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Listening Activities and Games for Students

Aparna Jadhav
For better understanding of certain concepts in a language, you need to listen effectively. Here are some listening activities for them, so that they not only hear but listen and learn new things.
When you are sitting in a restaurant, there are many people talking, the waiters taking orders, vending machines being operated, or the cooks cooking in the open kitchen. You can hear all these sounds, because you have ears which are meant to hear the sounds.
But if you happen to overhear your neighbor's conversation, you find out he/she is talking about their day at office! This is called active listening, where you not only hear a certain piece of information but concentrate on it, analyze and try to understand what was heard.
Listening is a very important activity for our existence, as it is one of the main factors in communication, which all of us need, and should be inculcated within us at a raw age. This ability to understand, evaluate, and interpret the words could be used to reduce conflicts and improve relationships, to teach others what you understand.

Activities to Improve Active Listening Skills
When a child is sent to school, the first activity which is carried out is introducing yourself! When a class of little children tell their name out loud and clear, it is called the most effective activity, as the other kids start memorizing it and gradually associate the person with his/her name.
Other activities are learning alphabets and numbers, shapes and colors, words and sentences, which are already a part of a study curriculum. By definition, listening means hearing and analyzing what is heard.
So, to make the art of listening more efficient, developing a routine of listening to a recording or one's own vocal sounds can be adopted as an effective training exercise. This exercise evidently has been fruitfully applicable for every one.

Various Sounds

When you want to recognize regular sounds which exist around you all the time, but haven't paid attention to them yet, the simplest thing to do is make a list of all and listen to them. You can use this activity for yourself, for kids, or any other students you are trying to train.
It is also one of the simplest and most effective active listening exercises one can go through for better listening skills. Visit the beach, join a music class, sit in a park, go to a lake or river side or a farmland, visit a construction site, or any other place where you would get to hear a variety of natural sounds.
The sounds of flowing water or bubbles, musical instruments, strong winds or breeze, insects and animals, children playing and swinging, bulldozers rolling tar on the road or drilling machines demolishing the road, etc., are all the unique sounds which are present around us, but all you need to do is listen.

Phone Numbers

Many times, when we are trying to memorize somebody's phone number, we think they are easy to remember for the next 2 minutes, but forget them right after 1 minute! Well, that's because we follow the wrong way of memorizing.
Like alphabets, numbers are also learned or memorized the best when they are spoken loudly, so we could hear them and store them in our brain. Therefore, try to read out all the phone numbers in your contacts list loudly and clearly to yourself or the other person.
Through this activity, the precise numbers are heard by us, and because we concentrate and understand the order, it is easy to memorize them. Once you have learned these with respect to their owners, you will remember all the phone numbers for the exact owner automatically.

Games and Activities

Another activity for college students, could be playing some knowledgeable games with those students who need to learn active listening skills. These games could be group activities or could be played individually.
If you are teaching these techniques to a group of students, you could play games such as; Pass a message, Lip read or mime games, Draw with description (one partner describes verbally and the other partner draws without looking at him).
Narrating speeches, hearing audio clips of well-known songs or movies, voices of famous people, etc., are some of the agreeable activities.
Developing these senses and sharpening them is very essential for the overall development of any individual.