From Professor Pauline Gibbons books Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning available from Amazon by clicking here this classroom strategy is a great way to develop your EAL learners listening skills.
Beginner EAL learners often switch off / lose focus when they are listening to extended teacher talk, therefore, it is our job to provide them with classroom strategies that help to improve their listening skills and give them some focus. For more advanced EAL learners you could use this classroom strategy for extended periods of teacher talk and they have to complete the cloze which is a summary of what you are saying.
Here is how you can do it:
- Have a text that you are going to read aloud to the class with focused words missing. For beginners you could provide these deleted words for them to listen out for.
- Read the text at normal speed and have learners fill in the gaps
I have used this strategy in a wide range of subject areas with different teachers. It could be adapted so that you don’t just read out a structured text but that you use teacher talk (sometimes which is unstructured) and the learners have to listen for when they can fill in the gaps.
EAL in the Daylight 