Listening Skills: Listening for information about plans

There are many situations in which you listen to other people talk about their plans or arrangements for the future, for example, the arrangement for the weekend, the plan for losing weight, the plan for a business project, etc. So it is quite important for you to learn how to listen for information about plans.

At sentence level, a strategy you may use to identify information about future arrangements is to listen for sentences in future tense, typically sentences including the structure be going to do sth, and the modal verb will, as in the following examples:

e.g. This week I’m going to go swimming every day.

I’ll take a trip up the coast to the beach.

In English, present continuous tense is also frequently used to introduce future arrangements, which seems confusing, but is in fact an idiomatic way to say that something is planned and will be done in the near future.

e.g. I’m having dinner with John tonight.

At discourse level, if there is more than one activity in the arrangement or plan, signal words and expressions are used to inform listeners of the order of these activities, as in the following plan for writing a term paper:

e.g. First, I will read the short story carefully, and take notes of ideas related to the theme I want to discuss. Next I plan to search the electronic databases for relevant academic papers to see what has and has not been written on this theme. After that, I will work out the outline of my paper and discuss it with my professor for suggestions.

In this example, signal words and expressions like first, next and after that are used to indicate the sequence of the activities in the plan.

Similar signal words and expressions include at first, to begin with, (and) then, afterwards, later, when it is finished, finally, in the end, etc.

A plan may involve a serious of events arranged in time sequence. We can use a timeline to take notes of the information about plans. A timeline is a visual method of displaying a list of events in chronological order, typically a long bar with dates and events labeled alongside itself, as shown here. Timelines are particularly useful for organizing future projects and events.

For example, a timeline can be used to organize the details for an upcoming wedding by specifying on what days to go dress shopping, what days to pick up decorations, what days to book wedding banquets, what days to send invitation cards, etc.

Title:

Event: Event: Event: Event:

Date: Date: Date: Date:

Event: Event: Event:

Date: Date: Date:

So timelines are an effective way of graphically organizing the details and requirements of events that are being planned. When you are taking notes using a timeline, write the events and the dates for each event in chronological order from left to right.

In the following exercise you’re going to listen to a radio program in which Dominique and Rob are asked to talk about their plans for an evening in London. Pay special attention to the signal words and expressions, and tenses they use to obtain relevant information about their plans for the evening.