 7, but I thought that if we all pooled our ideas, we could probably come up with a lot more. So if anyone else has any more ideas or activities for listening lessons, please share your stuff as well.
1. The IELTS Resource Pack by Jon Marks is a good starting point.
The listening section is more limited than some of the other skills, but there are at least 4 good activities in here.
2. Re-arrange the strips in order game--use to review what listening strategies the students should use on the test, and the order they should do them in.
Strips are cut up and shuffled before class.
Students are put into groups, and have to re-arrange the strips in the correct order.
3. Find your partner games to review IELTS listening strategies. (I have two examples in my archives, here and here. More examples can be created depending on what particular strategies you want to review with your class.)
I usually do this game in 2 rounds. The first round is a whole class game, where each student gets one card, and has to find the student with the matching half.
In the second round, students are put into groups of 3, and each group of 3 is given a set of shuffled cards and must match each card to its matching half.
4. Write your own Listening Part 1 Test
I thought it might be useful for students to try to get into the heads of the test writers, so they can better predict what kind of tricks the test writers will use.
This activity is done in groups. Students are encouraged to write a dialogue with lots of distrators and synonyms and paraphrases, just like the real test. Then I make photocopies of the questions for the rest of the class, and distribute it, and the students read out their dialogue as a "live" listening for their classmates
5. Board Race
This is useful for directing students' attention to the information in the textbook. It can be adapted for any pages of the textbook, but one example is here. After the game, I usually do feedback on a PowerPoint or slideshow to ensure that everyone knows the correct answer. Example here.
6. Treasure Hunt
As with the Board Race, this is another way of directing students attention to the test tips and test strategies in their textbook.
The questions are cut up and hid around the classroom, and students are put into groups and have to find the questions, and then find the answers in their textbook. (This requires a little bit of advance preparation, since you have to go into the room about 15 minutes before the students to hide the questions). It can be adapted to any page of the textbook, but an example is here. And again, I do feedback on PowerPoint. Example here.
7. Quiz Game
Another way to focus students' attention on the information in their textbook.
Students are told one lesson before the pages of the textbook that will be on the quiz, and their homework is to memorize the information.
On the next class, students are divided into teams, and play the quiz game.
Here's one example. (This is actually an example from a reading lesson, but the same format can be used for a listening lesson.) When I did this in my class, I put the categories and the numbers up on the board, but the students couldn't see the actual questions.
Teams choose a category and a number, and place their bet before hearing the question. (Each team has 10 points to start out, and throughout the game their maximum bet is limited to the number of points that they currently have).
If a team misses the question, they lose the amount of points that they have bet. I then allow other teams to try to steal those points by answering the question correctly.
For extra, extra fun, the same quiz game idea can be used with a "Hurricane" game format. In Hurricane, a grid is drawn on the whiteboard. (Numbers 1-5 on the vertical axis, letters A-E on the horizontal axis). Each space on the grid corresponds to a question. The teacher has the key to which questions match each grid space, but the students do not know. The students chose a grid space and bet their points without knowing the question. Then the teacher reads the question. For extra extra extra fun, a few of the grids in the Hurricane game have special surprises in them (e.g. "a hurricane" means they lose all their points. "A rocket" means they destroy another team's points. "an arrow" means they change points with another team. "+200" means plus 200 points. etc)
Examples of Hurricane games can be found here and here. These are not IELTS questions, but the same template can be adapted for IELTS questions.
This can be used to review test rules, tips and strategies from the textbook. Or it can be used to review your own material that you have given to the students.
Friday, February 24, 2017
IELTS Express Upper Intermediate Unit 8: Listening p.84-87
(Supplementary Materials for Specific Textbooks--IELTS Express Upper Intermediate)
Transcript 8.5
Early pioneers described the development of an infant’s motor skills in great detail. In the 1930s and ‘40s, Arnold Gesell identified 22 stages in the development of crawling, beginning with the lifting of the head from a prone position and ending with an even, balanced crawl on hands and feet. Myrtle McGraw similarly identified seven primary stages in the development of walking, from a newborn’s stepping movements to the baby’s ability to walk independently by the end of its first year. For these pioneers, motor development was a consequence of neuromuscular maturation, that is mainly independent changes in an infant’s brain, its muscles and last but not least its growing skeleton.
Transcript 8.6
This theory of neuromuscular maturation became the popularly accepted explanation for motor development for the next forty years or so. It was not until the 1980s that new research methods and technologies allowed researchers to analyse and measure the development of infants’ motor skills in a different way. One such way is the Dynamic Systems Approach, which was developed by the psychologist Esther Thelen, building on the work of a Russian physiologist Nicholai Bernstein. In this account, new motor skills are believed to emerge from the coming together of a variety of interacting factors. For example, in order for a child to walk independently a number of these factors must be in place: the child’s muscles must be powerful enough to counteract the effects of gravity. As mentioned earlier, the stepping instinct is common in newborn babies, but they lack the bodily strength to maintain an upright position. However, when they are placed in water, thus making them lighter, they begin to make stepping motions. When they are removed from the water, the action ceases. The stepping reflex normally disappears after a few months. By the way, as I’m sure many of you will know newborn babies can swim; however this ability is lost with age and has to be relearnt. In order to walk a child should also have lost the top-heavy body proportions typical of infants. The resulting lowering of its center of gravity gives it better balance and means that it does not have to hold on to things in order to remain upright. They also need a reason to walk. If the baby has no need to go anywhere, why should it? Very young babies cannot see that well, but as its vision and brain matures, it can identify objects from a distance and so its interest is aroused. At the same time this improvement in perception makes it more aware of its environment. In other words it can identify the nature of its surroundings and the type of terrain it needs to traverse, making progress possible.
Transcript 8.7
Perception plays a more important role in another approach to motor skills development—the Perception-Action approach, which was inspired by the work of Jane and Eleanor Gibson. For them, there is a strong correlation between our perception of the world around us and our ability to perform movement within it. In other words, our ability to move is not just down to the physical development of our bodies, but also our perceptual ability. For an action to be planned and executed successfully, we need to have perceptual information about certain properties of the environment, our bodies and the relationship between the two. At the same time, we usually acquire sensory information through the use of movement. For example, we may use exploratory movement of body parts such as the hands, feet, eyes and head to generate perceptual information. In a similar way, actions generate more information for perceptual systems. Furthermore, motor development does not stop after infancy. After mastering basic postural, manipulative and locomotor skills, children acquire many more abilities: writing, playing an instrument, etc. While movement is stiff, wasteful and uncoordinated at first, with practice it becomes progressively more rhythmical, smooth, and efficient.
Friday, February 17, 2017
IELTS Express Upper Intermediate Progress Test 3 p.70-74
(Supplementary Materials for Specific Textbooks--IELTS Express Upper Intermediate)
Progress Test 3 Listening Transcript
Vaugh: Hi Shelley.
Shelley: Hi Vaughn. Just working on my presentation on the decline of the British bird population.
V: Birds, Hm.
S: Did you know the number of countryside birds has decreased dramatically over the last two decades?
V: Er, can’t say I’d noticed. I don’t get out to the country much.
S: Well, maybe you should, while there’s still some birds there.
V: Well, Shelley, these things happen. We can’t…
S: This is important, Vaughn. The status of the wild bird population is indicative of the health of the environment. A struggling bird population means a sick environment.
V: So, why is this happening?
S: Mainly loss of habitat. The countryside is quite different from what it was twenty or thirty years ago.
V: Why’s that?
S: It’s mostly due to changes in farming practices.
V: Really? The farmers are to blame?
S: To an extent, yes. Certainly the rise in the use of chemicals has had a big impact.
V: And they’re poisonous to birds, are they?
S: Not directly, but their use results in the loss of plant and invertebrate food sources. Kill off what a bird eats, kill off the bird.
V: That’s why it’s called “the food chain”.
S: Exactly. And another key factor is that crop sowing times have changed. In the past farmers would harvest a crop of, say, wheat, in high summer, and leave the remains of the plant, the stubble, in the ground until the next spring, when they would plant new crops.
V: So what happens now?
S: Now they remove the stubble and plant the new crops in the autumn. Because it’s in the ground longer, the crop has more time to grow and they get a better yield.
V: Well, how does that affect birds?
S: The stubble used to provide an ideal habitat for birds to forage for food during the harsh winter months.
V: Oh, I see.
S: Other habitats are destroyed in other ways. For example, grasslands are drained or ploughed up. Hedgerows are removed to create bigger, more cost-effective fields, but the hedgerows provided a place to nest, protection from predators, and a good source of food, like berries, seeds, insects, and so on.
V: So, are all birds equally affected by this? Are they all in decline?
S: The RSPB has…
V: Sorry, the what?
S: The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has drawn up three lists—red, amber and green—which categorise over 240 birds in terms of conservation concern.
V: Red, amber, green—like traffic lights.
S: That’s right, the red list contains 52 species including those that are globally threatened or those whose population has declined rapidly in recent years.
V: What’s on that list? Blackbirds?
S: No, through the starling, which is related to the blackbird, has joined the red list, as has the house sparrow. One of the birds people are most concerned about is the skylark, which has been greatly affected by habitat loss.
V: So what about the amber list?
S: That includes 126 birds with “unfavorable conservation status”, or whose population has declined moderately in recent years. That includes birds of prey, such as the kestrel and osprey, woodlands birds like the green woodpecker, water birds like the shelduck and farmland species such as the reed bunting.
V: And are all other birds on the green list?
S: Not necessarily. It doesn’t include those species that are not native to the UK—foreign species that have been introduced deliberately, such as the Canada goose—or those that have escaped from domestic cages, for example parrots.
V: I don’t suppose it includes summer visitors either, you know, like reed warblers.
S: No, they are included in fact. They are in this last category.
V: So, is anybody doing anything about all this?
S: Thankfully, yes. The RSPB is campaigning to stop this loss of biodiversity by putting pressure on the government to invest money to rescue and protect threatened habitats.
V: But I thought you said that farmers were to blame?
S: Well, the RSPB has called on the government to reform the Common Agricultural Policy so that agricultural subsidies only go to environmentally friendly farmers.
V: I guess that would encourage them to change the way they do things.
S: That’s right. And there’s a further initiative which encourages farmers to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
V: What’s that then?
S: They’re being asked to turn off their seed drills occasionally for a count of two seconds, when sowing winter cereals. This will leave small areas of land, about four meters square, that can be used by skylarks for nesting and feeding.
V: And will farmers do this?
S: Well, farmers are being offered financial incentives to create skylark plots. The RSPB is aiming for two plots in every hectare of land.
V: And will this work?
S: Hopefully. The RSPB reckons that if these empty patches are created on just one fifth of Britain’s arable farmland, the decline of the skylark could be halted and then reversed.
V: Well, that’s very interesting. Let’s hope it works.
S: Yes, let’s.
Reading Progress Test Answers p.72-74
1. Not Given
2. Not Given
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. No
6. Yes
7. F
8. A
9. G
10. C
11. early space rocket/ dirigible
12. roller blinds
13. windows
14. underground entrance
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
IELTS Express Upper Intermediate Second Edition Unit 6 Listening p.62-65
(Supplementary Materials for Specific Textbooks--IELTS Express Upper Intermediate)
1. Listening section 3 is which type of dialogue: academic or everyday life?
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2. How many people talk in listening section 3?
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3. Usually, which type of people will talk in listening section 3?
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4. In section 3, the questions may relate to ___________ rather than ____________.
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5. In classification questions, there is only one answer to each question, but you may _________________________.
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6. Note completion questions have to be completed using words from the recording. Sentence completion questions are similar, but you should ensure that your answer is __________________.
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7. Watch out for _______________! The correct answer can come after the ____________.
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8. TRUE or FALSE: For classification questions, you have to write the full answer.
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9. Before you listen, first identify the ____________, then try to think of any ______________ and _______________.
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10. TRUE or FALSE: the answers will not come close together, so after you here one answer, you can take some time to write it down without worrying about listening for the next answer.
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Treasure Hunt
The teacher has hidden 10 questions. See if you can find and answer the questions. The first team to finish will get a prize.
All the questions come from pages 62, 63, 64 and 65 of your textbook, so make sure you take your textbooks with you. The answers to some questions may be the same.
1._____________________________________________________________________________
2._____________________________________________________________________________
3. ____________________________ _______________________________
4. _____________________________________________________________________________
5. _____________________________________________________________________________
6. . _____________________________________________________________________________
7. _______________________ ___________________________________
8. _____________________________________________________________________________
9. _______________ ______________________ ___________________________
10. _____________________________________________________________________________
Answer key:
1. academic
2. 2 or 3 people
3. students or students and a tutor
4. opinion, fact
5. use each answer more than once
6. grammatically correct
7. distractors, distractor
8. FALSE
9. keywords, synonyms, paraphrases
10. FALSE
D: Hi there, Alison.
A: Hello, Dave. Long time, no see. What’ve you been up to?
D: Oh, this and that. Research mainly.
A: Researching what?
D: The WTO.
A: World Trade Organization.
D: Yes. It’s all part of this project I’m doing on globalization.
A: Oh, yeah. We did that last year. What do you make of it then?
D: Well, it’s not exactly the most caring of organisations, is it?
A: What do you mean, Dave?
D: WTO rules favour the larger companies from wealthy countries.
A: In what way?
D: Well, by prohibiting protection through discriminatory tariffs, it’s hard for poor countries to build up domestic industries.
A: That may be the case. But I’m sure that’s not a deliberate policy. Anyway, you could argue that the rules laid down by the World Trade Organisation don’t exactly help smaller companies from the richer nations either.
D: Why not?
A: Well, many companies in wealthy countries, especially textile and clothing producers, oppose globalization because they can’t compete with cheaper imports made in countries with lower production costs.
D: Like China.
A: Exactly.
D: Ah. And that’s another thing.
A: What is?
D: Democracy. The WTO isn’t the most democratic of organisations, is it?
A: Why do you say that? You know, all of the WTO’s rules have to be ratified by member states and all decisions are reached through consensus.
D: Yes, but all those decisions are made behind closed doors.
A: Maybe, Dave. But I still believe that the WTO is a force for strengthening democracy throughout the world, as it encourages international trade and therefore the exchange of ideas and beliefs, including democracy.
D: I can’t see how you arrive at that conclusion, Alison. No, if you ask me, it’s quite the opposite. The WTO actually weakens the democratic process, because it allows the formation of enormous multinational organisations that are richer and more powerful than some countries. And that can’t be good. When it comes to global democracy, the WTO has a weakening effect.
A: I suppose you’re going to tell me that the WTO should regulate international companies over pollution next.
D: And so they should. The WTO allows global companies to locate pollution-producing industries in poor countries.
A: This idea is nonsense, Dave. Why would a company choose to relocate a whole plant to the other side of the world? The cost would be enormous. It would be much cheaper for the company to clean up the existing plant.
D: Maybe, but look at the extensive logging of the rainforests, Alison. You must agree that the WTO should regulate that?
A: The WTO’s regulations allow for countries to protect such natural resources. What does worry me is the way agricultural seed companies focus on high-yield, disease-resistant plants at the expense of other plants. This policy is destroying plant biodiversity and that can only spell trouble. No, these seed companies need regulating.
D: Well, at least we’re agreed on something. Fancy a cup of coffee?
A: Only if it’s Fairtrade.
D: What? In this place? You’ll be lucky. Come on…
K: OK, Peter, we need to decide about our presentation next week.
P: OK, Katya. What do you think we should talk about?
K: Well, Dr. Chobham said to look at some of the factors that have contributed to the process of globalization.
P: Er, yes. I was thinking maybe we could do something on the Internet.
K: Really?
P: Yeah, along with things like satellite TV and cheap flights, I’d say the Internet was really important in terms of globalisation.
K: I think you’ve got something there, Peter. I mean anyone can get hold of all that information anywhere on the planet.
P: All you need is a computer, a modem and a phone line.
K: Precisely.
K: And apparently, I was reading, the Internet and mobile telephones allow developing countries to leapfrog steps in the development of their infrastructure.
P: What does that mean?
K: Well, for example, the Philippines has a poor landline telephone system, but with a mobile phone and computer, you don’t need to use it.
P: I don’t even know anyone here who uses a computer with their mobile!
K: But in my book, the Internet has moved far from its non-commercial roots. When it was created it was meant to be a tool for people to communicate with each other. These days it’s dominated by big business which is only interested in selling you yet more stuff, I get so much junk mail, and all these pop-ups!
P: Oh, that doesn’t bother me. I rather like to know what’s on offer.
K: The Internet could also be seen as divisive.
P: In what way?
K: Well-off countries have much greater access to the Internet and communication services in general. What we are witnessing is an information revolution and less well-off countries are getting left behind.
P: Up to a point. Yes, not everyone has access to the Internet at home. But many places have shared communal access—Some villages in Africa, for example. But on the whole, it’s such a great way of exchanging ideas.
K: Ha! I think you’ll find it’s a one-way street. The vast majority of websites are in English and western values dominate.
P: I know, I know. You think it’s a kind of cultural imperialism.
K: I think that’s a fair assessment, don’t you?
P: I think you’re exaggerating the situation there, Katya. For me, and millions of other people, it’s just an easy way of keeping in touch with family and friends, even when you are thousands of miles away.
K: Ah, that reminds me. It’s my mum’s birthday today. I forgot to send her a card!
P: Why not send her an electronic card?
K: Great idea! Where would we be without the Internet?
T: Welcome back. I trust you had a good break and that you managed to read the books I recommended to you. Any problems, Brad?
B: You know, I thought “Hands off the Planet” might be difficult to get hold of. As it turned out, they had a whole stack of them in my local bookstore. It was even on special offer.
J: Yeah, and you get a free password to enter a website dedicated to the book.
T: Really, Janet?
J: Yeah, I tried to take a look at it but the link wasn’t working.
T: Ah well, and what about Dr Jones’ book?
B: The bookstore said it was reprinting at the moment. But in the end I managed to track down a copy in a second-hand bookshop.
T: Smart thinking there, Brad. How about you, Janet?
J: Well, my brother had a copy so I just borrowed that.
T: Good, so what did you make of them?
B: I loved “Hands off the Planet,” it was such an easy read, unlike “The Future is Bright”. I mean, it kept losing me, the argument just kept jumping around.
J: I know what you mean, it wasn’t helped by the fact that quite a few of the quotes in foreign languages were left untranslated, it’s as if we’re all expected to be multilingual!
T: Yes, I’m afraid that Dr Jones does like to show off his familiarity with different languages. I’ll certainly make that point to him next time I see him.
J: But I think the main problem with Dr Jones’ book was that it assumed a previous knowledge of the subject.
B: Yeah, right. There were some chapters where I felt way out of my depth. I had no idea what he was talking about.
J: I had to get my brother to explain it to me!
B: I just didn’t feel Dr Jones’ book was very user-friendly. Unlike “Hands off the Planet” it had no illustrations, and the section containing the extended interviews with all those foreign businessmen just went on and on.
J: Didn’t it just!
T: Well, it is a little on the long side, yes, but I think it remains a relevant and valuable resource, though on reflection it may have been a wiser option to have put these in the back of the book.
J: As an appendix?
T: Precisely.
T: So you preferred “Hands off the Planet”, did you, Brad?
B: Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. Crilly obviously spent an awful lot of time preparing this book, all those amazing facts and figures. The chapter on how cinema, TV and newspapers are becoming more global was really well researched. In fact I was shocked to read just how powerful and influential some of these media corporations are.
J: Yes, though I thought at times the author just conveniently overlooked any data that didn’t support his argument. It seemed to be quite biased, I thought.
B: That’s because he’s passionate about all this. He’s very concerned about the future of the planet.
J: Well, that’s highly commendable, I’m sure. But oversimplifying things to such an extent greatly distorts the true picture, and by adopting so radical a position he can actually put people off.
B: Yes, but he sees it as his mission to make people sit up and take notice.
J: Well, to be honest, I’m surprised we were asked to read this book at all.
T: Really, Janet? What makes you say that?
J: It’s quite lightweight, isn’t it? I’m not surprised they had so many in the bookshop. I don’t know. I just didn’t find the tone academic enough for serious study.
B: You mean you didn’t like the Captain Planet comic strips? I thought they were hilarious!
J: Yes, I liked them. They were quite amusing. But I didn’t think that they were particularly appropriate for a serious subject such as globalization.
T: Hmm, I tend to agree with you there, Janet, but other students have read it in the past and most of them have been favourable towards it.
J: Another factor which I felt detracted from the academic nature of the book was that there was no index, whereas the one in Dr Jones’ book is excellent.
B: Ah yes, it was superb. More than could be said for the bibliography in “Hands off the Planet”. It’s virtually non-existent.
T: Well maybe there’s some more information on the website, if you can make it work that is. OK, thank you for your comments. All very interesting and most useful. Now if we could just focus in on some of the ideas expressed in these books…
B: …especially with bananas and so on.
J: Oh, I know exactly what you mean.
T: OK. Time for us to wrap up. Now, I’d like you to write an essay. The title is… “Globlisation: right or wrong?”
J: How many words?
T: One thousand, five hundred.
J: When is it for?
T: Where are we? January 21st. Shall we say in one week’s time? The 28th?
B: Oh. I’m not sure; we’ve got exams till the 26th.
T: Fine. Let’s call it February the 2nd. That will give you the weekend.
J: OK. And do you want us to email it to you?
T: Best not to. We’ve had a few problems with the system in the past. No, pop it in the internal post. Right, I’d better hurry. I’ve got a lecture in five minutes; now where did I put my gloves?
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