Effective Listening Comprehension Exercises and Assessment

Three Basic Types of Exercise

We can distinguish three basic types of exercises:

1. Intensive Exercises

These focus on developing specific oral comprehension microskills and more specific aspects of language. In most cases, the fragments to be heard or produced are short, the response to the exercise is unique or closed, students work individually, and the overall duration of the activity is between 5 and 10 minutes.

2. Extensive Exercises

These are used to practice entire speech comprehension or extensive fragments. Students listen to the text in a more relaxed manner, work in pairs or small groups, and perform a more global activity with less guided, open-ended questions from the teacher. This group of exercises requires more time than the previous ones.

3. Productive Exercises

These aim to develop productive skills and use audio and video as means to develop oral and written texts. They include both recording exercises in the classroom and the production of audio or video programs, which can become a project lasting a week, a month, or even a quarter.

Evaluation of Listening Comprehension

The assessment of listening comprehension is twofold. First, it is used to detect a general lack of understanding that students may have early on. Furthermore, it is useful to measure the progress of student understanding during the course.

Regarding the first point, shortcomings in understanding have transcendental implications. We must not forget that this is an essential instrumental skill for advancing in most subjects of the curriculum. These deficiencies can become real barriers to learning and lead to educational failure. It is, therefore, important to detect any problems as soon as possible to solve them.

To perform this assessment, each teacher simply needs to be attentive to daily classroom practices and take note of any major effects present. This can be performed with a control sheet.

Continuous Progress Assessment

Regarding the second objective—to assess the continued progress of students in understanding—evaluations can be made from the same exercises that have been proposed before, noting the results obtained by pupils in a detailed manner throughout the course.

Examples of Evaluation Exercises

• Listen to a conversation or a presentation and answer multiple-choice questions.
• Listen to a story read aloud and answer general written comprehension questions.
• Perform a dictation.
• Complete a drawing based on oral instructions.
• Record the most important ideas from a 5 or 10-minute presentation given by the professor.
• Play radio commercials and relate them to pictures.
• Complete a table about a person's life based on their oral biography.
• Etc.