10 Teaching Moves That Build Listening and Trust

Teach Listening as a Named Subject

Valentina Gonzalez, a longtime educator and advocate for English learners, now treats in-person conversation as a subject to teach outright. When she began teaching in the late 1900s, cellphones and online gaming were not concerns; children played face to face. Handheld technology changed that, so she now explicitly teaches physical proximity — how to sit or stand near a speaker — plus eye contact, tilting the head and nodding, waiting until the speaker stops, and paraphrasing or asking for clarification. She applies the same direct teaching to monolingual English-speaking students, not only to English learners. Her most recent books are "Equitable Instruction for English Learners in the Content Areas" and "Welcome to Teaching Multilingual Learners," and her point is blunt: unless she directly taught listening, she spent class time reteaching material she had already covered.

Have Students Raise a Card When They Hear a Term

Bobson Wong and Larisa Bukalov, who teach math at Bayside High School in New York City, start from the research claim that in the earliest stage of language learning, students absorb the new language by listening and understanding. Their first technique is pronunciation: they review the pronunciation of the lesson's terms and symbols, display them on the board, and ask the class to repeat them in a choral response. Students then copy each term or symbol on an index card. The teacher reads a text — a definition or a word problem — and students hold up the appropriate card every time they hear the term. Later the same cards become flashcards, with the definition written on the back. This sequence moves from hearing to recognizing to producing the word, and the card raise gives the teacher immediate visual feedback on who is tracking the spoken text. As Wong and Bukalov note, students who can't pronounce something will struggle to understand its meaning, so the pronunciation drill is not a warm-up but the core of comprehension.

Listen and Do: Nine Pictures, One Instruction at a Time

Each student receives a worksheet with nine pictures. The teacher gives one instruction at a time, such as 'Place a star over the house' or 'Draw a cloud above the tree.' The first time this activity is done, students typically miss many steps; with repeated practice, their listening accuracy improves. This activity directly practices listening to the teacher, which is one of the five listening modalities students need. The teacher can check the completed worksheets to see exactly which steps were missed, showing where comprehension broke down. The activity is low-tech and inexpensive—just a worksheet and a prepared list of commands. It also produces a permanent record: a misplaced cloud or a missing star shows exactly where comprehension broke down.

Listen and Draw a Two-Paragraph Story

Williams' second signature lesson, Listen and Draw, begins with a short story of about two paragraphs on a topic. Students listen without seeing the text, then draw what happened in the story. Williams offers an extension: have students sequence the events in the story, which converts a listening check into a comprehension check. For example, students can number the key events in order or break the drawing into panels and arrange the panels in the sequence they occurred, forcing them to reconstruct temporal relationships rather than just recall isolated facts. The activity works across proficiency levels because the output is visual — a student at the earliest stage of English can show understanding through drawing rather than speech. It also reveals whether a student tracked the order of events, not just isolated facts. The two-paragraph length keeps the listening load manageable while forcing attention to narrative structure.

Model the Good Conversation and the Bad One

Valentina Gonzalez describes a modeling technique that requires a second adult in the room. When she had a co-teacher or teacher's aide available, the two of them role-modeled two conversations: one that demonstrated effective listening and one that did not. The class then discussed the characteristics of both. The contrast makes the difference visible — students see the nodding, the eye contact, the wait time, and then see the version without them. Specifically, they note behaviors such as maintaining eye contact, nodding, tilting the head, waiting until the speaker finishes, and paraphrasing what was heard, and they observe the absence of these in the ineffective conversation. Gonzalez says this is one of the few ways she modeled listening and speaking protocols directly, and it depends on having someone to play the second role. Without a co-teacher or aide, the exercise loses its contrast.

Call on Random Students, Then Scaffold the Summary

Gonzalez holds students accountable for listening by calling on a few randomly after any listening round to share what they heard, summarize, or paraphrase. The key is that English learners at beginning proficiency levels are not left to sink or swim. They can get time for rehearsal before sharing, a thinking or speaking frame, or the group preparing the speaker before they speak. A speaking frame might be 'I heard that...' or 'The main point was...' — a simple sentence starter that gives the learner a structure to shape their response. The rehearsal time can be spent with a partner, and the group can help the student decide which point to share. The random call ensures the whole class stays alert because anyone may be asked to report. The scaffolds keep the accountability from penalizing students whose oral English lags behind their comprehension.

Ask Questions Before You Disclose Anything

Leslie John, the James E. Burke Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of "Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing," says the instinct when a student is stressed is to jump straight into fixing things. That is the wrong move. She recommends asking questions and letting the other person lead, with the mindset "I want to understand the whole of you so that I can help you." This approach delays the urge to give advice and instead creates space for the student to articulate what is actually wrong. The point is that disclosure does not start with the speaker; it starts with listening. If you do not know what the student is actually carrying, any personal story you offer is aimed at the wrong target. This is the foundational step before any of the other disclosure techniques.

Know Your Why Before You Share

John says the No. 1 thing to consider before disclosing anything to a student is "What's your why?" The goal of revealing should never be to get support, praise, or approval from the student — it should be to help them. She gives a concrete example: a student approaches you about exam stress, and you feel compelled to say you also struggled with testing in college. That disclosure works if the point is to help the student feel less alone and remind them college is survivable. The disclosure shifts the student's perspective from isolation to solidarity, and it does so without turning the conversation toward the instructor's own difficulties. John says taking two seconds to think through the why is "really transformational" because that brief pause acts as a filter, separating disclosures that serve the student from those that serve the teacher's ego.

Use a Catalyst Confession to Open the Door

John calls the first share a "catalyst confession." Sharing something appropriate and a little deeper than usual is a social risk, and taking that risk says implicitly to the other person: I trust you not to make a fool of me. That opens the door to reciprocal honesty. The risk of embarrassment is real, but that risk is exactly what signals trust; the other person sees that you are putting something on the line, and that makes reciprocity more likely. John's own studies support the mechanics: she asked students sensitive questions, such as about sexual health history. One version of the survey carried a confidentiality assurance; the other did not. People were more forthcoming without the assurance. John's conclusion is that trust is shown, not told — saying "you can trust me" does nothing, while a disclosure demonstrates trust and invites it back.

Transparency When Vulnerability Is Too Much

John distinguishes between two modes of openness. Transparency is explaining your thought process — saying what is going on in your head and how your mind works. Vulnerability is sharing sensitive thoughts and feelings. You do not always need the second to be human. Early in her career, John worried that talking about her kids might undermine her credibility, a concern she says is especially sharp for women and minorities climbing status ladders. Transparency can be practiced in everyday interactions, such as explaining why you are assigning a certain task or how you would approach a problem, whereas vulnerability involves exposing feelings that could be judged. Her advice in such contexts is to focus on "modeling your competence in a warm way," which transparency achieves without requiring emotional exposure. The distinction gives faculty a middle option between blank professionalism and oversharing.