English Teaching

ELT365 · Day 165 — Listening problems: a checklist

📚60-Day ELT Masterclass — This post is part of an ongoing series. View full index →

Idea — Common listening difficulties cluster around speed, connected speech, unknown vocabulary, and unfamiliar topic. Diagnosing which one is biting lets you target help instead of just replaying.

Example — If learners catch the words but miss the point, the issue is top-down knowledge, not decoding — pre-teach the topic, not the vocabulary.

Try — After a hard listening, ask learners to name what blocked them: speed, words, or topic? Plan your next lead-in around their answer.


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