Listening Skills: Slang Man Aural and Oral Lesson

I have always thought that listening skills in ESL classes... just happen. The students have to listen to us to understand the basis of the lesson right? You can imagine my surprise when I conducted a lesson on slang for Junior 2/3 age group, that involved them having to use their Aural (listening) and Oral (speaking) skills to write down some dictation and try to speak some common short cuts (slang) that we often use everyday in the English language. I composed some fairly easy sentences and read them aloud whilst the students listened and wrote down what they thought I had said. Sure I included slang terms, but nothing too difficult (and we had just run through the worksheet) but it was astonishing how much...they didn't pick up. This led me to wonder...just how much of what I teach them, do they understand?...what's actually getting through with all these lessons I teach? I guess their listening skills, run the same way mine do when I am listening and speaking Chinese. Often with listening to a foreign language, you grab the key words that you know, whilst many other words float by the wayside...heard but not comprehended.

How To Improve Students Listening Skills

I have found that students talking english among themselves can comprehend their own Chinese lilted English accent much more easily than I can and they in turn can sometimes have trouble understanding  me. If a student had come up and given the same dictation that I had given to the class, the students most likely would have achieved much higher scores. As an ESL teacher, it's really important to remember that our jobs are not about grammar and grades and often we are in fact hired to give students the listening skills that they require to use English effectively OUTSIDE of the classroom.

There are a few lesson I use for making the student's hone their listening skills including a lesson on silence, but today I will talk a bout a particular lesson that incorporates using and understanding  how native English  speakers use slang (more like natural lilt actually) which will give the students some ideas on how to sound more natural when they speak. They will definitely need to use their listening skills to complete this activity.

I find lessons that involve less physical activity and more brain work from the student's, can be more difficult to impliment...so find the lesson plan below to see how I went about it. In saying that though, this lesson can be quite popular even with students that don't have strong English skills or are often not interested in more theoretical based lessons because "Slang Man Worksheet" directly addresses quick and easy words that they can learn to use which can make them sound so much more natural. Like how they mimic lingo they hear in their favourite movies or from their favourite actors and singers. This lesson is an eye, mouth AND ear opener for them.

The Slang Man Review

The above slang lesson that I am talking about (that really got me thinking about the whole listening skills thing) is a great way to test student's listening abilities. I thought that it was purely a pronunciation lesson that I would be teaching, but it turned into a wonderful listening skills activity.  Here is the Slang Man lesson review worksheet that I found on the internet. It wonderfully details exactly how and when to use contracted words and "slang pronunciation", just as we do.

Slang Man Pronunciation and Listening Skills Lesson Plan

Title: Slang Lesson 01

What We Will Study:
Many slang keywords : Things such as  gonna, wanna, would'ja, could'ja, hafta, 'n' wansta and many more.

Objective:
To be able to say sentences in a more natural way... Less of the text book and more of the casual and natural speech... AND improve the students listening skills by learning and concentrating on the way native English speakers pronounce words.

Starter:

Note: With over 600 students...I don't often do handouts, but this activities information is extremely useful and something the kids can keep and refer to forever.

Before giving the kids the useful handout, and if you have the facilities, put it up on the screen. Give an example of how we condense our speech by reading a paragraph of your own and some of the sentences on the worksheet  as naturally as you can, just how you would talk at home and see if the kids can understand what you said.
10 minutes explaining and giving examples.

Activity:

• Give the kids the handout


• Let them study it for 10 - 15 minutes and practice with each other saying the sentences in the more natural way.


• Give each team a white board, marker and cloth


• Give some dictation and see if they can write what I say.

These are the sentences I used, obviously the students hear the slang (like I have written below) but they must write the proper English - You can use these or make up your own.

1. Did'ju go to the movies yesterday? Did'ju like it? I wanna go ta see Ironman.


2. My friend wansta go ta the park. I think 'e hasta relax because e' works too hard.


3. I mustn'av done very well in my English test. My English teacher 'n my class teacher said I should'av studied more.


4. Sarah is 'n Paris this week. She wansta visit lotsa good restaurants


5. I hafta run, I'm gonna miss d bus if I don't hurry


6. The cen're of Australia is all desert. It's very hot 'n dry there. Would'ya go to Australia if you could.

Finishing Up:

Reverse and get the kids to say something naturally to me and see if I can write what they say on the blackboard.

Resources:

The Slang resources we will need are
- word file of slang lesson on USB
- handouts
- whiteboards, markers and pens OR make sure every student has a pen and paper if you want them to work individually. In classes of 60 student's, I often find group work involving putting their heads together to work things out...like the dictation, is much more effective and the students that are super interested will work on their own anyway.

Standards:
The standards we will fulfill during this slang lesson are: natural speech and listening skills

Topic Info:
Background slang information and information for the continuation of slang in future lessons. These notes explain slang terminology in great detail.

I'd be interested to hear how your students did with this exercise. Could they understand you?

BLAH Photo by© 2006-2013 Pink Sherbet Photography via Compfight cc">.

Listen Photo byB Rosen via Compfight cc">.