Listen A Minute: Accidents

Details

Activity Description

Use this listening-based lesson activity to supplement or introduce the theme of accidents or with the EL Civics unit on reporting accidents and emergencies. For each of the numerous listening exercises, there is an MP3 audio file, transcript, activities to accompany the text, and quizzes a student can use to test their listening skills.

Preparation

1. If you plan to use the MP3 file within the browser, check to see if the site is blocked at your school and if your computer has an appropriate media player to play the file. If the site is blocked or you do not have Internet access at your site, download the MP3 file to your computer and copy it to a USB device to play on the computer in your classroom.
2. Under "Downloads," select "Word" or "PDF" to download, print, and photocopy the lesson, which includes the transcript and activities such as listening cloze (gap fill), word unscramble, surveys/discussion, writing, and suggested homework/extension activities.

How-To

1. Go to the main Listen A Minute[www] site to see a list of topics listed alphabetically. For this activity (the link is shown above under Web Site Example, we used the first one on Accidents.
2. Select a topic or theme that is related to your lesson topic to view the listening activity posted for that topic.
3. Distribute the handouts you downloaded and printed that accompany the activity.
4. Have the student select the "Listen" link to play the audio file in their browser for a listening activity. If you are presenting this with the entire class and you do not have Internet access at your site, you can select "Download this file" to save the MP3 file to a USB Flash drive (also called a "thumb drive") so you can play it on a laptop at your site. (You will need speakers loud enough to project to the entire room in that case.)
5. The online quiz/quizzes (under the "Listen" link), which are about the text, can be used in class or individually by students in a lab setting.

Teacher Tips

• Prepare conversation or discussion questions to introduce/brainstorm the topic in the article and link it to other course content / previous class topics, texts, or discussions.
• The provided texts contain some British spellings, so you may want to modify them to American English, and the audio recordings are in a slight British accent, but there are many accents in America, so this will be good practice.

Other topics that might be of interest include clothes, culture, family, doctors and more. Check the list.

More Ways

• The listening activities are a good way to introduce a new topic.
• Students can be assigned to use the site outside of class as extra, supplemental listening practice or homework. See the list of ideas for homework,project-based group work and extension activities at the end of each lesson.

Program Areas

• ESL: English as a Second Language

Levels

• Beginning High
• Intermediate Low
• Intermediate High
• Advanced

Documents

• accidents FINAL.pdf - Story about accidents from listenaminute.com

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