Listening isn’t a passive skill, it’s the foundation of literacy and learner independence. Explore authentic, real-world listening tasks and walk away with a toolkit of explicit strategies that work across levels, in-person or online
About This Session
Description
Listening is often the first bridge to literacy. For beginning-level English learners, explicit listening instruction is essential.
This workshop zooms in on the unique needs of emerging readers and beginning level language learners, exploring how targeted listening tasks build the foundational skills they need to decode, comprehend, and communicate.
Participants will explore listening scenarios relevant to beginners, try out accessible activities designed for low-literacy and beginning-level learners, and connect explicit listening strategies directly to literacy development.
Leave with practical, ready-to-use ideas for both remote and in-person settings.
What we'll cover:
In this workshop, we’ll tackle listening, which the most foundational, but in some ways most challenging to explicitly teach skill. Participants will be able to articulate the importance of explicit listening instruction to their learners and colleagues.
In this session, we connect listening strategies to concrete classroom activities, explore listening materials and scenarios, and discuss how to incorporate explicit listening instruction into every class.
Topics & Focus
Primary Topic Area
Session will also cover:
Assigned by TCALL
Pending
Audience
Level
Case study?
Promotion?
A note from the presenter:
No other info available at this time.
Handouts & Materials
No handouts or materials available at this time.
“Name of Session” – session presentation slides (PDF)
Name of Document – lesson sample (PDF)
Name of Document (PDF)
Name of Document – infographic (JPG)
Presenter
Andrea Echelberger
LESLLA
Andrea Echelberger has worked in the field of adult education as a classroom teacher and an instructional trainer for over 20 years, providing training and support for English language teachers on both a state and national level.
Andrea has worked extensively with refugee-background adult emergent readers, served as an EL Fellow and EL Specialist with the US State Department, and has developed a wide variety of workshops and classroom instructional materials for ABE teachers of all levels. She served for three years on the international board of LESLLA, an organization that focuses on adult emergent readers. Andrea’s favorite areas of research are universal design for classrooms, healing-centered classroom practices, and pronunciation instruction.
Breakout26 – ECHELBERGER
Page checked or updated: 6/10/2026
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