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dulouz
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Uranus
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 Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:53 am Post subject: I DO NOT talk to fast |
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I hear this alot when I teach older people. I don't like hearing it because I do take critical comments and try to improve my job performance. But... I make listening exercises on the computer with famous speeches. That is I run an mp3/.wav file of a famous speech and the students have to transcribe it. Today we had this speech fragment...
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Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
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and it threw them for an absolute loop. The best students only had 4 or 5 words. Churchill is a famous orator, the speech was rehearsed several times. English speaking ability can hardly get better than recorded Churchill.
If Churchill and his ilk cause this manner of listening haplessness and I'm willing to wager classicaly trained thespians will do the same, what hope do I have? I just have to rely. Next time they make a comment about the speed, I'll get a nice haircut or buy a new suit. |
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Ody
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
Location: over here
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:05 am Post subject: |
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I DO NOT talk too fast
(sorry) |
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dulouz
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Uranus
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:10 am Post subject: |
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| Whatever, hey its a typo. |
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the_beaver
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:20 am Post subject: |
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That used to drive me insane but, to be fair, I was going to quickly.
It took a whole bunch of years but eventually I modified my speed to match the level. I used to write "slow down" on my lesson plans in bold letters and occasionally I'd recruit a student to give me visual signals to slow down. Now it's automatic for me to adjust my speed. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:15 am Post subject: Re: I DO NOT talk to fast |
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| dulouz wrote: |
I hear this alot when I teach older people. I don't like hearing it because I do take critical comments and try to improve my job performance. But... I make listening exercises on the computer with famous speeches. That is I run an mp3/.wav file of a famous speech and the students have to transcribe it. Today we had this speech fragment...
| Quote: |
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
|
and it threw them for an absolute loop. The best students only had 4 or 5 words. Churchill is a famous orator, the speech was rehearsed several times. English speaking ability can hardly get better than recorded Churchill.
If Churchill and his ilk cause this manner of listening haplessness and I'm willing to wager classicaly trained thespians will do the same, what hope do I have? I just have to rely. Next time they make a comment about the speed, I'll get a nice haircut or buy a new suit. |
Well no wonder.
First of all, Churchill was speaking in 1930s English. The recording probably sucked, because I remember once hearing the speech he gave where he said "we shall never surrender...". I could barely make out half the recording. He had a deep, gruff voice not at all like a modern professional radio or TV announcer, and just look at some of the UNCOMMON expressions in that paragraph:
"brace ourselves"
"so bear ourselves"
"duties"
"commonwealth"
"finest hour" (just imagine Churchill pronouncing this: "fienest howah" in that jowly deep voice of his)
Where do you see rhetoric like this in your average ESL classroom text in Korea?
The recording is culturally loaded...WE know half of what it means because we know the context. How the hell would you expect a Korean to know the context? Playing this to a class of Korean adults is like having a Korean teacher play a speech by Rhee Syngman or Kim Gu to a group of students learning Korean, and expecting them to "get it" right off the bat.
If this is how you're teaching your adult students, I feel sorry for them. You don't know what you're doing. |
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whatthefunk
Joined: 21 Apr 2003
Location: Dont have a clue
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:07 am Post subject: Re: I DO NOT talk to fast |
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| dulouz wrote: |
I hear this alot when I teach older people. I don't like hearing it because I do take critical comments and try to improve my job performance. But... I make listening exercises on the computer with famous speeches. That is I run an mp3/.wav file of a famous speech and the students have to transcribe it. Today we had this speech fragment...
| Quote: |
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
|
and it threw them for an absolute loop. The best students only had 4 or 5 words. Churchill is a famous orator, the speech was rehearsed several times. English speaking ability can hardly get better than recorded Churchill.
If Churchill and his ilk cause this manner of listening haplessness and I'm willing to wager classicaly trained thespians will do the same, what hope do I have? I just have to rely. Next time they make a comment about the speed, I'll get a nice haircut or buy a new suit. |
Dude, I have no idea what you just said. Could ya type a little slower next time? |
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dulouz
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Uranus
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:20 am Post subject: |
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| I disagree. This stuff is all easy. Word by word its easy, if they can't understand "commonwealth" they can give me "common well" or "there four". "Thousand years" is easy, "brace" can equal "race" "ourselves" is easy "bear" is easy. I went through this stuff, if you don't know all of it, they can give me they can't understand. Its a famous well known speech heard by millions. Its a good piece. |
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Ekuboko
Joined: 22 Dec 2004
Location: ex-Gyeonggi
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:50 am Post subject: |
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| dulouz wrote: |
| I disagree. This stuff is all easy. Word by word its easy, if they can't understand "commonwealth" they can give me "common well" or "there four". "Thousand years" is easy, "brace" can equal "race" "ourselves" is easy "bear" is easy. I went through this stuff, if you don't know all of it, they can give me they can't understand. Its a famous well known speech heard by millions. Its a good piece. |
I disagree!
It is not 'all easy' (maybe for Advance/Post-Advanced students...)
You set them a dictation - but if they are trying to blindly write down what they hear (e.g. 'common well') , then they are just going to get frustrated and give up, because what they have written down is probably all mumbo-jumbo.
Did you set a context?
Did you pre-teach any words?
What were the aims of this exercise? Did the students know the aims?
You might like to try a different technique called a DICTOGLOSS. This kind of task will ease you and your students' frustration and improve their listening confidence.
Another idea is to give them a gapped dictation to take the pressure off them - blank out the key words/phrases so they can at least follow the speech using the 'grammar' words. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:22 am Post subject: |
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| dulouz wrote: |
| I disagree. This stuff is all easy. Word by word its easy, if they can't understand "commonwealth" they can give me "common well" or "there four". "Thousand years" is easy, "brace" can equal "race" "ourselves" is easy "bear" is easy. I went through this stuff, if you don't know all of it, they can give me they can't understand. Its a famous well known speech heard by millions. Its a good piece. |
I was right the first time. 
If it was so easy, then why didn't they get it, genius?
Who did you sleep with to get this job? My God... |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:35 am Post subject: |
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"commonwealth" is not a common word. They're going to be listening for words that they know. If they don't know the word, they're not going to be able to tell you what it is. And if they don't know "commonwealth", they're not going to be able to tell you "common well".
"brace ourselves" - now there's a common, everyday expression. What does it mean? They don't know the expression because they've never run across it before, and you (I suspect) haven't taught it to them. So, they're not going to be able to distinguish those words and understand the meaning.
"it's a famous well-known speech heard by millions" - by millions of Koreans? No. The average Korean has probably never heard it before. The average Korean WOULDN'T RECOGNIZE CHURCHILL'S VOICE. Would you recognize Stalin's voice if you heard it? Hirohito's? If YOU heard a Korean speech, would you be able to distinguish Park Chung Hee from Kim Young Sam? Of course not.
There are very few everyday, concrete nouns or references in that speech...if you knew nothing about it, you would have no idea what the speaker was referring to.
"...men will still say, "This was their finest hour." - if you knew nothing of world history, how could you know what this refers to, or means? You couldn't.
Pick something that's contemporary and that they might recognize, for God's sake. A passage from a movie Koreans might have seen. Something with Tom Hanks in it or something, his diction is always good.
Learn to teach, for Christ's sake. |
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tzechuk
Joined: 20 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:10 am Post subject: |
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I have to say, for a learning, anything faster than slow is too fast. I am just looking at this from my learning Korean (and other languages) experience. I basically know a lot of words in Korean but there are some that I have no clue and have to ask my husband. Whenever I ask him something, he would tell me in his normal Korean to Korean speed and frankly, that's way too fast for me!
When people learn a language, it can be hard to adjust their ears and their brains because they are not listening to that language all the time to become attuned. So you just have to do quite slowly to begin with I guess. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:22 am Post subject: Re: I DO NOT talk to fast |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
| dulouz wrote: |
I hear this alot when I teach older people. I don't like hearing it because I do take critical comments and try to improve my job performance. But... I make listening exercises on the computer with famous speeches. That is I run an mp3/.wav file of a famous speech and the students have to transcribe it. Today we had this speech fragment...
| Quote: |
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
|
and it threw them for an absolute loop. The best students only had 4 or 5 words. Churchill is a famous orator, the speech was rehearsed several times. English speaking ability can hardly get better than recorded Churchill.
If Churchill and his ilk cause this manner of listening haplessness and I'm willing to wager classicaly trained thespians will do the same, what hope do I have? I just have to rely. Next time they make a comment about the speed, I'll get a nice haircut or buy a new suit. |
Well no wonder.
First of all, Churchill was speaking in 1930s English. The recording probably sucked, because I remember once hearing the speech he gave where he said "we shall never surrender...". I could barely make out half the recording. He had a deep, gruff voice not at all like a modern professional radio or TV announcer, and just look at some of the UNCOMMON expressions in that paragraph:
"brace ourselves"
"so bear ourselves"
"duties"
"commonwealth"
"finest hour" (just imagine Churchill pronouncing this: "fienest howah" in that jowly deep voice of his)
Where do you see rhetoric like this in your average ESL classroom text in Korea?
The recording is culturally loaded...WE know half of what it means because we know the context. How the hell would you expect a Korean to know the context? Playing this to a class of Korean adults is like having a Korean teacher play a speech by Rhee Syngman or Kim Gu to a group of students learning Korean, and expecting them to "get it" right off the bat.
If this is how you're teaching your adult students, I feel sorry for them. You don't know what you're doing. |
I have to agree with this. I'm a great fan of Churchill's speeches but dulouz, you have to ask yourself "why are my students learning English?" and "what do they intend to use it for?" If they are very advanced students and serious accademics studying for a MA in English Literature or something , then this might be appropriate. But if they are learning English to help them in the business world, or they are doing a conversation class - this kind of thing is way off the mark. Very few second language speakers will (or even need to) reach the level of near native speaker. This kind of exercise wont assist in the business world, or help them improve their conversation skills, but it might just discourage students. Remember, most Korean English students are never going to live overseas and are looking for a more realistic level of functionality. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:26 am Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
Learn to teach, for Christ's sake. |
On the other hand, I disagree with this sort of unnecessary and unkind remark. It's not very constructive or intelligent and just gives rise to ill-feeling.  |
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Mr. Literal
Joined: 03 Jul 2003
Location: Third rock from the Sun.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:47 pm Post subject: Re: I DO NOT talk to fast |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
| If this is how you're teaching your adult students, I feel sorry for them. You don't know what you're doing. |
I agree. What a horrendous, totally inappropriate activity. Unbelievable. |
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Mr. Literal
Joined: 03 Jul 2003
Location: Third rock from the Sun.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:49 pm Post subject: Re: I DO NOT talk to fast |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
| If this is how you're teaching your adult students, I feel sorry for them. You don't know what you're doing. |
I agree. What a horrendous, totally inappropriate activity. Unbelievable. |
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