Matakuliah Tahun : G0444 / Material Design and Testing : 2005 LISTENING ACTIVITIES Pertemuan 2 1 I. The importance of Listening II. Focussed Listening III. Helping Students to listen IV. Getting Students to predict 2 Matakuliah Tahun : <<Kode>>/<<Nama mtkul>> : <<Tahun Pembuatan>> Getting Students to predict Pertemuan 2.4 3 • An important part of the skill of listening is being able to predict what the speaker is going to say next; we can help students to listen by giving them some idea of what they are going to listen to. • When doing listening activities in class, we can also ask students to guess what they are going to hear next; this will help them develop listening skills, and is also a good way to keep the class actively involved in listening. 4 Read this story and decide at which points students could stop and ask them to make predictions Once there was a boy called Ali, a poor fisherman’s son. As he was going home one evening, he saw an old man lying by the side of the road, seriously ill. The boy was very kind, and he helped the old man to the nearest hospital. The old man thanked the boy and asked him for his name and address. The boy was ashamed to admit that his father was a poor fisherman, so he said, “My name is Mustafa and my father is a teacher”. A few days later, the old man died in the hospital, and left all his money to “Mustafa, a local teacher’s son who helped me in my hour of need”. Of course, because Ali had lied, he did not receive any of the old man’s money. Mark 5 places in the story where you could stop and ask Ss to predict what will happen next. What questions would you ask each time ? 5 Matakuliah Tahun : G0444 / Material Design and Testing : 2005 Helping students to Listen Pertemuan 2.3 6 2 ways of helping students to listen 1. Using a dialogue for listening 2. Using a cassette recorder I. Using a dialogue for listening What a teacher can do to help the students to listen and so improve their listening skills : 1. Introduce the topic before getting the class to listen to the dialogue. This would help the students to predict what the dialogue would be about. If necessary, the teacher could also present new vocabulary at this point. 2. Give one or two “guiding questions” before the listening stage. This would help focus students’ attention on the main points of the dialogue. 7 3. Divide the listening into stages, e.g : First listening : students listen for main idea only, to answer the guiding questions. Second listening : students listen for details. For the second listening, the teacher could divide the dialogue into two sections, and check comprehension after each section. (This would be very important with a longer piece of listening). 8 A Possible PROCEDURE for using a dialogue ( helping students to listen) 1. introduce the topic 2. give guiding questions 3. read the dialogue. Students listen for the main idea and answer guiding questions. 4. read the first part again, and ask questions to check detailed comprehension. Do the same with the second part. 5. students open their books. Read the dialogue while students follow. This technique could also be applied when using a text for listening. 9 4. in a large class with bad acoustics, listening to a cassette may be very difficult indeed. Up to a point, trying to listen to something that is not clear can provide good listening practice, but if it is too difficult it will just be frustrating. II. An important part of listening is being able to “catch” words and phrases that we hear; students who have not had much chance to listen to English often fail to recognize words that they already know. The cassette recorder is very useful for giving practice in this, because the cassette can be stopped and a phrase played over and over again. This practice is called “ intensive listening”. 10 The procedure of Intensive Listening: 1. introduce the listening, and give one or two guiding questions. 2. play the cassette once without stopping, and discuss the guiding questions 3. play the cassette again. This time, focus on important points, pausing and asking what the person said each time. If students are unable to catch the remark, rewind the cassette a little way and play it again. The aim of this practice is to focus on the most important remarks only, not of course to go through the whole of a listening text phrase by phrase. 11 USING a CASSETTE RECORDER ( helping students to listen ) I. Advantages and problems of using a cassette recorder for listening : 1. the cassette recorder gives a chance for students to listen to a variety of voices apart from the teacher’s, and it is a way of bringing native speaker’s voices into the classroom. Students who have only heard English spoken by their teacher often have difficulty understanding other people. 2. recorded material is useful for listening to dialogues, interviews, discussions, etc where there is more than one person speaking. Otherwise the teacher has to act the part of more than one person. 3. listening to a cassette recording is much more difficult than listening to the teacher. When we listen to someone “face to face” there are many visual clues ( e.g. gestures, lip movements) which help us to listen. When we listen to a cassette these clues are missing. 12 Matakuliah Tahun : G0444 / Material Design and Testing : 2005 The Importance of LISTENING Pertemuan 2.1 13 The Importance of Listening • We cannot develop speaking skills unless we also develop listening skills; to have a successful conversation, students must understand what is said to them. To develop this ability, students need plenty of practice in listening to English spoken at normal speed. • Listening to spoken English is an important way of acquiring the language – of “picking up” structures and vocabulary. In a situation where learners are living in non English speaking countries, they don’t have plenty of “exposure” to English language. So, we need to give these learners as much opportunity to listen to spoken English as possible. 14 Listening in real life In real life, there are two ways in which we often listen : 1. CASUAL Listening : sometimes we listen with no particular purpose in mind, and often without much concentration. For examples : listening to the radio while doing some housework; chatting to a friend. Usually we do not listen very closely, unless we hear something that particularly interest us, and afterwards we may not remember much of what we heard. 15 2. FOCUSSED Listening : at other times we listen for a particular purpose, to find out information we need to know. For examples : listening to a piece of important news on the radio; listening to someone explaining how to operate a machine. In these situations, we listen much more closely; but we do not listen to everything we hear with equal concentration - we listen for the most important points or for particular information. Usually, we know beforehand what we are listening for ( the things we want to know), and this helps us to listen. 16 Matakuliah Tahun : G0444 / Material Design and Testing : 2005 Focussed Listening Pertemuan 2.1 17 Focussed Listening In class, we are usually concerned with the second kind of listening: we expect students to listen closely and remember afterwards what they heard. But if we just ask the class to “listen” and we ask questions afterwards, we are giving them a very difficult task. We can make it easier by telling them beforehand what to expect and what to listen for – this will help them to focus their listening. We can do it: 1. by giving a simple listening task 2. by giving guiding questions. These two techniques serve the same purpose : they focus the students’ attention by giving them something specific to listen for; they give them a reason to listen and also help them to listen by leading them towards the main points. 18 Demonstration of 2 ways doing Focussed Listening Demo 1 : i. T talks to the trainees about her/himself or someone else or an imaginary person. Include the information they need to complete the table, but add other details as well. ii. Ask trainers to look at the table in their Teacher’s Workbook and write brief notes in the table. Home town Brothers/sisters Children Interests Holidays 19 Demo 2 i. T reads the following text and asks trainees to find answers to the questions : a. Where did he stay ? b. What does he say about : - the river ? - his bicycle ? - the fruit trees ? 20 Reading Text for Demo 2 I remember when I was a child we often went to stay with my grandfather – he had a farm in the country, and we used to stay there, and I had a wonderful time – there was so much for a child to do there. I remember there was a small river that ran past the farm, and I used to go swimming in it – I suppose the water must have been fairly clean. And another thing I remember was – I had a bicycle and I rode it round and round the fields, and along the river bank, too. And what else ? Oh yes, climbing trees. There were quite a lot of fruit trees on the farm, peaches and apricots, mostly, and I used to climb these trees and pick the fruit for my grandfather. Of course sometimes I climbed them and picked the fruit when he wasn’t looking as well, but I don’t think he ever found out ! 21