Assessing listening skills in the French classroom

Assessing listening skills in the French classroom

Assessment in French class can be divided into four categories: speaking, writing, reading and listening. As French teachers we want to assess each of these four skills as each is integral in developing fluency in French. In this blog post, I will discuss the skills of ‘listening’ in French class.

Listening is a central skill for language acquisition and the frequent source exposure to language for most learners. However, listening skills are not often explicitly taught outside of a school setting. All students in learning French as a Second Language would benefit immensely from direct instruction and feedback related to their listening skills and strategies. 

 

Here are 8 listening comprehension skills that can be taught directly:

 

1.     Recognizing Literal Meaning: facts, details, or information 

2.     Understanding Vocabulary: the meanings of words 

3.     Making Inferences: make inferences as students listen  

4.     Identifying Main Idea: identify the central idea 

5.     Determining Purpose: determine the purpose of an oral text

6.     Drawing Conclusions: draw conclusions by synthesizing information

7.     Analyzing Reasoning: analyze reasoning supporting a claim 

8.     Finding Evidence: identify statements or details in an audio 

 

Here are some activities for French classes that directly focus on developing student listening skills:

 

This ‘écoute et colorie’ resource contains 9 unique French listening (or reading!) activities. They are perfect for listening assessments. In each activity, your students will listen to 7 instructions and complete the task on the sheet. Students will review prepositions of location, directions, colours, family and house vocabulary to complete each activity. The activities are versatile as they can also be used as a reading comprehension activity. This resource is available in my TPT shop HERE.

 

This is a set of listening activities for French students in grades 4-6 using traditional French songs. It makes a great weekly listening routine for French class. This resource includes activities for 8 songs.

Students will listen to the song via a YouTube video (linked in this document via a Google Slide) and complete a cloze passage activity for each song. Each song is featured on a single-page activity, which includes important vocabulary, interesting facts to read, comprehension and extension activities. Complete teacher answer key is also included. This resource is available in my TPT shop HERE.

 

Are you looking for a great rubric that has been generated specifically for ‘listening to interact?’ Check out THIS free download from Mme Nelson.

 

For suggestions on how to differentiate your French listening instruction, see THIS Document from Transforming FSL.