David J. Lyndon David J. Lyndon

Teaching Practice 6 - Listening
A2 level


This is a listening lesson within the context of preparing a house-sitter. The idea is to teach some basic home related vocabulary and then listen to a conversation between the home owner and the house-sitter. We will ask the students to react to this listening by using it to answer possible worries that a house-sitter might have.


Main Aims

  • To provide gist and specific information listening practice using a text about household items in the context of introducing a housesitter to your house.

Subsidiary Aims

  • To provide practice of household items vocabulary in the context of introducing a housesitter to your house.



Picture of snoopy on the board. What he is doing? Elicit house-sitting. Ask what house-sitiing means, and elicit the idea of living in another persons house while they are away to look after the house. If it becomes necessary to explain, then we will tie in Bahar's story from last lesson about going to Bali, and ask who looked after the house when she was away. We will lie and say her sister did! This is house-sitting.

Pre-Listening (5-10 minutes) • To build students vocabulary and enable the listening

Sts given HO. Match words to numbered pictures. Sts work in groups (prearranged by seating pattern). Check using track 2.3. Have students repeat. Drill any that they say badly.

Prediction (3-5 minutes) • To encourage students to think about the context

Explain the setting of the upcoming conversation, using the picture on the handout. Elicit what they might hear. We are looking for answers like. "Where are the towels\Where the towels are"

While-Listening #1 (8-12 minutes) • To provide students with less challenging gist and specific information listening tasks

Handout. Direct attention to part 1. Explain. Students individually try to understand which place is being talked about in each of the four conversation parts. ICQ: How many parts are there? 4. Will we work individually? Yes. What will we write next to each topic? A number from 1-4 Don't give answers. Explain: Listen to the recording again. Ask sts to write the part number next to the words that they hear in part 2 of the handout. Give example. "I hear pots and pans in part 1. I write '1' here next to pots and pans" ICQ. What will we write next to each item? 1-4 Will we talk with our friends? No Will this help us to know which place is being talked about? Yes. Stop after each part to check answers from different people, and ask which place the part refers to, thereby checking part 1 and 2 simultaneously. Use different colors to highlight on the board which words belong where. Give out answers sheet if necessary.

While-Listening #2 (15-20 minutes) • To provide students with a more challenging detailed listening task

I will lead in by asking the students to cline their worries if they were to housesit for a friend. The worries will be on cards prewritten to allow students to move. These worries will be answered in the listening. We will need at least 8 so that we can do PW at the end. (This should give a little realism to the task, because these would be natural worries.) The students will listen for the answers to the worries. The clined questions will then be hung around the walls. ICQ. Are we writing notes? Only if we want to. Are we listening all the way through? Yes. Can we listen again if we need to? Yes. After listening, using sticky notes, I will have the students write their answers, and stick the notes to the correct worry. (We can listen again if the students have problems.) Then, in pairs I shall give the worries out, and we will listen again. Each pair will be listening to see if they can pick the best answer for their worry. ICQ. Are we listening for all the worries, or just for yours? Ours. Are we listening for new answers, or for the best answer? Best.

(Optional) Post Listening (0-10 minutes) • To give the students an opportunity to react to what they have heard.

I will ask the students to think for 1 minute about the worries that are around the room. If someone were house-sitting for them, how would they answer the questions. I will then ask them to stand by one of the worries and answer it with another person who is standing there.

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