Methodology Week 8 Reading Questions

Harmer, 18, Listening

1. Maybe another name for type 1 and type 2 tasks should be top-down and bottom-up tasks. A type 1 task involves listening or skim reading to get the gist of a text whether written or aural. A type 2 task on the other hand requires that specific information be extracted by methods such as detailed comprehension, text interpretation or language analysis.

1a. Harmer states that the warm-up or introduction section of a listening activity, where the teacher prepares the ground or in some way sets the stage for what the students are about to hear, is vitally important. It is at this point that the teacher can activate the students’ schemata and provide contextual information. He goes on to quote a study by Chang and Read which found ‘that giving students background knowledge before they listened was more successful than either letting them preview questions or teaching them some key vocabulary before they listened.’ Harmer mentions one caveat in connection with this – students are likely to benefit more from lots of listening than they are to a little listening that has been thoroughly pre-explained. I.e. don’t overdo the introduction.

2. The only one I haven’t tried is the ‘interview’. However, I am including ‘conversations’ amongst the activities I’ve tried in class because I’m assuming it includes modelling dialogue in a conversation with my co-teachers. I am happy to have modelling conversations with 3 of my 5 co-teachers. Of the two I don’t do this with one is not a great English speaker and I don’t want to embarrass her and the other is determinedly not interested in this kind of co-teaching.

I specifically read aloud every second week to my grade 3 classes. Every second week I have to teach a listening activity from the textbook which necessarily involves me reading aloud at some point. It is relatively successful but I think lots of students don’t pay attention. I think only the good students really listen. This is partly my fault due to how I structure and introduce the listening activity. I will experiment with changes having now read Harmer and Brown.

‘Story-Telling’ is something I have specifically done on two occasions. The first time was for winter camp. I thought one day could be a story-telling day. The students were less than enthralled. At camp I learned the students just want to do fun activities and I suspect my story-telling lesson was not exciting enough for them. I gave the same lesson in a different context to my grade 3 students one week and it actually went really well. Looking back I don’t know why I haven’t tried it again. I have the actual lesson and will bring it to class on Saturday. I actually found the lesson online in a free downloadable book of listening activities. Looking at it again in the context of the Brown and Harmer reading I realise that whoever made it knew what they were doing as it is really well put together. Furthermore, my co-teacher thought it was a great lesson. If anyone wants a copy of the book let me know and I’ll email it to you.

3. I use video fairly regularly for a variety of different purposes. Of relevance here is the video I use during listening activity lessons for the grade 3 classes. Each activity consists of a 1 minute video depicting a conversation between 2 young people on a topic related to the textbook chapter’s theme. Cleary the makers have aimed to reproduce authentic conversations but they are staged in such a blatant and obvious fashion that most of my students think they are hilarious. It is difficult to take the speakers seriously. There are normally 2-4 different activities associated with each video – say which sentences are true and which are false, choose the picture that relates to the dialogue, fill in the missing words etc. These are easy lessons to teach but again, having done this reading on listening activities, I can probably make them better. It annoys me to note that I thought that I had thought about these lessons and now realise I haven’t thought about them enough.

I also use video for ‘Last One Standing’ games. This is a really great bodily kinaesthetic listening activity. It is nearly always a hit with my students and is a really great warm-up activity.

I also tried playing pop songs and giving students the lyrics with some words missing. They listen to the song and fill in the words. I stopped this because it was time consuming, unproductive and killed the momentum of my classes.

The ideas on 309-310 are all interesting and possible to a greater or lesser extent. However, ‘Partial Viewing’ sounds like the one I would be least interested in trying. It is too fiddly for my taste. I would really like to try ‘Picture or Speech’. I have read about lessons like this before and wanted to try it but have always been put off by the logistics of moving chairs etc. Maybe reading this will provide the impetus for me to try it.

4. I’m not sure I have an order I’d like to try them in but I have some thoughts on each –

Example 1 – Honestly, I can’t really be bothered arranging for someone to come into the classroom to be interviewed. That sounds terrible but it is the unvarnished truth.

Example 2 – I did this activity once before, during winter camp, and the students really liked it. I framed it as a competition between 3 teams. I would definitely do it again. I’ve never really thought about it before but I use lots of lots of things in camp classes I don’t use in normal classes. This could easily be used in a normal class. I should have thought of it before. And it wasn’t a recording the students were treated to it was my dulcet tones.

Example 3 – If I’m being honest I could not be bothered with this activity because I don’t want to record anything myself. I just don’t want to have to deal with the technology or deal with corralling a co-teacher to help me. Modelling in class is fine but recording before class is not going to happen.

Example 4 – This seems okay. Assuming I had the audio track I would try this one out. This is similar to the listening activities I give my grade 3 classes.

Example 5 – I don’t think I would use this because the language and concepts are too sophisticated. I think it would be too time consuming and difficult to explain.

Example 6 – I would happily try this too. It is actually similar to the ‘Last One Standing’ activities I use except it involves a book instead of a song.

Example 7 – I like this one – it’s simple, interesting and compelling. I would try this.

Example 8 – I don’t think this sounds like an activity for ‘lower intermediate’ at all. The concept is too abstract and shapeless for me. Maybe I’m being lazy but it doesn’t immediately appeal.

5. All these questions relate to intensive reading. However, the section on extensive reading is very interesting. I attended a lecture about extensive reading at the conference and I might try and set up an extensive reading club at my school. I found some really interesting sources and websites for this kind of thing.

Other than that I’m always disappointed when I read these things because doing so always reveals how limited my earlier thinking has been. I’ve been giving listening activity lessons to my grade 3 students for weeks now and I could be doing it so much better. For instance I never really give a contextual introduction or consider that everyone listens at a different speed. I never differentiate between type 1 and 2 activities. I could probably use more ‘reading aloud’ activities. I’ve been oblivious to the idea of paralinguistic behaviour. All of these ideas constitute useful and applicable knowledge.