During school closures we are publishing descriptions of short activities that EAL learners can do independently at home or with their parents, or that can be set by teachers for online learning. Today’s activity comes from Samira Moradi of Southgate School. She has prepared a listening activity that will suit intermediate learners of English.

If you have an activity that you would like to share, we’d love to hear from you. Posts should be about 500 words long and should describe one activity (if you’d like to write more than one post on different activities do feel free). Send your post to h.chalmers@naldic.org.uk or submit it through the website here.

Activity 1

Time: 30-60 minutes estimated

Improve your academic skills in English at home

You will need a computer, internet, and an exercise book.

Google British Council Learn English teens  https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/

Find and click on “skills” and choose “listening”

You will see 5 boxes. First one is the easiest. Last one is the hardest.

If you are not sure of your level, start with the first one to find out.

Click and open to see all the topics.

Start from the first one. “A good night’s sleep” is the first topic in the first level.

Here your lesson starts:

1. Find “preparation” under the picture in a thin purple box

Do the task in preparation: usually it is a matching activity. If you need more help, use a dictionary to check the meaning of the words. Then check the answers by clicking on “finish”.

 If you get any of the answers wrong, make sure to check to understand your mistake and learn the correct answer.

2. Open on the audio file; there is a small triangle you can click on. Listen to the file 3 times.

3. Then do the tasks. It says “check your understanding” or “check your vocabulary”. Answer both tasks and check your answers and make sure to understand and study the questions you don’t get right. If you need listen to the file again to understand the activities fully.

4. Now, open an exercise book. try to write up what you heard as far as you can remember. This is your version of the recording. You don’t need to remember the exact sentence but try to create the meaning in your own words.

Proofread and if there are any words you are not sure, look them up in google for the correct spelling. Use Google Translate too if you need.

5. Open the next file “transcripts”. This is the written form of the recording. Listen again to the recording and at the same time follow the line in the transcript.

6. Read the transcript aloud. If you struggle with the pronunciation (how to say) a word, go back to the recording and repeat after it until you are confident. Then read aloud again until you can read out the full recording at home, or to yourself and in front of a mirror (you can be your own audience).

7. Now, read the recording sentence by sentence and turn each sentence into at least 2 questions. Write the questions down in your book. Answer the questions in full. For example:

“During school closures, students can continue their learning at home with a book, guidance from a teacher, or by using internet positively.”

Question 1: Where can students continue their learning during school closures? They can continue their learning at home.

Question 2: What do students need to continue learning at home? They need a book, internet and their teacher’s help.

8. Last and most important step: Tomorrow morning, give a speech to your audience (anyone at home or in the mirror) on this topic. You will see that you may not remember as much as you like to, so come back and visit this topic, listen to it one more time. Practise your speech for 5 minutes, and then carry on to the next topic.