In
your language learning classes, was there any focus on listening and/or
speaking? If so, explain and critique
the methods used for listening and speaking. If no, discuss why you
think the teacher chose not to focus on those aspects of language.
(Additional comments on this post no longer earn points. Please choose a more recent entry).
(Additional comments on this post no longer earn points. Please choose a more recent entry).
There was always an emphasis on speaking. The first twenty minutes of a two hour class was spent in talking with the teacher, with the teacher asking direct questions about things that you had been doing in your personal life. When not directly speaking and answering the questions, you were listening to the other students' answers. This was a small class of four people, so many times everyone would chime in interactively and ask more questions of the speaker. The teacher continually focused on production throughout the entire class, even when doing grammar exercises we had to give all of the answers out loud. I think that this method was very effective in order to have us gain commuicative competence right away. We also played a lot of games where we were expected to produce dialog. I would say that at least 3/4 of each class was spent in some type of language production or listening to each other produce the target language. Aside from listening to the teacher and each other, we did a lot of exercises where we had to listen to a tape and then either fill in the blanks or answer questions about what we had just listened to. The only criticism I have of all of this production is that when it came time to listen to the tapes (native speakers), the rate of speed of the dialog was incredibly difficult for me to comprehend. We had a lot of practice speaking and listening slowly, but when the conversation approached native speaking rapidity, I had no practice with that rate of transmission and it was difficult to keep up. On the positive side, I learned how to speak with some confidence in a relatively short period of time.
ReplyDeleteIn my language classes, there was quite a bit of focus on speaking. I don't know that it was a main focus, but definitely important. There was less of a focus on listening. The main emphasis with speaking was pronunciation, and proper word choice. Sentence structure and building came more into play with writing assignments. I think that speaking was always important for my language classes, simply because the aim of most of them was communication, and being able to hold a conversation in the target language.
ReplyDeleteThe way speaking was assessed in my classrooms was through conversation and oral exams. In class, we would discuss different topics or readings in the target language, and the instructor would prompt us with questions, in order to illicit more speech. I think this was probably the most informal way of assessing our speaking ability.
The more formal way was through oral exams. These would be part of the final, where questions were handed out to the class a while before the exam. All of them needed to have a prepared answer, because we did not know which one we would be answering during the exam.
Listening was not as emphasized in any of my classes. The most I remember about listening is having to pick out main ideas, and understand enough to give an appropriate response. Beyond that, all listening skills exercised were purely incidental, and our ability to respond was the assessment for how well we were able to listen.
In my Italian classes, there was an equal focus on listening and speaking. I think this worked so well, because those are the two skills that have interaction between people. My teacher would talk about grammar or concepts extensively in Italian and we would have to listen in order to comprehend. We also had lots of opportunities to express ourselves in Italian. She asked us lots of questions and as a class we had become very comfortable with one another so, talking in Italian became very natural to us.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in my German class, there was a lot of listening and little speaking. Because of that, I sort of "zoned out" during class. If I didn't understand something I had no interest in continuing to try to figure out what was going on when I could barely even greet my classmate in German. I think, especially for low-level speakers, speaking is so important. If a student doesn't become comfortable with speaking in the L2 in their first classes, then it will be difficult to communicate later.
In my Spanish courses, I remember there was quite a bit of focus on listening and speaking. For one, the classes were mostly conducted in Spanish, so listening in the L2 was exercised all the time and we were encouraged to participate orally in the L2. There were speaking activities occasionally, and as part of the exam there'd be an interview with the teacher (as opposed to a memorized dialog that doesn't require spontaneous, creative use of language). I'd say these Spanish courses were communication based. There were also at-home exercises with a CD and workbook that had listening comprehension exercises. That was a regular part of homework from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteThis is in contrast with my Chinese courses which were primarily taught in English and had no listening component whatsoever during the first 2 semesters other than a word dictation exercise I mention in the other blog. The third semester introduced a listening / workbook homework component which helped and was sorely needed. The speaking practice for all classes was typically a memorized dialog. Twice we did an improv role play (shopping and going to the bank to exchange money) which turned out to be great speaking practice. I wish we had more of that. The handful of conversation activities in the 3rd semester typically lasted 2 minutes which never felt long enough.
As a consequence of the lack of listening and speaking, I feel much less capable of communicating in Chinese than I did after 3 semester of Spanish. Maybe that's because Chinese is just more difficult for English speakers to learn. The teachers may have chosen to use mostly English in the classroom because they believed it'd be too hard for students to follow instruction in Chinese. But now I really feel at a loss because I wasn't pushed to develop these skills earlier. Therefore, I believe it's necessary to communicate in the L2 as much as possible from the very beginning (modifying language as necessary to create i+1) and have ample listening / speaking activities integrated as a regular feature of class.
In college, there are separate English listening and speaking class. We have listening exercise book which the whole class will focus on. In listening classroom, each student has a headset and a small computer screen, sitting in a small space individually. Usually, the teacher starts the recording to let us listen and then write answers for all exercise. According to the performance of students, teacher will decide whether to repeat the listening material and explain the answers. I think, there’s no interest learning listening skills like this. Oral class is not as strict as listening class. We can do group discussion, presentation, drama and debate. But the problem is that we often speak Chinese together. I think listening and speaking cannot be separated. There should be a class focusing on both sides.
ReplyDeleteThere was a focus on both in my French classes. Even our tests had a listening and speaking portion. My teacher used several ways to enhance our listening- he used songs, movies, news clips, conversations in class, and the usual listening to a cassette and answering questions. I think the class really liked it when he made an assignment for us using a movie-he would give us a handout before with questions, and then while watching the movie we would jot down the answers-they weren’t extremely long answers so this was easy to do, you just had to listen well. The movie was in French of course, with subtitles, but hearing the words we’d learn or catching a phrase we know and hearing it in native French was quite exciting to us! We also had a lot of pair work listening activities (like those information gap activities), and sometimes just multiple choice or fill in the blank activities. In general, we had a lot of listening activities, but at the same time he also made us focus on speaking. He wasn’t worried about us sounding completely perfect, but at least to be able to say things clearly and not just blur the phrase or word altogether. We always spoke in French, even if we wanted to ask a question about what something meant, or how to say something, etc., everything we did we had to do it in French, so we definitely practiced speaking on a daily basis. I think that the more you use the language (everyday), the more natural speaking will become to you. We had conversation activities with our partners (we did role play a lot), and sometimes as a class we would be picked randomly to answer a question on the spot (if we’re reading a passage or doing homework for example). As I mentioned, our tests had a listening portion (listened to a conversation or phrases and then answered the questions), and also a speaking portion, which was done separately. He would give us a list of topics that will be on the speaking examination, and then he would have a conversation with you based on those topics (and he’d record it for grading). So, for example, if the topic was food, he’d start with the usually hi/how are you/etc, and then ask something about food (what did you eat yesterday? Or what is your favorite food? etc.). However, even though we were tested on speaking and listening separately, they still complemented each other, and with all the focused practice we had on each, I think that made it easier when we were tested.
ReplyDeleteIn my Italian and Korean classes both teachers had a listening and speaking component to the course. In both cases the listening was some sort of dictation either done from a CD or by listening to the teachers. In my Italian class part of our homework included the dictation for the workbook exercises were we would have to listen to the and either fill-in-the blanks or decided what word was used in the paragraph. During our unit tests the teacher would read a passage that she created using the vocabulary from the text. We would have to fill in the blank with the proper spelling and grammatical form (if necessary). In our Korean classes we had to lesson to the CD's in the text to work through the text as well as the workbook. During our exams the teacher would read out some words and we would have to write down what we heard.
ReplyDeleteThe speaking components in both classes included in-class discussion and participation reading passages as well as answering questions in the target languages. During the final exams both teachers did an interview portion where the students would have to listen to and answer questions in the target language.
I think with using both the workbooks and in-class activities students got to hear and practice the target language and the final exam including an interview active showed how much attention we were paying in class. If our production was low then we were not working hard enough. The questions that both teachers asked required students to know the language (from the beginning of where we started to where the class ended and no more) and made the students work to answer the questions properly versus just regurgitating answers! This made for great practice.
Stefani Goode
There was a lot of focus on listening and speaking in my spanish courses throughout college.
ReplyDeleteIn my lower level classes, my teachers strived to speak mostly in Spanish although they often translated after to ensure everyone understood. I don't know if that's counter-productive or not, but it helped me. We also did a lot of dialogue work. This was mostly done with scripts and left very little room to the imagination but it did practice some listening and speaking. We also did a lot of listening tests such as dictation or circling words that the teacher would recite out loud. One of my teachers would give us a list of questions with multiple choice answers then she would read a story out loud. As she read we would have to read through the questions and circle the right answers according to the story. I thought this was a creative way to practice listening skills. Not only did I had to listen well, but I also had to remember and comprehend everything of what she said or else I would get the questions wrong.
Later on in more of my "upper level" classes, the main focus was definitely on listening and speaking. I took one conversation class where in every class we were split up into groups of 5 and were instructed to discuss a given topic for that day. Each group was assigned a "discussion leader" and then another student would be assigned to take notes and then present what the group discussed in front of class. These roles would rotate every class so every student got a chance to do it. This really helped my speaking and listening skills. Not only were we having to discuss amongst ourselves about various topics, but we would also have to practice leading a discussion and presenting in front of class with no prior preparation. Everything was impromptu and spontaneous.
I also took some literature courses in spanish that really helped my listening and speaking skills. Although these courses were technically Spanish Literature courses, they were designed to help non-native speakers strengthen their language skills in an advanced course. We would have reading assigned before every class and most of the class time would consist of discussion based on the reading. In this class we had plenty of open discussion, debates, and question and answer settings. All students were encouraged to speak up, and our teacher even graded us on our daily "class participation". It was a small class, so it was easy to speak up.
It seems to me that many of the ways teachers use and evaluate listening and speaking in the classroom give students incredibly high anxiety that can hinder their ability. I recall being tested on these abilities in an early level Spanish classroom and the task was to carry on a conversation with the professor one on one. I was so nervous I forgot half of what I knew and had rehearsed. Rehearsing is another issue, when students are evaluated on their speaking capabilities and they knew the topic beforehand, they are going to rehearse, so rather than improvised speech production, they are graded on how well they can write and memorize what they wrote. I think classes that specifically focus on Speaking and Listening are integral to diminishing this fear and rehearsal aspect of L/S. When students are forced to talk every single day, their affective filter goes down and you can then observe their true speech production in the L2.
ReplyDeleteWith the exception of Latin (for obvious reasons!), my language classes had a strong focus on speaking and listening. The classes were conducted in the target language, so that automatically put a strong emphasis on speaking and listening. Especially as I was learning Khmer, the focus was almost solely speaking and listening. I didn't learn how to read Khmer until I'd been studying it for nearly 6 months. Up until that point, I used textbooks that used transcriptions of Khmer in roman letters. Khmer is really hard to learn to read, so I can understand in some sense why my teacher didn't teach me that right away. But I think it would've been helpful in my pronunciation. There isn't exactly a standard way of transcribing Khmer into roman letters, so there were sounds that were different between English and Khmer that I couldn't hear. Once I learned to read, though, and could see the spelling difference betweens sounds, I could better hear the sounds. Up to that point I couldn't tell the difference because there are more sounds in the t-d and p-b range than we have in English. Because I was working with my own transcriptions to learn words, I would transcribe them wrong (and thus say them wrong) because I couldn't hear the variation in phonemes English doesn't have. Learning to read and using Khmer script in my language classes greatly increased the accuracy of my pronunciation and ability to hear different sounds.
ReplyDeleteI loved that my teacher provided plenty of practice in speaking and listening through informal conversation and role playing. Unless I needed English for clarification, we spoke almost entirely Khmer. The downside of infrequently using English was that sometimes I would have minor questions about grammar or how to use a word, and it would lead to 30 minutes of her trying to explain it in Khmer when 1-2 sentences in English would've sufficed. In terms of listening, I wish we would've practiced more vernacular language. I found that people outside the classroom could understand my language very well, but I couldn't understand them. I learned the formal and polite ways to say everything but not how people actually spoke. For example, the proper way to say 17 is "dop braum pbi," but in reality people say something more like "dop'mpbul." I asked my teacher if she could teach us how people actually spoke, but she said it was the policy of the school to teach us "good Khmer."
-Debby Adams
I took Japanese classes for a few years and looking back I think the teacher was actually quite skillful even though I might have not been the best of students. This skill in part might have something to do with the teacher being a native speaker of Japanese and she had taken quite a few L2 classes in English so she brought a lot of her learning into class with her.
ReplyDeleteThe classes usually began with the Japanese teacher telling us about her weekend activities or her family life or even her life in Japan compared to life in the U.S. We would all sit there and she would speak. She would repeat key words or phrases, which after a while you grew to pay attention to because a question would soon follow and you might get chosen to answer, in Japanese.
Those were the days of audio cassettes and no L2 class would be complete without the tape player being taken out at some point. The native speakers on the tape spoke slowly and repetitively to which I was truly grateful. At some point there would be a questioned asked of us and we again would have to respond in Japanese. I do remember some Japanese anime being shown but I would be lost in animation and the fast Japanese that was spoken would go right over my head.
Listening and speaking was half the class and the other half was writing. I found the listening and speaking portion of the class quite grueling, only because it really made you pay attention and do mental work.
The test consisted mostly of listening and speaking portions.
In my Spanish language studies, there was a fairly good balance between listening and speaking activities. The professor I had for my intermediate courses was especially good, and she would have us watch fairly long serial videos (soap operas or dramas), answer questions about what we had seen, and then get in groups to create skits mirroring the type of scenario we had seen (not exactly but with the same tone). I think that her methods were effective because they not only included listening but also required meaningful spoken production as a followup to what we had seen. By the time that course ended, I was able both to understand Spanish when I heard it and to produce it fairly competently.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast to this, the four different teachers I had for my Korean studies all emphasized listening and drill and almost entirely excluded meaningful spoken production in our sessions. They constantly reiterated to us that Korean is especially difficult for English speakers to pronounce, and insisted that if we would simply watch dramas and listen to songs we would eventually 'get it'. To a point this was helpful - it resulted in my being able to understand even a relatively complex conversation between Korean speakers fairly easily. However, my ability to speak the language was practically non-existent. I ended up feeling extremely handicapped by this situation, since I could understand so much of the language but couldn't accurately produce it. When we did have the chance to speak the language in class, we spent 99% of our time doing drills or memorizing set phrases that our teachers thought would be helpful. Eventually I started working with Rosetta Stone on my own in hopes that I would be able to move beyond the barriers these classes presented. I do agree with my teachers that Korean is difficult for English speakers to pronounce, but I have obvious problems with their choice to spend so much time on listening that any meaningful speaking was left out entirely.
In my language learning class, the main focuses were listening and speaking. Each teacher had about an hour and a half per lesson and after the 2nd week, we weren’t allowed to speak anything but the target language. The class sizes were small, and the teachers all took time for one-on-one speaking practice (which is great if you have the time) and the listening focus was agiven because the class was conducted entirely in the target language. There were sing-alongs, we were required to give presentations, oral book reports, the works; it was almost like being in junior high school, just using a different language. I think that immersion, (which is what I went through), is the best way to learn another language although it can be incredibly stressful if you have other commitments to handle. And I also don’t know that I’ll use sing-alongs as a teacher, but they can be very useful for learning idioms, slang, and the “natural flow” of the target language, if your students are willing to participate.
ReplyDeleteI can't think of a language class I have taken that did not somehow put emphasis on speaking and listening. For example, In French we will watch short videos as a class that use the vocabulary we are discussing for the week and then answer questions about it as a class. In French there is more emphasis on listening, probably because it is a somewhat large class and it is much easier to have 20 something students listening at once than speaking at once.
ReplyDeleteMy German class is much smaller. I believe there are 15 enrolled students about half of whom actually show up to class on a regular basis. Most of the class takes place in small groups where we discuss an article the entire class read. There is not as much writing in this class as in other classes I have taken but there is a lot of emphasis on understanding the other students and being understood by them when speaking.
Kailey Watson
Jarrod Duarte
ReplyDeleteIn my first language class here at UTA there wasn't much emphasis on listening and even less so on speaking. The only way listening was emphasized in class was that it was simply a section on the test and in the homework and regarding the skill of speaking we simply had memorize a speech and present it in front of the class. There was no cognitive skills teaching of either micro or macro skills. I believe this was because of departmental curriculum that gave very little leeway to the teacher. However, in my current class there is more importance placed on speaking and listening, we practice listening to various songs and plays and then have sing-a-alongs to certain music. I enjoy doing this very much and in a way I find singing to music a great way to practice my pronunciation as I focus on making the correct sound for the song instead of trying to "sound the letters out".
Jarrod Duarte
There was a good bit of emphasis on listening and speaking, throughout all levels of my Spanish learning experience. During middle school and high school, much of this involved doing a project presenting it; whether it was a research type project, or a skit that we rehearsed and performed. This was good in that it integrated reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It also was useful for lowing students’ affective filter in that they had time to practice beforehand so they were not put on the spot without having a chance to think about what they would be saying in front of the class. It also assisted the students who were listening to the presenter or presenters because after having done their own work, they might want to see their peers’ work. In college my classes mostly required impromptu production of language, with little in the way of large projects done outside of class. This was more acceptable though because by that point most of the students had reached a higher level of ability to communicate. Also the professors tended to moderate the class to keep it non-threatening. If the interaction was in a group setting, teachers often wandered around to assist and would again try to catch students if things were getting heated—perhaps over a grammatical issue—in order to keep conversations amiable. Since speaking and listening in both whole-class and group-work settings often had a conversational sense to it, students remained engaged and also were for the most part willing to participate.
ReplyDelete