Task 7

Listening Worksheet from ESL Short stories        

The activity we share this time is a listening activity for students in 3^rd of ESO. There is no specific language content, it is rather focused on the listening comprehension, which is very important for students and usually difficult for them.

For creating the worksheet, we have chosen the audio from ESL Short Stories, a webpage which offers a lot of short stories for creating listening activities. It also offers comprehension and vocabulary activities and even games related to each story. In this case, we have chosen a story called ‘The doctor’salmost perfect children’.

Pre-listening task:

Before listening to the story, we propose the students a pre-listening task to give them a little bit of context about the story. This first task will be a warming-up to give them some clues about what they will hear. Students are supposed to discuss in pairs two statements which are related to the story. Then, they have to share their opinions with the rest of the class.

While-listening tasks:

After this task, we will explain the students they have to do tasks number 2 (comprehension) and 3 (vocabulary) while listening to the story. The first time we put the listening, they have to do task 2, which is about filling in the gaps the words missing from the story. Then, we put the audio again and tell them to do task 3. This task is about finding synonyms for the words given. They will find all the synonyms if they pay attention to the story.

Post-listening tasks:

Once the students have listened to the story twice, we ask them to do tasks 4, 5, and 6. In task number 4, we ask them to explain the meaning of an idiom that appears in the story, and also to give the Spanish equivalent. Then, they have to do task number 5, which is a comprehension activity. They are supposed to answer two brief questions about the story using their own words. Task number 6 is also about comprehension, and students have to choose the correct option a, b, c, or d to answer some questions about the story.

Finally, we propose the students a speaking task. We will arrange a debate: they will discuss if it is better to be an only child or to have sisters and brothers. This topic has some relation with the story they have just heard, and is an excuse to practice the speaking skill. The teacher will divide the classroom in two groups: one for those who think being an only child is better, and another one for those who prefer having siblings.

You can listen to the story here.

And here you are the worksheet we have created: