Korean Job Discussion Forums

[njp6]

I'm fishing for good suggestions here. My classes have been going well for the most part, except when it comes to the listening portion of the curriculum. As soon as I put on the listening, heads start to nod and all the energy gets sapped out of the classroom. The listen portion does seem valuable, but I need to give it a kick, maybe some group work or make it into a competition or something.

I teach college age students, but they still dig activities and competition, plus it makes the class more enjoyable for me as well. Any ideas are appreciated.

[lovebug]

if you're teaching a song, you can have the students pick some words of the song that you give them, one each. they can write it on their notepads. when they hear the word, they have to stand up.
or, depending on the song, you can have them count how many times they say a word or phrase. the person who guesses the closest will get a prize.

listening is one of the hardest skills because we are able to pick up so many contextual clues. without the visual, things get incredibly difficult. if you're not doing so already, i would recommend ''chunking.'' if, for example, they're doing a gap fill or a multiple choice based on a listening activity, play the relevant part for the first answer, then pause. give them time to process and choose the answer. then play the part again. most teachers play listening sections only once and students can't even process the first question when the section finishes.

depending on the context of the listening section, you could have students pantomime what the dialoguers are saying, or have 2 people put their arms under another 2 people's armpits and move around and gesture as if they are the 2 people talking.

good luck!

[njp6]

I'm definitely going to use chunking. I've been playing the listening twice, but you're right-- I think it's going too fast for some of the students.

[nobbyken]

Slip in and out of funny voices as you read.

In schools they are used to Korean teachers putting CDs of dialogue on, over and over and it would drive anyone crazy of listening.

[HapKi]

dictogloss

look it up, or I'll write more about it later. got to go...

[njp6]

I'll admit, I'm a bit scared to search "dictogloss" for fear of what might come up, but I'll give it a go.

[Hawkeye Pierce]

In my experience, the best thing was using old radio shows from before TV. These were well done with sound effects. The students really liked them.

If a student closes his/her eyes during a listening, its not a bad thing. It means that he or she is focusing on listening.

[DavidVance]

njp6,
This might be of some help.
Multifactor ESL English website has a lot of material on many different subjects, including accompanying (integrated) Korean vocabulary and translations, that have been made very easy for you to print and hand out or bring up onto the screen:
http://sites.google.com/site/multifactoreslenglish
Best wishes,
David Vance.

[ddeubel]

I have a whole Teacher Training handout with loads of ideas for listening. Click the document at the link (easier than me pasting the many pages here.

Hope this helps. Of course, Lastonestanding, a song game I kind of stole, adapted, invented, is cool too. Examples in the videos of EFL Classroom 2.0.

Cheers,

David

[njp6]

Thanks for all the tips. I did some "dictogloss" with "chunking" last week (that sounds bad). It helped greatly.

Another thing a friend suggested is helping students to form a mental picture in their heads. Stop the listening partway through and ask the students questions such as, "What color in the narrator's hair? What are they wearing?" etc. Encourage them to be humorous. These questions may be unrelated to the listening questions in the book, but it helps students to make pictures and stories out of the listening, rather than just passively listening a jumble of unrelated sounds.

[JBomb]

I usually do the unrelated questioning thing to. It helps to analyze the video and get them using their brains about something. The imaginative approach is probably the most difficult though. Most of my kids (elementary school) seem lost when they are asked to do this.

[cubanlord]

I hear this guy has some good ideas.

www.teachingenglishmadeeasy.com

[lovebug]

also, before chunking, you can ask them a context question - something simple and usually answered towards the end of the listening section to get students to pay attention to the piece as a whole. this is a good way to warm them up to the listening activity. then do chunking as you play the listening section again.

unrelated questions are good, but related questions are good as well! this will help with their critical thinking skills. where are they? how many people are talking? how does person a/b/c feel? what is the problem? etc

[sheba]

Comprehension questions in the form of a competitive quiz does wonders for my class. I usually put the students into groups and give points based on the difficulty of the question.