Using listening skills material

It is a good idea to start the lesson with a lead in. One easy way to do this is to hold up flashcards showing the three places and elicit where they are. (Tip: Don’t show them in the same order they appear in the audio – you’ll soon see why..!) Then you could ask students to work in pairs and write down three things you can buy in each shop:

Clothes Shop	Cafe	Pharmacy
dress	tea	toothpaste
skirt	coffee	toilet roll
T-shirt	brownies	make-up

This activity provides useful vocabulary revision and it also gives you a chance to see if the students come up with any of the key vocabulary in the text. Follow this stage by pre-teaching vocabulary which is essential for students to be able to complete the listening tasks which follow.

Then you could move onto the first listening task. The aim of this task is for students to get the ‘gist,’ or the general idea of the conversations. It’s important to set an achievable task clearly before students listen. This way, they have a reason to listen and they know that you don’t expect them to understand everything they hear. For this lesson, the gist task could be:

Listen to three conversations. Where are they? (This is why it’s important not to ‘give the game away’ by showing the flashcards in order.)

After the students have listened to the three conversations, give them a brief opportunity to check their answers in pairs. This gives them a chance to improve their confidence levels before class feedback. It also gives you a chance to monitor and see how they’re getting on.

Then move onto a second listening task, which involves listening for specific information:

What did she buy?

How much did she pay?

	What did she buy?	How much did she pay?
1. Café	a medium coffee a piece of carrot cake	$6
2. Pharmacy	a packet of 12 tissues (a bar of) soap	$5.75
3. Clothes Shop	a blue shirt – size small	$22.50

Again, give students a chance to check their answers in pairs before checking as a class. (Monitor while students are comparing their answers – and decide whether they need to hear the recording again.)

If you have time, you could include a third listening task. Cut the café conversation into strips and give each pair of students a set of strips. Ask them to try and put the strips in order before they listen – and then they listen one more time and double-check.

That is the end of the listening skills section. You could wrap up the lesson by using a speaking skills task which personalizes the topic. For example, you could write the following questions on the board:

a) Do you have a favourite cafe or restaurant?

b) What is the name of it?  Where is it?

c) Why do you like it?

d) When do you usually go there?

e) What do you usually have?

Students work in groups of three or four to discuss their answers – and then finish off the lesson with a brief class feedback stage.