THIRD REFLECTION, 6-13 DECEMBER

These two weeks we’ve covered that pre-listening activities, the effect of L1 and
English outside and in classroom, what we could use to create a context for listening, how we
can help the student to reduce their negative feelings.

Firstly we’ve clarified the difference between receptive skills and productive skills, the
former ones are reading and listening, while the latter ones are writing and speaking. In that
way, reading and listening pre-activities are similar. They both deal with a text, their activities
can use any of 4 skills, their warming-up activities involve guessing or predicting about the
topic, these activities can use words from the texts to be read or listened. These activities aim
to motivate the students to read or listen to the text, to activate the schemata, to draw their
attention to the text. We can use pictures, videos, guided fantasy, drama activities; we can
personalize the topic to get their attention, to make the text more meaningful, to build a bridge
between the topic and their lives, to have them find sth related to them, to adapt the text into
their lives and to collect their ideas to motivate them; we can have them predict some
vocabularies from the text to activate their background knowledge, to foster their creativity to
have them brainstorm and to give them a reason for listening such as checking whether their
vocabularies are in the text or not; we can have them predict facts to have them be involved in
the topic, to set the stage, to activate the schemata, to motivate them; we can have practice
tenses to cover what they have learned before. The last but not the least important point in
these activities is to make the topic far closer to the life in order to have the ss benefit from
this listening better.

Secondly we’ve talked about the effects of L1 outside the classroom and English or
any other second language in the classroom. L1 does not use tape recording, language is
fleeting, while second language often relies on a tape which can be replayed. L1 is not so
complicated that we may not care the grammatical rules strictly, while in second language in
classrooms linguistic items should be considered carefully. In L1 there is no strict time limit,
while in second language in classrooms there is a time limit which should be stick to it by
following a syllabus. L1 may be informal, natural and include slangs, while second language
in classrooms is formal and polite not so natural. L1 is shaped according to what we want,
while second language is a kind of obligation which should be listened to. L1 does not cause
nervousness, while using second language we may be nervous, anxious. Listening in L1
happens in a context for communication, while listening in L2 has some educational purposes.

Thirdly we’ve covered some ways of creating a context for listening such as telling the
ss the topic of the listening task and asking them to predict what the text is about; using
pictures, videos by turning off its sound, visuals, creative drama, storytelling; asking them to
write some words about the topic which is mentioned before listening by the teacher. These
ways give them a reason to listen to the text such as to find out whether these words are in the
text or not, they are right about their predictions or not.

Fourthly we’ve tried to find some ways of helping the ss to reduce their negative
feelings such as telling them they don’t have to understand every single word; telling them the
text can be understood by them, it is easy for them; telling them to take notes about the words
they can catch while listening, after taking notes we can say let’s look at your words and try to
guess what the text is about; starting with the easier ones to motivate them by having them
gain the sense of achievement by having them see they can do it; giving some clues from the
text to help them understanding the text; giving them a purpose for listening like
reinforcements; giving easier activities to have them get the gist of the passage first; training
them to listen first to get the main idea; asking them bring songs to the class and doing some
listening tasks with those songs; doing pre-listening activities to get them to the topic; not
saying just ‘’listen to it’’ because it may panic the ss.

Finally we have done some exercises to cover teaching listening techniques and their
advantages and disadvantages; to clarify the aims of activities and skills which can be
practiced. I’ve learned that to have the ss get a purpose to listen to the text, we should clarify
our aims accordingly, we should set these steps in our minds clearly, and we should have a
purpose why we do these activities for a listening task first. If we don’t fall these steps into
their places in our minds as a teacher first, we can’t be beneficial for our learners n our
teaching process.