Learning Listening: The Challenges of Unscripted Langauge

Many students studying English want (or even need) to be able to understand the spontaneous, unscripted speech they find themselves immersed in as people chat away around them. For students schooled on a diet of scripted ELT material the challenge is truly daunting; for teachers wishing to help, the unruly nature of conversational spoken English makes it difficult to know where to start. In this workshop, I’ll classify and exemplify commonly-occurring features of unscripted language and participants will try out some listening activities which can be adapted for use with different texts.