Direccin de Educacin Secundaria

2011-2012

February, 2011

LISTENING COMPREHENSION
Activities

FOURTH MEETING FOR THE ARTICULATION IN BASIC EDUCATION February 2012

TIME 30 TOPIC Introduction of participants. Agenda and purpose of the workshop Warm up ACTIVITY Introduction of the assessor Read the agenda for the session Ice breaking activity MATERIALS Attendance list Agenda PC Projector PRODUCTS Attendance list

2:00

Listening Comprehension

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Some background Two views What to, What for and How Enabling skills Some examples Problems we face How should the material be managed? Listening Stages Listening with video (some techniques). Listening to confirm expectations Listening to extract information Listening for communicating tasks Listening for main ideas

Projector Computer Copies of dialog as an example.

15

BREAK Two listening activities.

BREAK 1. Plan and create two listening activities according to the program. 2. Socialize your plan with the listening activities

BREAK Material in Multimedia. Bond paper Markers Masking tape

Evaluation format

BREAK Chart with listening activities

15

Evaluation

Evaluating the workshop

THE CINDERELLA SKILL

Overlooked by its eldest sister 60s boost 80s

Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner.

Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.
Listening is thus fundamental to speaking.

TWO VIEWS
BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING 1. Listening is a process of decoding the sounds that one hears in a linear fashion. 2. From the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to complete texts. 3. Phonemic units-wordssentences-meaningful texts.

80S

TOP-DOWN INTERPRETATION
1. The listeners actively constructs or reconstructs the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds as clues. 2. In this reconstruction process, the listener uses prior knowledge of the context to make sense of what he or she hears.

Talks dialogues

Interviews / lectures

Pop songs directions

NEWS BROADCASTS

descriptions
discussions

Telephone conversations

Stories and advertisements

ENABLING SKILLS
Predicting what people are going to talk about. Guessing at unknown words or phrases without panicking. Using ones own knowledge of the subject to help one understand. ding relevant points; rejecting . Retaining relevant points

Note taking Summarizing

Recognizing discourse markers. Recognizing cohesive devices, e.g. such as, which, pronouns. Understanding different intonation patterns and stress.

Understanding inferred info (speakers attitude or intentions).

SOME EXAMPLES OF ACTIVITIES

Discriminate

1
Place in the correct order

COMPLETE FLOW OF CHARTS

Fill in the chart

DRAW

Follow Directions

Problems we face
Training students in listening skills presents problems for both the teacher and the students = reading materials.

A written text is static. It can be consumed at the speed of the reader, and read again and again.

Problems we face
Spoken text on video or audio can certainly be repeated but it still happens at its rate. Of course in a conversation a listener can ask the speaker to repeat what it is being said, but the same is not true in a lecture you are listening to, or the radio program that flashes past.

Spoken language differs from written text

Argument
develops

Point of view Story

clarity

Writers can

ammend

re-draft

correct

Final version

E.g.
Interviewer: Do has this everdoes this cause you any problems? I mean do you get, do you get a lot of attention that you dont want from the media? Sue: Um yeah, you know, sort of knocking on my door, eight oclock in the morning saying er tell you a funny story I mean I havent had a lot of hassle from the press.

Both speakers seem to have trouble or at least unsure of what they are trying to say and yet on audio their conversation is surprinsingly understandable. Interviewer changes his mind, then reformulates. Actress uses hesitation devices time to think

SPEECH PHENOMENA

HESITATION
REFORMULATION REDUNDANCY

TOPIC CHANGE

Natural part of spontaneous speech

Our Job
To help them disregard these phenomena. To help them concentrate instead on the main message of what is being said.
They do this in their own language, and are not sidetracked by these phenomena, at least as far as comprehension is concerned.

We must make sure they can do the same in English, although clearly in acceptable stages.

So, we would not use the interview with our beginners class with any confidence that they would understand it.

Major Problem
The actual way in which listening is presented to the students. The most common form of doing is through the use of a CD player.

Theres no limit to the variety of voices. REASONS

CDs are small.

CD players are portable.

A nerve racking experience

Hardly natural for 30 to 40 people to sit in silence listening to a CD. Sts feel threatened when they begin not to understand what they are hearing, they gradually loose the thread. Disembodied voices in a foreign language are much difficult to cope with.

CDs are still the most common way of giving students listening practice (they are cheaper and more portable) but they also focus their attention to spoken English, rather than on visual contact, gesture, surrounding events. SO HOW SHOULD THE MATERIAL BE HANDLED?

Listen carefully to the following audio

SO HOW SHOULD THE MATERIAL BE HANDLED?

Lead in The use of visual material Listening tasks The equipment

LEAD IN
We must be sure to give as clear a lead-in as possible, because the students expectations are vital here. If they have some idea of what is coming they are less likely to put a panic barrier between themselves and the CD player, or any other device. It is vital, too, that they should be interested in what they are going to hear since they are unlikely to be very successful without the commitment that such interest will bring.

The use of visual material

It is often extremely useful to give students a visual setting for the CD they are going to listen to, some pictorial back-up that will create expectations and reassure the listeners.

Listening tasks
It is important that listening tasks should be designed to help students to listen

+ effectively

traps

When students look at the tasks they have to complete before listening to an audio, they should be able to predict the content of what they are going to hear at least in part.

The equipment
Its important to know that devices and CD or audio are in good condition before taking them into class. Nothing is more demoralizing than an audio or CD that cannot be understood because of poor quality. Devices can become damaged or have faulty speakers.

LISTENING STAGES

STAGES
PRE-LISTENING

LISTENING
POST-LISTENING

Pre-listening
There are certain goals that should be achieved before students attempt to listen to any text. These are motivation, contextualization, and preparation. Motivation It is enormously important that before listening students are motivated to listen, so you should try to select a text that they will find interesting and then design tasks that will arouse your students' interest and curiosity.

CONTEXTUALIZATION
When we listen in our everyday lives we hear language within its natural environment and that environment gives us a huge amount of information about the linguistic content we are likely to hear. Listening to a tape recording in a classroom is a very unnatural process. The text has been taken from its original environment and we need to design tasks that will help students to contextualize the listening and access their existing knowledge and expectations to help them understand the text.

PREPARATION
To do the task we set students while they listen there could be specific vocabulary or expressions that students will need. It's vital that we cover this before they start to listen as we want the challenge within the lesson to be an act of listening not of understanding what they have to do.

WHILE LISTENING When we listen to something in our everyday lives we do so for a reason. Students too need a reason to listen that will focus their attention. For our students to really develop their listening skills they will need to listen a number of times three or four usually works quite well - as I've found that the first time many students listen to a text they are nervous and have to tune in to accents and the speed at which the people are speaking.

Ideally the listening tasks we design for them should guide them through the text and should be graded so that the first listening task they do is quite easy and helps them to get a general understanding of the text.

Sometimes a single question at this stage will be enough, not putting the students under too much pressure.

The second task for the second time students listen should demand a greater and more detailed understanding of the text. Make sure though that the task doesn't demand too much of a response. Writing long responses as they listen can be very demanding and is a separate skill in itself, so keep the tasks to single words, ticking or some sort of graphical response.

The third listening task could just be a matter of checking their own answers from the second task or could lead students towards some more subtle interpretations of the text.

Listening to a foreign language is a very intensive and demanding activity and for this reason I think it's very important that students should have 'breathing' or 'thinking' space between listenings. I usually get my students to compare their answers between listenings as this gives them the chance not only to have a break from the listening, but also to check their understanding with a peer and so reconsider before listening again.

Post-listening
There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take. These are reactions to the content of the text, and analysis of the linguistic features used to express the content. Reaction to the text Of these two I find that tasks that focus students reaction to the content are most important. Again this is something that we naturally do in our everyday lives. Because we listen for a reason, there is generally a following reaction. This could be discussion as a response to what we've heard - do they agree or disagree or even believe what they have heard? - Or it could be some kind of reuse of the information they have heard.

Analysis of language The second of these two post-listening task types involves focusing students on linguistic features of the text. This is important in terms of developing their knowledge of language, but less so in terms of developing students' listening skills. It could take the form of an analysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or vocabulary or collocation work. This is a good time to do form focused work as the students have already developed an understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meanings much easier.

Listening with video

Listening with video

Videos have many disadvantages like the ones we mentioned of the CD, but of course the major advantage is that students can (sometimes) see people speaking and can have a visual context for what is being said. Principles for using a video are very much the same as those for using CD, and there is a special need for teachers to set motivating and challenging tasks. Students, like all of us, see TV as a form of relaxation, yet teachers are trying to use it as a positive learning aid. The problem is not insurmountable and TV has a long and respectable history in first language education.

Silent viewing

Freeze frame

Video-specific techniques

Sound only
Jigsaw viewing

Silent viewing
One of the most common techniques with video material is silent viewing. This acts as a powerful predictive exercise. The teacher plays the video tape with the sound turned off. The students speculate about what the characters are saying. Only then do they watch the video with sound to check whether their predictions are right.

Freeze frame The teacher might create expectations by freezing a frame on the screen. The students can predict what the characters will say.

Sound only
Video is used like a CD audio by covering the screen. Students listen only to the sound. Their task can be to say where the conversation is taking place and who the speakers are. Afterwards they watch the extract to see if they were right.
Web page

Jigsaw viewing
Half of the class watches without sound and the other half hears it without a picture. Then they can compare notes and build a complete picture of what happened before watching the video with both

picture
Chair vs. chair

sound

Listening to confirm expectations

Just as we can ask students to read to confirm expectations so we can ask students to listen for the same reason. The technique has the same advantages for listening as it has for reading. The students have then a definite purpose for listening.

Ts elicits information from the students about what they knew/didnt Know or werent sure concerning the topic.

Listening to extract information

Students are told that they are going to listen to a weather forecast
WEATHER REPORT
Todays weather Cold cool dry Temperature 0 2 4 6 raining drizzle

After this activity, the students can describe the weather in diff. cities.

8 10

Outlook for tomorrow Foggy cloudy sunny windy

Listening for communicative tasks

Fill out a form. Listen to audio and complete it with information they hear. After checking it. They can interview each other to fill in a similar personal details.

Listening for main ideas

The students listen to a whole interview. They read the list, and then check ( ) the main ideas.

Listening Activity for Third Grade Unit 3 Write a historical event. 1.Cover the listening script and listen to six people talking about their vacation. Decide if they enjoyed their vacation or not. Put in the box.

2. Listen again and match a topic from the box to each of the speakers.

Topic Entertainment Food Hotel Trip Money and prices Weather

Speaker _____________ _____________ _____________ _____________ _____________ _____________

3. Listen again .Are the statements true ( T ) or false ( F )? Speaker 1 They didnt like the restaurant or excursions. They didnt have enough money. Speaker 2 The vacation was very tiring. They sometimes slept during the day. Speaker 3 The hotel was not very clean. The hotel staff was very friendly Speaker 4 The plane was only a little late. They missed the train. Speaker 5 They didnt enjoy their first meal. The restaurants in the town were very good. Speaker 6 They were un happy about the snow. The weather had been better the previous year.

1. The Resort was great with a beautiful sandy beach. The problem was that everything cost a fortune. Fantastic restaurants, amazing excursions, windsurfing, diving, they had everything, but basically we did nothing at all because we couldnt afford it. After two days, we had spent all our money, so we just ate sandwiches after that and watched everyone else enjoying themselves.
2. I was dead by the end of it. Ive always wanted to go, so l decided to really enjoy myself. We didnt do much during the day because we needed our sleep, but in the evening we saw a musical and then went dancing at a different place every night. Awesome! I cant wait to get back.

3. Yes, fantastic. The hotel was an ugly high-rise building-they hadnt even finished building it. It was absolutely filthy, and there didnt seem to be anyone working there. Oh yes, there was a man at reception, but he was asleep most of the time. It was the perfect destination for your worst enemy.

4. When we got to the check-in they said there was a short delay. Six hours later, we finally got on to an ancient plane, and when we were airborne. I just closed my eyes and hoped. When we arrived, we were too late for the train and, in any case, they had lost our baggage somewhere.

5. On the first day, we went down to the hotel restaurant and it was awful. They served us some kind of fish head in spicy sauce. Ugh! So for the rest of the time we decided to go downtown where there restaurants on every corner. We found some really amazing places and we couldnt wait for dinner time to arrive.

6. The funny thing is that although it was very cold, I actually got a little bit of sunburn. There had been a lot of snow just before we got there, so conditions were perfect. The resort was really at its best. It is a shame it wasnt like that last year.

Second grade
The students are going to see and listen the following explanation about how a machine or device works. After that the teacher can ask some questions about the material they saw, or he/she can give to the Ss some written material, to answer the questions. They can use the following links: Howstuffworks.com (then they go to the section video)

Thanks and see you soon!

References Willis, Jane. Teaching English through English. Harmer, Jeremy. The practice of english Language Teaching.