Week 6 Class: Teaching Listening

In this week's class, i think Stephanie and Thea did an awesome job presenting the topic of teaching listening. I really liked the way they demonstrated different teaching methods and then got the whole class to provide the name of each technique. I also enjoyed the activity they carried out after that and thought the drawing made the listening very interesting. These activities best exemplify one of the statements mentioned in the book, which says students' listening ability is at its best when they listen for a purpose, and in my opinion, it even works better when that purpose is fun and inspiring.

Next we had a small discussion about the most effective listening activity we had either carried out or been taught, and it was interesting to hear which methods work for each of us, as well as different ideas about one activity, such as dictation. While Kizuna and Stephanie found it boring and ineffective, dictation seemed to work well for Chris and Bekir. I don't think any one is completely right or totally wrong here, it just depends on each person's learning style, preferences, and the way he/she was taught as well. For me personally, i experienced a lot of dictation when i learned Vietnamese in elementary school, and as far as i can recall, this method helped me tremendously with my spelling and punctuation. In second/foreign language learning, i think dictation can also help with students who have difficulty with punctuation, since i know a lot of students might not know how to appropriately use periods or commas when writing in English.

The next part was Solen's presentation about his experience in teaching the four skills in his ESL classes. As i am observing his ESL 101 class, i was able to see a lof of truth in what he shared, and personally i greatly admire his language competence as well as his teaching.

The last portion of class time was devoted to planning for the Final portfolio. We were able to get into groups and discuss how we would go about collecting artifacts for the first half of the porfolio. Adib, Bekir and I were able to decide which artifact to use for which standard, as well as distribute the work among the three of us. I feel more comfortable with the final portfolio this time compared to last semester, since we have everything made clear right from the beginning.