If you’ve ever pressed play on an authentic audio clip and watched your students’ faces fall…you’re not alone.
For many learners, authentic speech sounds like a wall of noise at first. Even when the content is compelling and familiar; the speed, accent, and natural rhythm of real speech can be overwhelming to the learner. When that happens repeatedly, students don’t just struggle to understand… they begin to believe they can’t.
Origins of Layered Listening
Recently, we’ve begun using a sequence of activities in Comprehensible Classroom lesson plans that helps students move from noise to meaning when working with audio and video. The sequence was inspired by an article by Judith Dubois called “Very Narrow Listening” (iJFLT, October 2015). Dubois is the founder and organizer of The Agen Workshop, an -incredible- professional learning opportunity for Acquisition Driven Instruction held each summer in beautiful Agen, France. For teachers looking to combine professional learning with travel and vacation, there is no better experience than Agen!
Dubois calls this sequence “Very Narrow Listening” because she was inspired by the practice Dr. Stephen Krashen calls Narrow Listening. In Narrow Listening, a person listens to many different audio texts on the same topic. This could look like listening to audio texts that are organized in a series (ex: an audiobook series, a themed podcast, etc.), or it could be many different kinds of audio files that are all about the same subject. The audio texts should be reasonably understandable to the listener, high-interest, and self-selected. Narrow Listening is a practice in which language acquirers listen to multiple recordings about a familiar topic, often chosen by the learner, and listen repeatedly over time. Narrow Listening provides the listener with enough content that is familiar and repeated that supports them in acquiring language gradually and naturally over time.
Dubois’ Very Narrow Listening is different but connected. She describes using a single audio text (a film), but breaking it into segments. Although it is a single audio, listeners are focused on one section at a time which makes it similar to listening to different “episodes” on the same subject. Because this is a strategy that Dubois uses in class, students do not self-select the audio; however, she was careful to use films that were high-interest and engaging to students–films that they were interested in viewing and understanding! Another difference is that Dr. Krashen’s Narrow Listening is task-free (students are listening for pleasure and there is no activity they must complete), whereas Dubois’ Very Narrow Listening does include tasks for the learners.
Why we call this sequence “Layered Listening”
While the sequence that we use can be very similar to what Judith Dubois describes in the iJFLT article, we have chosen to identify it by a different name when we use it in our instructional materials. We think that the context for the two practices is different enough to take precautions to not group them together. We call the sequence of activities inspired by Dubois “Layered Listening.”
We use the Layered Listening sequence with authentic resources. When we include it in our lesson plans, students listen to a single, authentic recording multiple times with the goal of understanding that specific resource better. This is different from both Krashen’s Narrow Listening and Dubois’ Very Narrow Listening.
Layered Listening is not traditional “listening practice”
Listening activities in language classrooms are often limited to “authentic listening practice.” What that usually looks like is the teacher selecting an audio recording that was created by native speakers, for native speakers for a real purpose in the world outside the classroom. For example, a news broadcast, a radio commercial, etc. The teacher plays the audio for the students with some kind of a task that allows them to demonstrate whether or not they were able to understand all or some elements of the audio; perhaps a set of multiple choice questions about the content. The impact is that listening practice ends up being more evaluative than formative: students either understand or they don’t. In our experience (as teachers and learners), this kind of activity usually involves:
- using audio that is far beyond students’ processing ability (they are not expected to understand all of it)
- require immediate comprehension (they might hear it a couple of times–but they either understand it or they don’t)
- ask students to answer questions they cannot yet understand
- leave students feeling unsuccessful
As Dubois points out in her article, this kind of practice can convince students they are far behind where they “should” be. Practicing confusion doesn’t build proficiency; it builds frustration.
What we love about Dubois’ sequence of activities is that it can offer a way for students to experience success, grow their confidence, and build proficiency.
Instead of asking students to understand everything immediately, we lower the stakes, build in repetition and familiarity, and guide student attention step-by-step.
While pre-and post activities vary by lesson, the core sequence remains consistent.
Layer 1: Contextualize
This happens before students engage with the audio in any way. The audio for Layered Listening should be ONE PIECE of a larger topic or lesson. To contextualize it, you could use an activity like:
Picture Talk: Show students a picture that represents the who/what/where/when of what they will be listening to. Talk about it and establish a setting or purpose for the audio.
Content Learning: Students might read an article or listen to a lecture (or perhaps engage with a Shared Reading) about a topic. This is what we do in Somos 1 Unit 14, when students read about a former policy in Bolivia before they listen to a news broadcast about it.
Explain it: Sometimes, just telling students the context for the audio will be sufficient.
Layer 2: Just listen
Students view or listen to the clip with no expectation of full comprehension. Reassure students that they won’t understand everything… and that they aren’t supposed to. This lowers the affective filter and allows students to attend to sound, rhythm, and visual context.
In this layer, you might tell students to (a) “just listen” or to (b) “notice what you can.” Either choice could be appropriate for your context and the specific content you’re working with. Sometimes you might follow this first viewing with a brief discussion about some big picture ideas; like who is speaking, is this about [topic a] or [topic b], or what words did you hear? If the audio is accompanied by visuals, you might also discuss what students saw. Sometimes, you might not follow it up with any discussion and instead jump to the next layer. You are the expert in your classroom, and as you experiment with this activity we believe you will begin to identify when follow-up discussion is helpful and when it gets in the way.
Layer 3: Listen with a light task
Students watch or listen again with a “light” (general, low-stakes) listening task. This might look like:
- estimating how much they understood
- listening for familiar words
- answering a few simple comprehension questions (either/or questions–including yes/no–are easiest!)
- etc.
This second pass builds comfort and familiarity because the audio is no longer entirely new. It gives the learners a chance to settle in as their ears become accustomed to the track. Importantly, continue to reassure students that you do not expect them to understand everything. The goal here is for students to believe that they DO understand some things in the audio already!
There may be times that you skip this layer and go straight to Tracking the Transcript, or that you move this layer to after the Track the Transcript layer. What you do will depend on your students’ interpretive comprehension and the complexity of the audio!
Layer 4: Track the transcript
In this layer, students receive a transcript with some words missing. The teacher plays the audio again while students track the transcript with a finger as they listen. Importantly, they do not write. No writing!! The goal is not to fill in the missing words or even guess the missing words; it’s to match the sounds to words on the page.
This step is actually quite powerful from a literacy perspective because tracking can support students in connecting sound to text, strengthening the sound-symbol relationships, and noticing word boundaries. This does more than just build confidence; it builds real skills!! And, because there is no writing yet, the cognitive load stays manageable.
Now that students have a written text in front of them, as well, this might be a time that the teacher leads a slightly more direct conversation about the content of the audio. Students will be drawing on both reading and listening comprehension to engage in the conversation, and the context that they gain from the conversation will support their success on the next task. However, this discussion is NOT necessary and not considered part of the core Layered Listening sequence.
Layer 5: Close listening
Now, after multiple exposures, it’s time for students to pick up a writing utensil. They listen again and, this time, fill in missing words in the transcript. They listen to the clip several times, and the teacher should make it clear that perfection is NOT expected.
There are two decisions to think about for this layer (although you would have had to make these decisions before creating the incomplete transcript). The decisions are:
- Word bank or no word bank?
- Familiar or unfamiliar words?
Our preferred method is to leave out only familiar words: words that students have become very comfortable hearing and interpreting through communication in class. If you only leave out very familiar words, you won’t need to provide a word bank. This is how Dubois directed this layer (familiar words + no word bank), and we believe it supports student success while keeping the task most similar to authentic listening. After all, there’s no word bank when you’re listening in real life!
Providing a word bank will increase student confidence because it will make the task easier. Instead of identifying sounds they hear and matching them to words in their head, they are matching sounds to printed words on a page. Either version (word bank or no word bank) could be valid based on your goals for the activity!
A different approach is to preview the audio critically and identify words that are easy to hear (clearly pronounced, not jumbled into other words) and leave those words out of the transcript, even if they are unfamiliar to students. If you choose this approach, definitely include a word bank. The reason that we don’t prefer this approach for this particular activity sequence is because the ultimate goal is increased comprehension. This sounds really silly as I write it, so bear with me: if students don’t know the meaning of the words, they don’t understand them even if they can successfully identify the printed word that matches the sound they hear. Interpreting meaning is different from identifying sound. Just because you hear something correctly doesn’t mean you understood it! So, for the goals of Layered Listening, we think it is generally best to leave familiar words off the transcript.
Alone or together?
Yet another question to consider is whether this activity should be done entirely alone or in a collaborative manner. This will likely depend as much on the dynamic/energy of the class as your goals for the activity! Dubois describes how she allowed students to call out the words when they were able to identify them, and in that way the class was working together on solving a puzzle. If you’d like to try this out, we recommend taking into consideration how you will ensure that all students have processing time. You might have students work on it individually first and then work together on any words that are eluding the class after a number of listens.
Why Close Listening is worthwhile
The Close Listening layer focuses attention on decoding [familiar] words in natural speech, which is an important listening skill for learners to develop.
As Dubois observed, students often have inaccurate mental representations of how familiar words sound in fluent speech. This activity helps recalibrate those mental models.
Because the goal here is skills development and confidence building, this is a formative activity and it should not be graded for accuracy. If you must assign a grade to the completed work, it should be based on whether the student attempted the activity or not. (Read more about our recommended grading practices here!)
Layer 6: Self-check
Finally, students check their work as the teacher reads the completed transcript aloud; likely at a slower rate than the audio in the actual clip. This step should provide students with a confidence boost as they receive confirmation that each of the words they filled in is correct!
This step is also helpful for future planning: you know you chose missing words well if most of your students correctly filled in most of the missing words. If not, you need to adjust your planning for next time to make it easier. This might look like:
- choosing an easier to interpret audio clip,
- choosing more familiar or fewer words to leave out of the transcript, or
- playing the audio more times for students as they attempt to fill in the blanks.
When to use Layered Listening
We have found that Layered Listening is especially helpful when working with authentic video or audio, especially when it contains unfamiliar accents, faster speech, or is not very clear. For example, we have recently used it in Somos 1 Unit 14 for a news interview segment in which the people being interviewed are not mic’d very well. Another time that we used it was in Sobremesa Episode 3 when students listen to a Virtual Postcard recorded by someone with a thick Buenos Aires accent who is also using voseo, both of which might be unfamiliar to listeners.
From noise to meaning
We have come to love Layered Listening because it helps students develop belief in their own ability to understand. Judith Dubois described the final moment of this process as almost magical, because “... students listen again and suddenly understand what once felt impossible.” Give it a try and see whether you agree!
