En elblogdetrinity.com recomendamos una variedad de ejercicios y buenas prácticas para la preparación de los exámenes de Trinity College London. En esta ocasión Richard Bradley (Teacher Trainer - Trinity College London Approved Service provider Spain and Portugal) compartirá una serie de post con recomendaciones y pautas muy interesantes para poner en práctica en clase.

TOPIC 13 - Co-operative listening (A2-C2 level)

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What?  Co-operative listening (A2-C2 level). 

How?  This activity gives a great twist to regular listening comprehension tasks.   Prepare and practise reading aloud a short talk on the topic you want to tell your students about.  Or use a listening comprehension task from a course book or from exam practice materials.  Arrange the class into rows.  The first row is A, the second row is B, the third row is A, the fourth row is B etc. Display the topic of the talk on the board.  The A row (or rows, depending on the size of the class) are the listeners and must not write anything down.  The B row/s are the listeners and note-takers and can take as many notes as they like.  Give half of the talk or play half of the recorded listening task.  Then the students work in pairs, an A row student with a B row student.  The A row students tell the B row students everything they can remember.  The B row students listen carefully and use their notes to jog the A row students` memories, but they must not just read out their notes.  Then give or play the second half of the talk with the A and B roles reversed.  Finally, in pairs, or possibly small groups if some students have found it very difficult, the students reconstruct all the notes for future reference.  The teacher could then discuss with the class the difference between listening and taking notes and listening without taking notes, focussing on the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

Why?  Traditional lessons tend to focus on competitive learning, where students compete with each other for grades, to see who is the `best`, (for example, to see who gets the most correct answers in the listening exercise), or individualistic learning, where students work more of less independently, paying little attention to each other , e.g. ploughing their way through workbooks.  However, decades of research shows that co-operative learning leads to accelerated academic achievement (especially in minority groups and low achieving students), development of thinking skills, improved race relations, enhanced social skills and social interaction, and an Increased liking for school, class and academic content.

So basically this simple twist to a normal listening comprehension activity makes it co-operative and puts it on a whole different level as far as being a learning experience is concerned.  The Trinity ISE type listening comprehensions, of which you can easily find examples on trinitycollege.com, could be approached in this way.