Week three is coming to an end and looking back at it, there are a lot of things to reflect on.
The more I get to know the other colleagues by reading their discussion posts, the closer I get to them. We all have in common our desire to change something about the way we teach, to make teaching and learning more motivating. To motivate ourselves and our students!
This week as usual became with our reading assignments tackling on an issue that is almost neglected in my teaching context, listening. Developing listening skills never gets a priority in a teacher's plan and there are many excuses teachers use and I used to think before getting to know so many different websites that focus mainly on listening. During this year, I was part of some webinar series where one of the topic was listening. There I learned the most important thing about listening: you need to cultivate listening habits in your learners. We can cultivate a habit only if we keep doing and repeating it several times. If our students practice listening activities not only in class but outside it as well, then they can improve their listening skills and turn them into a habit. I would like to share with you some the materials of that presentation, copied from the slides as there were 38 in total.
http://api.ning.com/files/jtJ034c97Hx9YqV9zKmR43mn7-jELTegwYl1E3RB--2haTjy5lrKuqTaLmNs66d6xvjE0DZokkRtA6NU4TGrz9-JqiwqnhtS/CultivatingHabitsofListening.pdf
Each of the slides raises some important issues that we need to take into consideration:
Features of L2 Listening
Builds on L1 listening
Requires more focus than L1 listening
Anxiety is often a factor
Products (for example, tests) are often emphasized more than the process
Cultural Dimensions of Listening
Listening behavior varies from culture to culture
Face to face
Classroom
(teacher-centered or student-centered)
Large groups
Status (older/younger; teacher/student)
Female and male
Minimizing Distractions, Maximizing Attention
Identify your distractions and ask yourself:
Can I eliminate or minimize these in any way?
What can I do to keep focused?
Keep a distraction journal
Keep note of distractions during activities that require deep attention—preferably after the activity
Think of ways to quiet your “internal noise level”
Make an effort to lessen any negative self-talk or negative judgments of others
Visualize a peaceful place or image while listening
Another interesting and useful tool we learned about this week, was social bookmarking. I personally like the idea as my bookmarking used to be very simple on the bookmark bar and I could organize them in folders but only in one computer. And that is the computer, I usually keep at home rarely carrying it with me. It means that my links were there and sometimes I need to show my students those links, which I copied manually and saved them. Social bookmarking was a breakthrough to my manual and conventional way of saving my links.
As to the project task we have to accomplish in the end, I think that I have a better idea after having three or four project reports that Courtney shared with us to be analysed and discussed.
Bye for now,
Daniela
The more I get to know the other colleagues by reading their discussion posts, the closer I get to them. We all have in common our desire to change something about the way we teach, to make teaching and learning more motivating. To motivate ourselves and our students!
This week as usual became with our reading assignments tackling on an issue that is almost neglected in my teaching context, listening. Developing listening skills never gets a priority in a teacher's plan and there are many excuses teachers use and I used to think before getting to know so many different websites that focus mainly on listening. During this year, I was part of some webinar series where one of the topic was listening. There I learned the most important thing about listening: you need to cultivate listening habits in your learners. We can cultivate a habit only if we keep doing and repeating it several times. If our students practice listening activities not only in class but outside it as well, then they can improve their listening skills and turn them into a habit. I would like to share with you some the materials of that presentation, copied from the slides as there were 38 in total.
http://api.ning.com/files/jtJ034c97Hx9YqV9zKmR43mn7-jELTegwYl1E3RB--2haTjy5lrKuqTaLmNs66d6xvjE0DZokkRtA6NU4TGrz9-JqiwqnhtS/CultivatingHabitsofListening.pdf
Each of the slides raises some important issues that we need to take into consideration:
Features of L2 Listening
Builds on L1 listening
Requires more focus than L1 listening
Anxiety is often a factor
Products (for example, tests) are often emphasized more than the process
Cultural Dimensions of Listening
Listening behavior varies from culture to culture
Face to face
Classroom
(teacher-centered or student-centered)
Large groups
Status (older/younger; teacher/student)
Female and male
Minimizing Distractions, Maximizing Attention
Identify your distractions and ask yourself:
Can I eliminate or minimize these in any way?
What can I do to keep focused?
Keep a distraction journal
Keep note of distractions during activities that require deep attention—preferably after the activity
Think of ways to quiet your “internal noise level”
Make an effort to lessen any negative self-talk or negative judgments of others
Visualize a peaceful place or image while listening
Another interesting and useful tool we learned about this week, was social bookmarking. I personally like the idea as my bookmarking used to be very simple on the bookmark bar and I could organize them in folders but only in one computer. And that is the computer, I usually keep at home rarely carrying it with me. It means that my links were there and sometimes I need to show my students those links, which I copied manually and saved them. Social bookmarking was a breakthrough to my manual and conventional way of saving my links.
As to the project task we have to accomplish in the end, I think that I have a better idea after having three or four project reports that Courtney shared with us to be analysed and discussed.
Bye for now,
Daniela
Hi, Daniela,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that we are getting to know each other better and better. We can see how technology helps us do it. First of all, it enables to communicate and share ideas and experience with people from different countries. In addition, it's a tool that enhances our learning.
I like the idea of 'cultivating listening habits in our learners'. I just remember the saying: 'Teachers plant seeds that grow forever'.
This week's assignments have given a lot of new ideas for improving our teaching.
Thank you for sharing very useful link.
Good luck!
Valeria
Hi Daniela!
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading the "Cultivating habits of Listening" pdf. I liked it. Thank you for providing the link. I agree with you on the social bookmarking. Delicious is a very helpful tool.
Hellen