3: The need to listen - Top 10 tips for teaching english conversation

49 ESL Conversation Games & Activities - Jackie Bolen 2020

3: The need to listen
Top 10 tips for teaching english conversation

It's tempting, even in our first language to not listen to our conversation partner, but instead think of the next witty or wise thing to say in our heads. This does not lead to good conversations. Instead, truly listen to what someone is saying and then respond to that. I make sure to talk to my students about this because it's even more tempting to do this in a second or third language when struggling to put words together into coherent sentences. There are a few tips I tell my students to help them out.

The first and last words in the question are key if it is a “W/H” question. For example, “Where do you go to school?” If you hear where, then you know that your answer needs to be a place of some sort and if you hear school, the answer should be quite obvious. “Do you go to” is necessary for forming a grammatically correct question but it's not that important for the listener to be able to answer appropriately. If a student catches the key words, it's possible for them to make a reasonable guess at the correct answer. This tip is also especially useful for something like the TOIEC listening test, where many of the possible answers can be eliminated simply by knowing what the first word in the question is.

I also teach my students phrases that they can use if they didn't understand the question and missed the key words. For example, they could say something like, “Sorry, could you please repeat the question?” or, “I didn't understand, could you say it again slowly?” I tell them that it's not a terrible thing to ask someone to repeat something and that it's always better than giving a completely random answer that's unrelated to the question.