Make listening a highlight
As mentioned in a previous post, listening is often seen as a test. With this listening, I simply made a multiple choice answer grid and let students highlight the correct answers. There is something very unthreatening about a highlighter. The students approached this as a normal lesson activity (which it was!) rather than a test. Having the words correctly on the sheet means the answers from the listening can become a writing activity, e.g. write about these people using the third person. It is easy to differentiate by providing more or fewer alternatives for students.