Word Bingo for Listening

(TESOL Ideas--Activities That Can Be Used With Any Listening Text)

Sample: docs, pub

I got this idea from How to Teach Listening by J.J. Wilson.  On page 83 of the book, it reads:

Bingo: in this activity, which is particularly enjoyable for young learners, the teacher writes a list of words on the board, all of which occur during the listening passage.  These should be content words--nouns and some verbs, not words such as of or and.  The students, working alone, choose and write down seven of these words (or however many the teacher feels is appropriate).  They then listen to the passage. Whenever their word comes up, they tick them.  They shout Bingo! when they have ticked all seven.  This activity is excellent for selective listening though it actually prevents listening for global meaning.  As such, it should only be done after an initial listening has established the gist.

I adapted the activity somewhat.  I created an actual bingo grid, and told my students they needed to get 5 words in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonally).  

I gave the students 30 words to choose from, of which they had to pick 25 to fill out their Bingo sheet.  (This was an EAP class, so the listenings were longer--about 5-7 minutes.   With shorter listenings, maybe less words would work better?)

 I had the students shout out bingo when they got 5 in a row.  We paused the audio, and (just to verify) I had them tell me which 5 words they got.  (Before class I had underlined all the key words in the transcript, so I was able to quickly ascertain whether or not those words had been said on the audio yet.

In my class, I played up until 3 students got bingo (1st place, 2nd place and 3rd place).  Then we stopped the game, congratulated the winners, and went on to the next activity.  

The sample activity linked to above is from Reflect Listening & Speaking 5 Listening: How to Plan a City p.94-97

Vocabulary Bingo

absolutely, architect, argued, authorities, calling for, conversation, compact, disease, demolish, factor, friendly, glass, historian, ideal, invention, knocked down, layout, persuaded, pointed out, preserve,  principle, professionals, proposed, quotation, recognize, recommend , restaurants, square, urban, Vietnam