Event Information
The professional development event that I decided for this reflection was a section of the Multimodal Classrooms Mini Event hosted by the British Council on August 1st at 6:15 - 7:15. It was an interactive webinar called “How can we use technology to make engaging listening activities?” and was presented by Chiara Bruzzano and English Language Teaching (ELT) researcher and teacher trainer.
Event Description
The webinar focused on the often-neglected skill of listening in language learning, highlighting its importance and exploring effective strategies for teaching it. Designed for language educators, the event discussed the dual process of listening—bottom-up decoding and top-down meaning building—and the challenges learners face, such as difficulties with word segmentation (being unable to distinguish individual words when listening) and preconceptions leading to misinterpretations. The webinar critiqued traditional listening instruction methods that emphasize testing over teaching and presented innovative approaches to enhance student engagement and control in listening practice. By leveraging technology, such as YouTube features, Chrome extensions, and interactive tools, the webinar provided practical suggestions to help educators create more effective and differentiated listening activities that address both bottom-up and top-down skills. Attendees were encouraged to adopt these tools to improve listening comprehension, foster metacognitive awareness, and ultimately, make listening a more active and enjoyable part of language learning.
Reaction to the Event and Ties to Practice
As an EFL teacher, I found the webinar incredibly insightful and valuable, particularly because it shed light on the often overlooked skill of listening, which is crucial for language acquisition and often overlooked by teachers and curricula. The discussion on the dual process of listening, which are bottom-up decoding and top-down meaning building, was very interesting to me as it highlighted the complexities my students face when processing spoken language. As addressed in the session by the speaker and participants, most of the listening exercises teachers implement focus more on testing comprehension, such as gap fills and comprehension questions, rather than teaching the skill itself. The critique of traditional listening instruction challenged me to rethink my approach.
What I found most valuable were the practical tools and strategies introduced during the webinar, especially those involving technology. The idea of using YouTube features, such as captions and adjustable playback speed, along with Chrome extensions like Language Reactor and Bookmark YouTube, offered innovative ways to make listening exercises more engaging and differentiated for my students. I did note that these features would be most appropriately applied to online classes or classes in which technology is available in the classroom. I was especially impressed by the online tools YouGlish for hearing natural and realistic examples of English phrases. I also found the tools lyricstraining.com and tubequizard as great supplements to listening exercises that can be used to “gamify” listening and make lessons more engaging. These tools not only help in developing listening skills but also empower students to take control of their learning, something I strive to encourage in my classroom.
Overall, the webinar provided me with actionable ideas to enhance my teaching practice and helped me see new possibilities for making listening an active, enjoyable, and integral part of my students' language learning journey.
Artifacts to Demonstrate Impact
The following are artifacts I created to demonstrate the practical applications that I derived from attending the professional development webinar. They consist of a lesson plan that I utilized in the past as an EAP teacher and the revision of that plan using some of the principles I acquired from the webinar. In addition, I’ve included a new lesson plan based off of some of the techniques I’ve learned.
Original Lesson Plan
Lesson: Academic Listening for C1/C2 EAP class.
Purpose: To become familiar with academic speech patterns and identify key themes and main points.
Procedure:
1. Lead in:
How do you define “security?”
What situations do you feel safe/unsafe?
2. Pre-Listening:
1) What are the two different concepts of security
2) How does the concept of Saddam Hussein illustrate his point?
3) What kinds of activities do we do every day that involve risk?
4) Why are we so bad at making security trade-off decisions?
5) What are the 4 biases in risk perception that he mentions?
6) What do newspapers do and what effect does this have on people?
7) What is “security theatre”?
8) What should companies do? What are 2 ways they can do this?
9) What is a model? What are some examples?
10) How do different generations view risks of electricity differently? Why?
11) Why did Swine Flu cause so much fear? What happened over time?
12) What are some other examples of models changing?
13) What is confirmation bias?
14) What are some things that can create a model?
15) What are 2 ways to fix the problem?
3. Listening:
4. Post-Listening:
Have students compare notes and discuss answers to the comprehension questions together.
Take up answers as a class, eliciting answers from students.
5. Discussion:
Do you think that the world has overreacted to the threat of COVID-19? Is the model close to reality?
Has our model about COVID-19 changed since the initial outbreak in December?
Why do some people (anti vaxxers) fear/distrust vaccines? Is this common in your country?
What are some “flashbulb events” you have in your memory?
Do you have any fears? How close to reality is your feelings about the fear?
"we respond to feelings of security rather than the reality of security"
Revised Lesson Plan
Lesson: Academic Listening for C1/C2 EAP class.
Purpose: To become familiar with academic speech patterns and identify key themes and main points.
Procedure:
1. Lead in:
How do you define “security?”
What situations do you feel safe/unsafe?
2. Pre-Listening:
1) What are the two different concepts of security
2) Why are we so bad at making security trade-off decisions?
3) What are the 4 biases in risk perception that he mentions?
4) What is “security theatre”?
5) What is a model? What are some examples?
6) How do different generations view risks of electricity differently? Why?
7) Why did Swine Flu cause so much fear? What happened over time?
8) What are some things that can create a model?
3. Listening
Give students 30 minutes to watch video individually, at their own pace. Instruct them that they may use the speed and transcript feature on YouTube, as well as Bookmark Youtube to pinpoint where they think the answer to each question is in the recording.
Ask them to make note of phrases or words that are unfamiliar
4. Post-Listening
Have students compare notes and discuss answers to the comprehension questions together.
Take up answers as a class, eliciting answers from students.
Elicit some vocabulary or phrases that the students were unfamiliar with, make a list on the whiteboard and instruct the students to use YouGlish to hear further examples in other videos and definitions.
Elicit the definition of the words from the students.
5. Discussion
Do you think that the world has overreacted to the threat of COVID-19? Is the model close to reality?
Has our model about COVID-19 changed since the initial outbreak in December?
Why do some people (anti vaxxers) fear/distrust vaccines? Is this common in your country?
What are some “flashbulb events” you have in your memory?
Do you have any fears? How close to reality is your feelings about the fear?
"we respond to feelings of security rather than the reality of security"
6. Reflection and Metacognition:
Have students fill out a Google Form with reflection questions, such as:
How difficult was the listening exercise today?
What was the most challenging part for you?
Which words or phrases did you find difficult?
What is one thing you could do to improve your listening next time?
Use their responses to guide a brief class discussion on strategies to improve listening skills.
New Lesson Plan
Lesson: Listening for A1/A2 English class
Purpose: To become familiar with native speech patterns
Procedure:
1. Warm-Up:
2. Listening:
Video Selection: Play a short, simple YouTube video (1-2 minutes) relevant to the students' interests (e.g., a clip from a children's show, a simple recipe, or a short travel vlog).
First Listening:
Students listen to the video without captions. Ask them to focus on understanding the general idea (top-down processing).
After listening, have a brief discussion on what they understood. Elicit key points and write them on the whiteboard.
Second Listening:
Enable captions and play the video again, this time with students paying attention to specific words and phrases (bottom-up processing).
Elicit difficult words from students and use the Language Reactor extension to click on difficult words for translations and examples. Pause the video when necessary to discuss these words and their meanings.
3. Bookmarking Difficulties:
Introduce students to the Bookmark YouTube extension. Explain that they will use it to mark moments in the video where they had difficulty understanding.
Play the video a third time, asking students to bookmark key moments using the extension. Encourage them to think about why those moments were challenging (e.g., fast speech, unknown vocabulary, pronunciation).
4. Intensive Listening and Decoding:
Focus on a short extract from the video (5-10 seconds) where students had difficulties.
Play this segment multiple times at a slower speed. Ask students to identify specific sounds, syllables, and words (bottom-up decoding).
Discuss as a class what they noticed (eg.”a lot of” is pronounced “alotta”) and how it helped them understand the segment better.
5. Reflection and Metacognition:
Have students fill out a Google Form with reflection questions, such as:
How difficult was the listening exercise today?
What was the most challenging part for you?
Which words or phrases did you find difficult?
What is one thing you could do to improve your listening next time?
Use their responses to guide a brief class discussion on strategies to improve listening skills.
Recommended Audience
I would recommend this professional development activity to EFL teachers who are looking to deepen their understanding of how listening skills can be effectively taught and developed in their students. It is particularly valuable for educators who feel that listening is often overlooked in favor of other macro skills, like reading, writing, and speaking. This activity provides a thorough exploration of the complexities of listening, including both bottom-up decoding and top-down meaning-building processes, and it highlights common challenges learners face, such as word segmentation and top-down fabrication. Additionally, the activity offers practical strategies and technological tools, such as YouTube features and Chrome extensions, to enhance listening instruction and make it more engaging. Teachers who want to move beyond the traditional comprehension approach to listening and instead focus on actively developing their students’ listening skills will find this activity especially beneficial.
