DDP_Assignment 2
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Context:
There are 12 adult students in the class who are in the intermediate-level. They come from at least
two foreign countries whose first language is not English. Now they work or study in the Glasgow.
They take the 10 weeks’ program to develop their general English. They have listening class every
Tuesday and Thursday. After the program, they can use the strategies or the skills to do further
self-study.
Three Lesson Plans:
These three lessons are listening classes in different topics mainly aiming to develop students’
metacognitive strategies, with the sub-aims of developing the cognitive and social- affective
strategies. They all follow the Pre-listening, While-listening, and Post-listening stages, which fits
alongside with the model of metacognitive strategy: Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluating
(Holden, 2004). The Pre-listening part of all three lessons is divided to setting the context and preteach vocabulary. The While-listening part consists of two sections: listening for gist, and listening
for details. After the Pre-listening and While-listening part, students are required to do a productive
task. The fixed structure of listening stages can help students to raise awareness of metacognition
(Macaro, 2001). Thus, when they need to deal with the listening task by themselves, they can recall
the memory of how they were taught to comprehend the listening. In addition, in designing
activities for learners, Graves (1996) points out two principles designers should follow: the
difficulty should be from simple to complex, and the task should be recycle. Based on these two
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principles, the activities in these three lessons are connected.
Lesson Plan 1:
In the Lesson Plan 1 (see Appendix 1: Lesson Plan 1), as mentioned in previous paragraph, the
Pre-listening covers the setting background and pre-teach vocabulary. In the step 1-2 of Prelistening, the teacher sets the ‘commercial’ context by presenting pictures. Through answering the
two questions in the two steps, students are prepared for knowing the meaning of the advertisement
and the potential consumers. Discussion in the step 3 is activating schemata of students by relating
their life experiences to the topic (Hu, 2012). These three steps are using the cognitive strategies.
According to Vandergrift (1997), use the prior knowledge from the outside world and relate it to
the knowledge obtained from the text can help students to fill the missing information they need.
Therefore, students are equipped the content knowledge before they do the task. In the second part
of Pre-listening, which is step 4 and 5, the vocabulary will be taught by doing Task 1(see Appendix
1: Handout 1). The meaning and the pronunciation in this part are addressed. The unknown words’
meaning or pronunciation could be a barrier to hinder students comprehend the listening text
(Scrivener,2011). Through teaching the potential unknown words in advance, students are
equipped the linguistic knowledge to comprehend the listening text (Nunan and Carter, 2001). The
purpose of the whole Pre-listening part is preparing students to enter the further stages of the
lessons (Nunan and Carter,2001; Coniam, 1998). This also is the Planning stage in the
metacognitive strategy which can develop students’ awareness of what need to be done before they
accomplish the listening tasks (Macaro, 2001). From the Pre-listening stage, students raise the
awareness that they need the content knowledge and the linguistic knowledge to complete the
listening task.
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The While-listening part is separated by two aims: Listen for gist, and Listen for details. In the
Listen for gist, two questions in Task 2 should be done separately, which means every time listeners
listen to the tape, they only have one question to answer. After answering the questions in the
Listen for gist section, listeners need to answer five detailed questions in the Task 3. When they
are going to listen for details, they have listened to the recordings for twice and completed the
Listen for gist tasks, which means they should have a general understanding of the listening
material which in some way decrease the difficulty to do the detailed questions (Baralt et al., 2014).
According to Vandergrift (1997), the activities related with gist or details can be useful for
developing learners’ metacognitive strategies. When learners listen, they are required to answer a
specific question. The attention of learners is fixed on one aspect of the text in order to assist in
task completion. This selective attention is a sub-strategy of the Planning. The whole answer
checking process is the Monitoring strategy in metacognitive strategy. In the Monitoring, students
check their understanding of the listening task (O'Malley and Chamot, 1990). In the Whilelistening stage of the Lesson Plan 1 (see Appendix 1: Lesson Plan 1), step 2, step 4, and step 7 all
mention ‘If there is different answer, listen again’, it is using the double-check monitoring strategy
to correct the comprehension of the listening.
In the Post-listening stage, there is a productive activity to evaluate the outcomes of learners’
comprehension (Vandergrift, 1997). In the recording, two men discuss about employing the
successful young person to endorse the product. To check learners’ understanding about the text,
the discussion focus on their own choice as a consumer. In this stage, although it is a productive
activity, it checks learners’ comprehension towards the listening material.
In Lesson Plan 1, the social-affective strategy is conducted by pair work and group work
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throughout the lesson. Step 2 to step 4 in Pre-listening, the checking answer steps in Whilelistening, and the last Post-listening all require learners to cooperate with others. Vygotsky (1978)
suggests that the cooperation with others can assist in developing the understanding of learning
process. No matter what level learners are in the cooperation, both sides can take the advantage of
cooperating (King et al., 1998, cited in Pata et al, 2006). That means, learners in a higher level
need to process their understanding to explain for lower students who are experiencing a
complicated learning environment. Through the cooperation, learners both developing their
understanding of the listening.
The activities in Lesson Plan 1 mainly followed the framework of Graves (1996): the difficulty is
increasing; the activities are recycled. From the first introducing topic activity, the tasks in the preteach vocabulary, listening tasks, to the last discussion activity, the difficulty is increasing. The
first activity is about the real experience of the advertisement which is considered to be the easiest
activity comparing the following activities. The vocabulary teaching is reached by asking students
to match the words and the meanings in groups. The words in transcript, which are regarded by
the teacher to be barriers against students understanding, may be too easy or too difficult for some
students. Through group work, the difficulty is decreased to an acceptable level (Baralt et al., 2014).
The first activity in While-listening is Listen for gist. At the beginning of designing tasks, students
should answer two general questions after their first listening. Considering the level of students
and the difficulty of tasks, they are asked to listen twice for answering two questions separately
(Jensen and Vinther, 2003). The level of difficulty actually is increased due to the individual work
compared with the group work in Pre-listening stage. In the next activity, students need to listen
to the recording again to answer five multiple choice items. This may be difficult for some students
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to process questions and listening in the meantime. Thus, the teacher interprets five questions first
in case the misunderstanding (step 5 in While-listening), which also can be considered a way to
decrease the level of difficulty (Scrivener, 2011). The last oral activity is the most difficult one in
those activities. The listening comprehension is a mental process, which means answering the
closed questions correctly may not prove the correct comprehension (Hughes, 2003). Involved in
a discussion, students need not only to process their understanding of the material, but also to
integrate their own experience.
The recycling of the topic and the material works as well. These activities also connected by the
topic ‘commercials advertisement’. The Pre-listening is about the own experience about the
advertisement. The While-listening is related with the ‘conducting the commercials advertisement’.
The Post-listening is linking the personal view with the listening material. Besides, the recording
is well used in the While-listening. In this stage, learners have at least three times to listen the tape
which can help students comprehend (Jensen and Vinther, 2003).
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