The biggest problem in communication is that we do not listen to understand, we listen to reply.
–Stephen Covey
Slowly spiraling towards an end, the fast-paced world’s impatience has led “listening” to a slower death. Research suggests that humans consume over 20,000 words a day. Yet, how much do they recall?
While high schoolers are the foundation of an entire upcoming generation of adulthood, they are also already adults in more ways than one. It is essential we allow them mature ways to start focusing on listening – for the sake of nurturing more stability in their tomorrow.
Importance of Listening for High Schoolers
Listening is an experience as much as a skill, which is appropriately justified by the audio data consumed by users around the world.
However, when you stand by listening to somebody communicate, it could be challenging to remain on track for a long duration and not let your psyche float.
High schoolers understand better when they hear words that they comprehend. Peruse or play fitting material that is appropriate for their ability level. Students ought to have the option to comprehend a large number of words and the overall idea of the material that they are paying attention to.
A few extraordinary activities and exercises to assist your curriculum with obtaining better listening abilities never hurt. Make sure you work on articulation, elocution, and normal progression of words.
The Art of Listening
Talking and listening are both basic to the outcome of mastering a language. For a high school student to have talking achievement, the individual must initially pay attention to the language being spoken.
Listening practice is basic since it supports understanding study material, adds more mettle to general learnings, and works on the expertise of normal elocution.
The Biological Aspect of Listening
Subsequent to going through jargon words and perusing perception, it’s vital to do an English listening movement to support what data the cerebrum is attempting to process.
The more times your cerebrum will experience the material, the better it will process it and remember it.
Effective Listening Activities for High Schoolers
Keep reading for a simple yet effective series of listening activities for high schoolers:
- Music – The Classic Listening Tool
Individuals of any age and social foundations connect to music. High schoolers are already engaged in following music trends, so what better than a musical activity to get them to listen?
Paying attention to music helps with jargon and word articulation. It likewise assists students with getting a more profound grip over word implications and is an incredible method for making sense of rhyming words.
A cool method for consolidating music in the homeroom is to have students parted into groups and compose basic tunes using words that they discovered that week.
Using an old song and simply composing new words for the melody is really smart for the less-inventive people. Have them play out the tunes and ask everybody to chime in!
Give understudies tune verse sheets with a portion of the verses missing. Pay attention to the melody multiple times, and teach the students to fill in the spaces.
To check for the right responses, circumvent the room and have every individual sing out a line.
They need to sing it, or it doesn’t count!
- “Drawing” to Attention
One method for getting high school students to listen is to ensure they know nothing about the fact that it’s a listening game.
In “Draw This” your students will just think they are drawing. So how does it function? Give every one of your students a clear piece of paper.
Then, give one drawing assignment, for example, “Draw a square”. Then, at that point, request that your students pass the paper to the following student so everybody has another paper.
Then, give one more drawing assignment, for example, “Under the square, draw a triangle.” Keep giving guidelines in various directions, such as “to the right”, “to the left corner” etc. until the papers have made over 10 rounds around the room.
Presently see which papers have ended up being correct.
- Quizzing their Ears
To get your high schoolers to focus all through illustration, it’s smart to give them a listening test. You can make the inquiries engaging. For instance, in case you enlightened your students a quiz concerning your doggo, one of the inquiries could be “What was the dog’s name?” The test ought to just be 2-5 inquiries in length. The student(s) who find the most appropriate solutions get a gold star or any form of reward.
Toward the end of every month, the students with the most gold stars or the most rewards get an award like picking a game to play, driving an action, or imparting to the class 15 minutes of his/her number one film. The prize framework removes the substantialness from the “test” yet keeps them motivated.
- Videos for Ears?
Everybody cherishes a decent film and a little TV, and both can be utilized for a wide range of exercises for high schoolers. You can constantly work out some questions for your high schoolers to reply to during a full-length film.
An extraordinary method for integrating this sort of media into the class is to pick short clips of motion pictures that fit with the example you are instructing that day.
Watching these clips toward the beginning of class isn’t just perfect for supporting the educational program, it additionally assists them with figuring out the culture and regular conversational language. It’s truly engaging as well!
In case you don’t know which shows to begin with, start with sitcoms that function admirably for English students.
Show a rundown of the names of the primary characters that are in the clips you will watch. Have every one of the high schoolers pick one person to pay an exceptional measure of regard for. Toward the end of the film or video cut, have understudies finish up a poll or give little details regarding the character they have picked.
Questions can include: What is his/her name? What is his/her work?
- Hello. It’s “Phone” Time
This is quite possibly one of the most established games in the book, yet entirely it’s as yet a great one! Have your high schoolers get all around.
One individual will begin the “call” by murmuring a mystery message in the ear of the individual close to him/her.
That individual then murmurs it to the following, etc. The audience just receives a single opportunity to hear the message accurately; he/she needs to pass on whatever was heard.
When the message goes as far as possible around the circle, the last individual rehashes the message without holding back. For the most part, it will be a mixed-up variant of the first message. Not only is it fun, but also engaging.
- Heard the News?
Read out loud an exceptionally short report – 1-2 passages. Ask students to create their own set of questions about the story, utilizing the WH-question words. Compose the inquiries on the board.
Put students two by two (or leave all in all gathering). Read out the story resoundingly once more.
Request that students ask and answer the queries orally from the board. To give students work on understanding non-face-to-face discourse, record the article on tape and play the tape instead of reading the article out loud.
- Dictation for Memorization
Find a level-suitable text that is relevant to the topic being contemplated. You can compose the text yourself, track down a passage from a course reading, or track down a concise article in the paper.
Using similar text, mark specific words, by the same token arbitrarily (every eighth or tenth word) or purposefully picked (key substance words or words frequently misheard), to make “holes”. (To assist students with recognizing action word tense endings, “hole” some or all the action words.)
Make one hole for each line or each and every other line. Prior to distributing the gapped worksheet, read out loud the total text while students pay attention to get the substance. Then, hand out duplicates of the gapped text. Peruse the text resoundingly a second time while students fill in the “gapped” words as they hear them.
Read the text clearly a third time so students can check their work. Use a characteristic speed each time you read clearly. Talk about the responses. The correspondence text might be recorded on tape to give students practice in understanding nonface-to-face discourse.
- Hear it? Hit it. With a Flyswatter
It is an indispensable method as it helps foster speed in aural word acknowledgment for high schoolers.
Set up a rundown of 12-15 jargon words students have been considering. Using many shades of board markers, and with the help of enormous content, arbitrarily disperse the words across the board. Make note of students into two groups. Line the groups up, every individual remaining behind, with the principal individual in the line confronting the board, some distance away from each other.
Give the first individual of each group a plastic flyswatter. Read a definition or depiction of each word. The first individual to smack the right word on the load up with their flyswatter procures a point for his/her group.
Students can smack the word when they sort out which word it is. Later each word, the students with flyswatters hand their flyswatters to the individual behind them and turn to the rear of the line.
Listening activities for adults are equally fun and engaging for the personal development and growth of adults.
Final Words
An average human being spends 45 percent of the time listening and 30 percent speaking, while reading and writing contribute to about 16 and 9 percent respectively.
It is, thus, essential we make listening worthwhile for high schoolers. One would be surprised to know the amount of knowledge one can impart by providing essential aids to listening activities.
Accredited as one of the top content writers in the country, Harshita Dagha is Harvard certified in Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking.
Holding a Bachelors Degree in Engineering(Telecommunication) from the Mumbai University, she is a firm believer in the power of tech & digital and how it helps the world grow exponentially.
With over 2 million views on her author profiles digitally, the subject matter expert and empath believes that digital is the blackhole of infinite knowledge for the youth where they can both find the finest nectar and suck it in.
She feels it’s time for high schoolers to leverage on the open source, enriching, digitally available methods of learning and take on the world #LikeABoss.