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Outline
Authentic listening/ viewing materials
Listening—the ‘Cinderella skill’
Issues with teaching listening and how might technology help
Using e-resources for teaching listening
Speaking—core skills and strategies
Importance of developing fluency
Using e-resources for teaching speaking
Authentic listening or viewing materials—to use or not to use?
Authentic English, more motivating, capable of sparkling interest
However, finding authentic materials relevant to the course and pitched at the right level is often difficult.
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The value of studying moving pictures (British Film Institute, 2000)
•Critical understanding of films, videos and television is becoming an integral part of literacy in the 21st century education (😉still remember the concept ‘multiliteracies’?).
•Moving pictures are also important in their own right as a value part of human culture.
•Analysing moving images sharpens students’ responses to literature and improve their reading and writing skills.
•Some students prefer to document and communicate their learning through images. For some leaners, it does offer them new ways of succeeding.
‘Listening is the Cinderella skill in second language learning. All too often, it has been overlooked by its elder sister – speaking’. -Nunan, 2002, p.238
Disadvantages of traditional listening
Listening had often been taught badly in the past:
•Listening limited to audio tapes or CDs which students hadn’t chosen
•Student had no control over where, when and how listening was done
•Too much focus on listening for information
•Mostly non-reciprocal listening with no opportunity to interact with the speaker
•Few opportunities to reflect on their listening problems
Challenges posed by authentic listening materials (Pachler, 2014, p.234)
•Listening to an extended passage without preparation can be challenging for ESL learners, particularly lower-proficiency learners. Authentic materials seem to pose even more challenges.
•A scaffold for listening activities usually goes through the following stages:
•Pre-listening activities
•Listening for gist and details
•Focusing on linguistic structures and forms
•Rebuilding selected language forms to express personal views
Objectives of each listening stage (Pachler, 2014)
•Pre-listening activities
To arouse interest and facilitate comprehension through providing pre-listening support (e.g. background information about the topic and & previewing of questions)
•Listening for gist and detail
To break down the listening text into manageable chunks and set different foci each time the material is listened to/ viewed
1st listening: context, gist, mood
2nd listening: specific details
3rd listening: allow those who could not catch the answers to try again
•Focusing on linguistic structures and forms
To let students communicate understanding of the listening material either orally and in writing by using their own language or borrowing language from the listening text
•Rebuilding selected language forms to express personal views
To let students rebuild the text or write a new text either orally and in writing to give expression to personal opinions.
How might technology help?
•Learners can choose what they listen to.
•Control where, when and how they listen.
•Create own listening texts and tasks.
•Link listening and speaking.
•Offer opportunity to reflect on listening problems in real life (e.g. speaker’s intention and attitude,
Differentiation of listening tasks (Smethem, 2003)
•Select shorter passages or long passages to be broken down into shorter ones.
•Allow repeated listening or repeated listening of specific items.
•Fewer speakers in the listening passage.
•Offer visual or textual support.
•Responses which do not require too much text or involve non-verbal responses.
Scaffolding and viewing support (BFI, 2000)
•Make purpose of viewing clear to students and establish that analysis and discussion will involve repetitions and pauses. You may also like to tell your students in advance how much note-taking and follow-up work is expected from them.
•Avoid using a comprehensive-type worksheet with detailed instructions, which may be unproductive because close viewing and copious note taking is often threatening to less confident students.
•Break the viewing down into short sections, each prefaced with one/ two key learning questions.
•Provide transcribed extracts and still images to which students can refer to after viewing
•Prepare pupils with key words, definitions and selected moments to look out for
•Prepare post-viewing worksheet prompting recall of key issues or data , using flow charts or spidergrams or sequencing activities.
Suggested activities to be used with films or other viewing materials (see CDC, 2007, pp.91-93 for more)
Some of my favourite Internet-based listening resources
Core speaking skills (Goh & Burns, 2012)
•The goal: produce accurate language which is easy for listeners to process and appropriate to the context.
•Four core listening skills:
•Pronunciation
•Performing speech acts (e.g. make requests and give opinions)
•Managing interaction
•Organising discourse (e.g. use of discourse markers to signpost)
•Speaking strategies:
•Cognitive strategies (e.g. find ways around lack of vocab through paraphrasing)
•Metacognitive (e.g. planning or rehearsing)
•Interaction strategies (e.g. ask for help to check understanding and request clarification)
Fluency
•However, it is often fluency that worries learners most.
•The Web 2.0 tools provide good opportunities for practicising spoken language.
•Real-time communication tools (e.g. Skype)
•Chatbots (e.g.Siri)
•Speech to text programmes (e.g. Dragon Dictation)
•Programs for recording yourself and compare to a native speaker (e.g. English File Pronunciation)
•Ask students to create an avatar and then add a recording of their voice and speak about any topic they like (e.g. Voki and My School Avatar)
Teaching pronunciation
References
CDI. (2007). English Language Curriculum and Assessment Guide(Secondary 4 -6). Retrieved from http://334.edb.hkedcity.net/doc/eng/curriculum/Eng%20Lang%20C&A%20Guide_updated.pdf
British Film Institute. (2000). Moving Images in the Classroom. A Secondary Teachers’ Guide to Using Film and Television. Retrieved from http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-education-moving-images-in-the-classroom-2013-03.pdf
Nunan, D. (2002). Listening in language learning. In J. C. Richards, & W. A. Renandya (Eds), Methodology in Language Teaching. An Anthology of Current Practice (pp.238-241). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pachler, N. (2014). Learning to teach foreign languages in the secondary school. a companion to school experience. New York : Routledge.
Walker, A. & White, G. (2013). Technology Enhanced Language Learning. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
