Listening Games for the Online Classroom

Last month, I shared a few activities focused on speaking skills (you can find those here), and this month I want to highlight some listening games that work well in the online teaching context. All of these activities are adapted from Games for Language Learning by Andrew Wright, David Betteridge, and Michael Buckby (part of the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series, which I obsessively collect).

Although I chose these activities with adult students in mind, many of them would be appropriate for children or teenagers as well. You can also easily rework these games for an in person context, as they were originally designed.

But first. . .

Spring is here!

I want to share a little video with you that I made a couple years ago with some simple springtime vocabulary. Feel free to use this with your students to add a seasonal side note to your classes. It’s only 2 minutes long, and although it includes Spanish text translations, the audio is in English only, so it’s appropriate for speakers of any language.

Enjoy!

. . . And now, back to listening games!

Listen and Draw

This is a classic activity but we might not always think of using it in an online classroom context!

Give students instructions of something to draw and have them hold their drawing up to the camera after they finish to check if anything is missing or different from what you described. In order to make students feel less self-conscious, you can draw too, and show your own drawing either before or after they show theirs.

This game works well for prepositions, daily activities, clothing, and any other vocabulary that can be depicted with simple drawings. It’s a great activity to use as a warm up or if things needs a bit of livening up towards the end of class!

Listen and Draw by Stephen Mark Silvers is a good resource with lots of specific drawing instructions, along with simple example drawings.

Listen for the difference

Show a text on your screen, appropriate to the level of your learner(s). It could be a few sentences, a short story, a news article, or anything containing mostly familiar vocabulary. Read the text aloud, while your student(s) follow along silently. Instruct student(s) to press the raise hand button if they hear something different from what is in the written text.

Occasionally change some of the words, reverse word order, or mispronounce words to see if students are able to catch the mistakes. Be sure to read at a pace that is appropriate to students’ reading proficiency.

Which picture is it?

Before class, prepare 3-4 images to show students at once. (See the example I created in Canva here). Photos should have similar elements, for example parks, buildings, famous people, families or other groups of people, etc. You may wish to select photos that highlight some of the vocabulary you have been focusing on recently in your class.

Start by describing features that all the photos share (there are trees, grass, it’s a sunny day, etc.) and then continue to describe features that distinguish one picture from the other (there are benches and a lake), until student(s) are able to guess which picture you’re describing.

Bingo Definitions

Display a list of 10 or more vocabulary words/phrases you have recently covered in class.

Instruct student(s) to draw a grid on a piece of paper with 4 or more squares, (depending on the amount of time you want to spend on the activity), and to choose a corresponding number of words at random, writing one in each square on their paper.

Give a simple definition or description of the words in your list (not in the order shown) and instruct student(s) to cross out any word on their paper that matches that definition.

Continue until the first student has crossed off all the words on their paper and says, “Bingo!” Check their words to make sure they match definitions you have given. (Be sure to keep your own list of the words you define.)

Bingo Rhyming Words

Follow the instructions above, except choose similar sounding words for your word list. These could either be rhyming words, or words with different vowel sounds that are sometimes difficult for your student(s) to distinguish, or words that have complex spellings and are tricky to pronounce.

Read the words in random order until someone gets a bingo!

A few ideas:

• met

• meet

• mit

• mat

• mate

• might

1. thought

2. taught

3. though

4. throw

5. through

6. thorough

I would love to hear if you try any of these games and which ones worked well for your students!