21st Century Learning - Part 4: Context

This year, after our head's recommendation, we changed the books from the home reading programme as the context was not student friendly. It was not related to their realities so students found it hard to grasp meaning. As they were classics, the characters and the plot were difficult to relate to their daily life or their knowledge of the world. As a result interaction between student was not very successful because they could only reproduce the main ideas in the text without getting involved or feeling identified with characters or situations. However, the topics dealt with during the projects are related to the students' context so they felt motivated and engaged to interact and communicate their ideas and thoughts.naturally.

Teaching Listening Strategies III

Some tips to consider before planning a listening task:

ü  Establish the purpose:

-       Listen to remember important information / learn

-       Listen for details (lexical items, grammatical units, functional languge)

-       Listen for general idea

-       Listen for implied meaning

 

ü  Teach 5 to 10 words before listening. You can use a chart like this one

Words I know	Words I don’t know	Words a bit familiar to me

ü  While listening encourage students to carry out note taking to identify main idea and find details. Different tools can be used: rough outline, graphic organizer, chart, story map.

ü  How to help students identify main idea? In listening activities speakers use:

-       Direct statements

-       Repetitive words and phrases

-       Pacing: pauses, Increased volume, Change in pitch of voice.

-       In a video, body gestures and mood.

ü  Ask general questions to follow the listening taks.

ü  Don't focus on gramar too much (1 grammatical point per time)

ü  1 listening activity a day (15’
 

Teaching Listening Strategies II

Abbott & Godinho (2004) suggest a collaborative learning strategy to carry out listening tasks. They built a framework for listening comprised of four units:


1. Tuning In-concentrates on developing individual and small-group communication skills that provide a foundation for learning and working cooperatively in any situation.

2. Tell Me the Story-explores narrative frameworks and strategies for engaging an audience.

3. So What’s New?-promotes dynamic performance and presentation skills

4. Let Me Change Your Mind-investigates provocative ways of developing and contesting points of view.


Through these activities, students will find significant aspects of the language through cooperative learning, such as the identification of the message, the understanding of the category, the understanding of the higher-order ideas in the text, the implied meaning, and the justification or persuasion within the discussion.

Abbott & Godinho (2004) Speak, Listen, and Learn. Stenhouse Publishers

Retrieved from "Listening Strategies and Applications in EFL Classroom" By Sella Liao.

Keelung Municipal ZhongShan Senior High School  

Teaching Listening Strategies

Acquiring listening skills has been a concern since I was a child. I’ve always found difficult to understand tapes teachers used to play in the lessons. I even find it hard today, when learning another language, to grasp the general idea that is presented in the audio. I think that the problem stems from the fact that teachers and students carry out ineffective actions when dealing with listening activities. I consider that students may not be well prepared before the task as there seems to be no specific training of listening strategies or preparation of pre listening activities which may ease the task and lower the anxieties produced with the unknown. Besides, I think that we as students acquired ineffective listening habits which do no foster the understanding of oral texts or the acquisition of strategies that might prove helpful.

 

There seems to be two ineffective practices that teachers use when dealing with listening tasks which restrain students from reaching proficiency in listening skills. The first one is that teachers tend to start the audio without setting objectives, without predicting content thought previous activity, without reading the task to check understanding and comprehension. As there is not previous involvement with the text to came, and no guidance through the process of understanding oral texts, students get lost in the waves of spoken information and end up feeling disappointed and frustrated.

 

The second deals with the fact that teachers organise the listening task in such a way that it prevents students from thinking. In general, students rush through the task without using higher order thinking skills as they seem to be more concerned about getting at least one word which may get them back to the lost line. Besides, most of the tasks designed deal with basic listening survival skills such as, complete the word in a song or place the chorus in order.

 

However, to be an effective learner, students need to carry out several activities which are not always fostered:

• Establish a reason for learning and the objectives.
• Pedict information expected to find in the message
• Gather the raw speech and create an image of it in the short term memory.
• Organize the information by identifying the speech event (dialogue, lecture, radio) and the function of it.
• Recall background information.
• Assign meaning to the message
• Check if the message is understood
• Determine the information to be stored in the long term memory.

 

Brown, H. (2001). Teaching by Principles. New York: Longman.

 

21st Century Learning - Part 3: Tools

"Standing still is not an option". We agree with this statement and because of this we try implement digital tools either for reflection, such as this blog, for training for instance courses or seminars, and for fun such as the use of social networks.

It doesn't matter weather teacher or students feel more at ease with technology, as learning is a two way Street. Besides, technology should be a means to an end, not the end in itself. Both teachers and students can teach and learn at any momento using the technology available, and profiting from each other's expertise.

21st Century Learning - Part 2: Content

 

We agree that language itself is not enough for our 21st century students. In fact the three main areas of content covered in the video are considered within 5th form projects: cross curricular, cross cultural content and global themes. There are some instances that still need to be polished such as bilingual Project, but we still work across the curriculum collaborating with teachers from other groups in primary and secondary.

 

What we consider to be unacceptable is to expect everybody to be the same as we are, not to acknowledge diversity. We would like to include cross cultural activities this year, communicating with schools from other countries within the connecting classroom framework. It would be interesting to share different points of view regarding the same topic globally, in order to reflect on our own culture and to discover how it differs from others.

 

5th form Projects take into account global themes sucha as children's righs, the environment, pollution, poverty etc; which aim at raising social awareness and building global citizenship. In this way we pretend to expand their view of the world.

21st Century Learning - Part 1: Skills

After having watched the video from Pearson ELT on the importance of developing 21st Century skills, here are our reflections.

 

Even though we do not belong to the same generation as our students, we do not consider ourselves digital immigrants, we are not outsiders. We feel comfortable with using technology in the classroom and we consider ourselves flexible enough to adapt to what the situation requires. We accept the challenge to help our students develop the digital skills they need to process the huge amount of information available to them. We are conscious that there is a need to add into our plans instances in which they filter and summarise the data the Internet has to offer.

 

Summarising skills can be implemented from the very beginning. We can train our students to summarise key points from texts read, songs, any given topic, and we can even have a "Summary of the lesson" activity at the end of the day.

 

In relation to our first project, Helping Hands, we could include logical thinking strategies when gathering data about the situation of children in Argentina, and about the process of collecting items for donation. This is an aspect we need to go on exploring. Also, regarding creative thinking, students could be asked to present results using different tools and media.

 

Even though fifth form projects deal with working with teams to try to promote social change, it may be necessary to go more deeply into what it means to work as a team, the roles involved, the expected attitude and behaviour, learning to act both as a good leader and as a good follower.

 

Developing communicative skills is a central issue. In fifth form students have several opportunities to exercise these skills throughout the year, however they mainly give informal talks or presentations. We could try to implement the teaching of formal presentation skills so that students gain more confidence and develop accuracy in a formal register.

 

We consider we should include reflecting moments within our plans, making them explicit and providing them with a specific timing in the assembly. This year we aim to raise students' awareness in relation to their learning styles and provide them with tools to enhance their strong points while at the same time improving their weaknesses.