Ellen&Tomo(secretary)
Possible Causes:
1. Anxiety, being nervous
2. Lack of vocabulary
3. Lack of experience & exposure, not being used to listening
4. Students don't know that they don't have to listen to everything to solve listening tasks.
5. They can't differentiate similar sounds (eg. 'l'&'r', 'm'&'n', etc).
6. Lack of motivation
7. The topic doesn't interest them.
8. Noisy environment
Ellis&Sinclair(1989): 7 steps
1. How do you feel..? Nervous, anxious, difficult.
2. What do you know..? Some vocabulary, grammar, and chunks.
3. How well are you doing...? Not so well.
4. What do you need to do next...? Getting good score in next listening test.
5. How do you prefer to learn..? In class, not homework.
6. Do you need to build up your self-confidence..? Yes.
7. How do you organise..? Ask the teacher to do some listening tasks in class.
Learner training needed:
Time: 15 minutes, secured by speeding up usual reading content
Preparation:
1. The teacher finds something authentic & relevant to the reading topic from the Internet. The text should suit the students' level.
2. The teacher reads the text aloud & record it (or ask a native-speaker to do so if available).
3. The teacher designs questions which students can answer without listening everything but some key words.
Class:
4. The teacher explains aim of the task. Aim: Practice listening with catching only key words. Students will understand that they don't have to listen to everything to solve listening tasks.
5. The teacher asks students to read the questions beforehand.
6. The teacher plays the recording and students try to answer the questions.
7. The teacher asks some students to share their answers with the class.
8. The teacher can play the recording again if necessary.
No. of sessions: once a week (on-going)
Integrated?: Yes, the content of recording is relevant to the reading in class.
Special sessions?: No.
Comment: We believe we can deal with the causes 1,3,4 by this learner training task. It looks like an ordinary language learning task very much. We will need to explain aim of the task to the students explicitly.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Well done, though not sure how the listing of the E&S steps fits here. I think you can also cover causes 6 & 7 by asking the students what they are interested in and picking something relevant (as you suggested). I'm not sure that recording a written text meant for reading will be very helpful in developing listening tasks as the written text will have quite different features from normal spoken English. If you are introducing the strategy of listening for gist, then it would be better not to ask questions before listening, other than something very general, like, 'What is theis about?', or 'What are they talking about?'. If y ou want to get them to listen for detail, then you can orientate them by asking pre-listening questions to focus their attention.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few techniques that can be used for training learners' listening skills. I have tried these in my classes and they worked most of the time.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all , the teacher might ask one of the students to read the transcript and the rest of the class to do the listening task. This usually helps the students to do better since it is slower than the tape and there is no background noise. The aim of this activity is to demonstrate that students just need to develop their listening skills in order to cope with the speed of casual conversations and background noise of daily life. Since students usually do better when a student reads the transcript, this kind of demonstration helps them to increase their self confidence. Furthermore, the teacher can also ask the students to listen to the news or watch a film in their native language first and then in the target language. This type of activity aims at providing the necessary information about a certain topic and makes it easier for them to do the exercises related to listening since they do not have to deal with problems regarding comprehension. It also motivates them to listen to extracts that last longer than the listening tasks which in turn develops their familiarity of the target language in general. Finally, the teacher can use video tapes that are specially designed for SLA more frequently in class for developing learners' listening skills. Watching the interlocutors and the place where the conversation takes place provides students with the clues they need to understand the situation and helps them to direct their focus on the utterances.
In sum , making listening easier for the learners first by slowing it down in the first technique, using their L2 in the second one and using visual aid in the third one, the teacher trains the learners and when she/he feels they are ready gradually introduces them with the actual listening tasks.