Developing Listening Skills in Children

As teachers who are teaching juniors of age range from 9-11 years ,we expect the pupils to have frequently practiced simple listening exercises that develop their listening skills such as those done to infant grades like playing with gongs ,whistles and so on.Infants learning to distinguish different sounds and following simple instructions.To develop these skills for this age range the teacher should plan exercises which promote more advanced skills.Lets look at further ear training to enhence listening skills.
The teacher should be a role model ,good for children to clearly hear the sounds of words and ability to destinguish the differences between bed and bird, fit and feet, Hat and hurt etc.
The sounds of words should be presented with statements ,normally in a stream of speech . Children should be given enough time to hear from the sentences ,before expected to produce response . The teacher's fluency is good from the initial point maintaining medium fast and not to be slow or too fast.
However there are problems with second language learners ,like in Zimbabwe where most of children speak English language as a second language because their pronunciation is always linked to their mastered first language.A child who speak chishona for example can always interfers the pronunciation to English being taught at school.If the sounds of the two languages don't match ,then the problems arise .English has 12 pure vowels and 8 dipthtongs whilst chishona has only 5 vowels and consonants where sounds of letters like L and Q never exist in their language.Children of this calibre likely sounds words like seat /si't/ ,sit /sit/ ,firm /fě:m/ ,but /bût/ etc .According to MacGregor(1970:180)second language speakers use sounds like their first language and hear those sounds as spoken by others.
Children listen and do. So their behaviour correspond to what they heard ,for example if there is a chart with picture if you say out words children can point the picture matching the word said.Also the teacher can point the picture and children can say out the names of the pointed picture.
When giving exercise the teacher should begin with pairs of words live-leave ,cot -caught, and then more practice follow where more than two words are used like bed-bird-bud ,hut -heart -hat. The children should be allowed to use sentences,recite jingles and rhymes of the sounds.