Overview of session
- Brainstorm: What are the components of airplane announcements? These are the short informative announcements we hear in flight. Take a few minutes to work with your neighbors to list what kind of information you normally hear in these announcements. Is there a structure to the announcements?
- Rationale
for our approach to teaching listening strategies
- Making
authentic material comprehensible: working with authentic materials in
popular media and textbooks
- Textbook examples
- Expansion examples
- Discussion
or Questions and Answers
Rationale:
We use a method of teaching language learning strategies based on CALLA:Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach - Theory and Practice
A. CALLA "is an instructional model that integrates current educational trends in standards, content based language instruction, learning strategies, and portfolio assessment" (Chamot, Barnhardt, El-Dinary & Robbins, 1999, p. 7).Activating background knowledge, or Schema Activation - Prelistening Activities: Activities to be used before listening should help students to activate their background knowledge of the topic (here, the topic is the problems of foreign travel) One example is a video segment from a popular movie. Students can learn about the announcements made on airlines as an additional listening practice.
B. CALLA provides teachers with a task-based five phase instructional design that helps them combine language, content, and learning strategies in a carefully planned lesson.1. Preparation - activate background knowledge of strategies
2. Presentation - teacher models the use of the new strategy for a particular task and explains how and when to use it
3. Practice - students practice the strategy in class activities
4. Evaluation - students evaluate their use of the strategy and its effectiveness for the task
5. Expansion - students extend the use of the strategy into new situations or tasks
Presentation of Listening and Speaking Strategies - a simplified set of listening and speaking strategies developed by Michael Rost was used in a listening textbook written by Robbins & MacNeill, Impact Listening 2.
Practice using authentic listening extracts - Most of our 'real world listening' extracts are based on recorded conversations between college students. They were used to develop the material in this textbook. It was scripted and re-recorded to become part of the listening textbook. However, for this particular extract, we used our actual experiences or those of our family.
Practice Activity for Low Intermediate students:
Impact Listening 2 page 28:
Vocabulary Task:
This is part of the schema activation done in preparation for listening.Listening Task
Listening Strategy: PredictStudents look at the pictures to guess the problem of each traveler.
Listening Strategy: Focus
Students listen to identify each person's problem
Listening Strategy: Guess
Students guess what will happen next
Listening Strategy: Respond
Students elaborate by imagining other problems.
Impact Listening 2 page 29
Real World Listening
Listening Strategy: Predict
Students are asked to predict what happened when Trevor went to Costa Rica.
They fill in the blanks on the postcard
Listening Strategy: Focus
When they listen the first time, they Focus to check on their predictions.
Students are asked to predict what happened when Trevor went to Costa Rica.
They fill in the blanks on the postcard
Listening Strategy: Focus
When they listen the first time, they Focus to check on their predictions.
Listening Strategy:
Focus
Students are asked to choose from possible problems and listen a second time.
Students are asked to choose from possible problems and listen a second time.
Listening
Strategy: Respond
Students respond by discussing Trevor's apparent feelings about the trip and relate their own experiences.
Students respond by discussing Trevor's apparent feelings about the trip and relate their own experiences.
Language
Awareness
Focus on FormInteraction Link: The Terrible Trip Game
Listening Strategy: ReviewStudents review the vocabulary they've learned by playing this game.
Evaluation activity:
After using particular strategies, students are asked which were helpful in their listening or speaking activities. They complete a checklist meant to encourage reflection on the way they use strategies.Extensions on the theme
- Survey Project: Students were asked to do a survey project. Students in groups chose the them and questions. they surveyed students on campus or neighbors. This gave them the chance to talk more in depth about a topic of their choice and to practice listening and other academic skills while gathering data, analyzing, organizing and presenting it. When they do the presentations, I ask them to evaluate each other as this encourages them to listen more attentively.
- Travel Research: Student research a travel destination and give an oral report on a particular country; telling about the environment and culture, the cost of a trip, and what one can do there.
Q & A
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