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Mikhail Grinberg: Ear Openers: Activities for bottom-up listening

Presentation focus

Listening activities can be found in most modern textbooks. However, as teachers we seldom go beyond playing an audio track, asking our students some questions and checking if their answers are correct. We test rather than teach. Students often complain that although they fully understand the transcript, when they listen to native speakers, all they hear is noise. We will be looking at activities that help learners develop their bottom-up listening skills and literally start hearing more. A shorter version of this workshop was run at the TESOL France Colloquium in 2016 and received a lot of positive feedback.

Why have you chosen this topic for your presentation?

Listening activities can be found in most modern textbooks. However, as teachers we seldom go beyond playing an audio track, asking our students some questions and checking if their answers are correct. We test rather than teach. Students often complain that although they fully understand the transcript, when they listen to native speakers, all they hear is noise. We will be looking at activities that help learners develop their bottom-up listening skills and literally start hearing more.

What do you want participants to take away from your presentation?

By the end of the workshop, you will learn to design your own 'ear-opening' workouts. For each of the 3 types of workouts we will be looking at, you will learn:

— where to find and how to produce the right kind of recordings

— how to stage the activities that make part of the workouts

Bio

Mikhail Grinberg is an independent Delta-qualified language and communication skills trainer based in Koblenz, Germany. Most of his customers are highly qualified business professionals and companies in Germany and online worldwide. Mikhail is a proud member of the teaching team at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences where he works as a freelance ESP instructor.

Mikhail's professional interests include teaching listening, second language acquisition, needs analysis and course design, technology in the classroom and marketing for independent language trainers. He is passionate about professional development. In an attempt to try himself as a teacher trainer, he recently started the online Teacher Development Group — a place where language teachers can grow professionally and receive support.