The Jones article was very informative in that it highlights the importance of incorporating prelistening, listening, and postlistening activities with multimedia technologies. As an educator, I would implement listening activities with technology because students have the opportunity to control the listening task. In other words, each student has the opportunity to listen to parts of a passage that are difficult to comprehend. Since every student learns at a different rate, using technology allows each student to use the input in a way that is most meaningful, and comprehensible. In turn, this will allow me, as a teacher, to provide a more facilitative role, and allow the students to actively take ownership of their learning.
In our crazy advertisement-laden world, critical listening is a crucial skill needed to separate important details from trivia, reality from exaggeration, and the truth from complete bull. Students need to learn to ignore the glitz, the glam, the sob-stories, the pop-ups, and the empty promises of commercials and focus on the product details, understand the side effects rattled off at the end, and become aware of hidden agendas. Even if a slick, fast-talking, dancing gecko draws your attention, maybe you shouldn’t buy car insurance from it. Considering this, it is probably a good activity to bombard your students with multiple forms of media at the same time, so they can practice processing TOO MUCH information. This is something that they will experience in the real world.
I like Gruba’s concept of being “flexible but focused” while discerning relevant information from multimedia sources. An authentic class activity could be to visit commercial websites with loads of video, pictures, misleading text, pop-ups, music, etc. and have students identify both important and unimportant or misleading information presented. Online sites with news broadcasts could also be a good source for this activity because many include video, audio, pictures, relevant text, text unrelated to the news story, advertisements, links to other news stories, etc. Perhaps having students just navigate through all the multimedia distractions to find the heart of an issue is a task in itself. This could be designed to primarily focus on video/audio sources to practice listening skills, but reading and other strategic skills will most likely be put to the test as well. As an instructor, I would urge students to remain “flexible but focused” when dealing with this material so their brains will not explode.
I like the student-directedness that online listening provides. Having taught a "listening" class with a tape deck up on a desk and thirty students listening -- well, there just has to be a better way. Being student-directed means that you can provide time for more difficult, authentic audio recordings.
I think one of the biggest advantages of listening activities with multimedia technology is giving the students the chance to listen to native speakers in natural contexts, with their normal pace and speed, not only the “robot speaking” they get from textbook cd’s. As Ryan said, news broadcast sites can be very useful. Besides reading texts/articles, students can watch videos and listen to newscasters, which can be more fun and practical than most traditional listening exercises.
In listening, one doesn't produce anything, one merely receives. Because of this, it oftentimes isn't given the respect as it deserves. This is unfortunate, because its so crucial for language competency. Integrating listening activities is very important in the classroom and for maximum success, it's important to vary the activities - reflecting real world usage of the listening skills. Every activity can have: a different listening purpose (with students listening for different things), a different type of listening material, a different type of control over the listening material, different supplementive supports, different pre and post activities, and different types of feedback, amongst other variations.
As far as where to get the material - we are lucky as educators to have the internet at our disposal. There is so much rich material out there, that, whereas in the beginning I was fretting over finding usable materials, now the problem is, which one to use for our lessons... podcasts, ESL radio stations, telephone conversations, real conversations, story readers, news readers, etc..
"Listening with the eye" as Gruba quoted Riley (1981) is an interesting way to look the receptive skill of listening. I thought that Gruba's study of how listening comprehension could be aided with visual support is something worth noting. He stated that by using the visual elements, an instructor has the opportunity to promote critical thinking amongst the students. With that said, it is imperative as it is with any task that the goal be meaningful and explicit. By doing so, student may display an eagerness to "play" with whatever the video text may be. As Gruba stated, some students found that using nontraditional texts was much more exciting that using traditional text books and audio cds. Simply put, changing-up the delivery methods of listening exercises can act as a catalyst by changing an unmotivated student into a energize one.
In analyzing the skill of listening when accompanied with visual elements, Gruba states that "...telling students that visual elements simply support aural comprehension would diminish an opportunity to encourage critical thinking amongst our students; a better presentation would inform students that visual elements offer potential opportunities for developing understanding in tandem with verbal elements". This article answered one of my previous concerns about the lack of pre-reading, pre-listening activities when using CALL technology. The idea of thinking of the use of media through accomplishing the goal of media literacy allows for us to view digital texts and resources equally as printed texts. This allows for media use to be more like the pre-reading brainstorming/discussion activities. The use of images, video, and audio can offer students the opportunity to engage in a context and make cultural connections that they would have been unable to make without it. I agree with Mari that media use also allows students to see and hear actual native speakers using the language. Without a doubt media use is a great tool for showing the cultural, and dialect-based, variations present within a language. For most learners, it is more beneficial to hear a description while images are playing in the background. Video-mediated L2 listening could be more meaningful when first teachers introduce the material, maybe talk about the topic/title. While they watch the video, students can control what they are watching, possibly going back and replaying as a means of “checking” their own understanding, like self-corrective feedback. Following the above activities, students can engage in listening comprehension activities. Cloze exercises or matching can aid in identifying if students understood the passage. Students could also engage beyond the literal comprehension and possibly propose equally important “media/textual” characteristics such as, intended audience, tone, or even create their own role-play video continuing the video they saw. Making them produce their actual understanding of the media would be a consecutive task to the actual listening task.
The other day I was watching a Japanese television show with a friend. It was in Korean and there were no subtitles, but for the most part I could understand the plot. Did this help my listening? I don't doubt that video-mediated listening can be meaningful and it can certainly help critical thinking but how well does it improve listening? Are they relying more on the visuals to communicate and comprehend a message or are they truly listening?
In my opinion, listening is an extremely hard skill and one that I struggle with even in my native language. For example, when I am on the phone I cannot browse the internet or look at a magazine because I don't remember what was said. When I have no visual input such as the telephone, It requires twice my attention.
I don't doubt the benefits of video-mediated listening, but I still have more questions about its use in terms of TEACHING listening.
However, I do agree with my classmates that overall video-mediated listening can be beneficial. As Laura said, it can help make cultural connections an allow students to engage in context. I also like Ryan's idea of using commercial websites.
I know that this is slightly off topic but the most exciting aspect to me of the article was the research on the students response to play and replay. There is something interesting about giving a kinesthetic aspect to audio/visual input, which is something I am constantly thinking about and searching for in order to incorporate it into my own lesson plans. Could the ability to actually have physical control over input beneficial kinesthetic learners or special ed language learners? In fact, the kinesthetic aspect and the ability for the learners to have more control over the input and output is one of my favorite aspects of CALL in general. It goes beyond a two dimensional world of paper and pencil.
In response to what Sarah said, I will have to agree with her in that even though the authors mention that visuals help the students with comprehension, how can we really make sure that it is improving listening skills? However, I was thinking that Jones provides more options besides visual support from video clips. For example, he also mentions the usage of scripts, the forward/rewind features, pictures only, and others that will assist to improve listening skills more directly. Then, she mentions that video-mediated listening can be beneficial because it provides cultural connections. What I understand by cultural connections means that if there are Native Speakers talking in the video, students can compare and contrast facial gestures, tone of voice, space separation, speech acts, body language, etc. whereas in listening only could not be accomplished. In my opinion I would mostly use video-mediated listening when providing input, after all it has been found to “provide meaningful input” (p. 105). I would use all the necessary sources so that my students clearly understand the new vocabulary for the unit. Then instead of videos for evaluation, I would only use images like from Screenshots so that they have an idea but do not depend solely on what the characters are acting.
Listening is a language skill that is often taken for granted because it is a receptive rather than productive skill. As such, listening is relatively low-key and perhaps even considered boring by students who want to interpret learning a language as being able to produce it orally and in writing. I can remember when taking French in high school the collective groan that would go up whenever the teacher pulled out a cassette player for us to do a listening exercise. Those exercises were inauthentic and, frankly, boring.
CALL offers a wide variety of possibilities for engaging students in authentic listening and language learning activities. Not only are recorded or live-streamed television and radio programs available for students, but the proliferation of podcasts and sites such as YouTube provide numerous and varied opportunities for students to practice their listening skills.
The use of video clips for listening are great for increasing student comprehension and, as Sarah and Liliana point out, also help to introduce students to the target culture. I thought that Overstream was a particularly useful application, particularly for lower-level students. I also like Liliana's idea of using screenshots to enrich a student's listening experience.
Apparently I didn't post anything to this. So here goes. Yes, listening is a huge area with CALL potential. With internet access, a student now has more listening opportunities than they could possibly handle. ELLLO site is a great source of listening activities for multiple levels. Randall's site is also of great use to students. The only issue is what to do with all of this listening. How do we provide proper checks so that the listening practice is valuable. Some of the sites are using short multiple choice quizzes - these seem to be pretty good but this is certainly a part of this industry that needs much more development. sorry for the late post
The Jones article was very informative in that it highlights the importance of incorporating prelistening, listening, and postlistening activities with multimedia technologies. As an educator, I would implement listening activities with technology because students have the opportunity to control the listening task. In other words, each student has the opportunity to listen to parts of a passage that are difficult to comprehend. Since every student learns at a different rate, using technology allows each student to use the input in a way that is most meaningful, and comprehensible. In turn, this will allow me, as a teacher, to provide a more facilitative role, and allow the students to actively take ownership of their learning.
ReplyDeleteIn our crazy advertisement-laden world, critical listening is a crucial skill needed to separate important details from trivia, reality from exaggeration, and the truth from complete bull. Students need to learn to ignore the glitz, the glam, the sob-stories, the pop-ups, and the empty promises of commercials and focus on the product details, understand the side effects rattled off at the end, and become aware of hidden agendas. Even if a slick, fast-talking, dancing gecko draws your attention, maybe you shouldn’t buy car insurance from it. Considering this, it is probably a good activity to bombard your students with multiple forms of media at the same time, so they can practice processing TOO MUCH information. This is something that they will experience in the real world.
ReplyDeleteI like Gruba’s concept of being “flexible but focused” while discerning relevant information from multimedia sources. An authentic class activity could be to visit commercial websites with loads of video, pictures, misleading text, pop-ups, music, etc. and have students identify both important and unimportant or misleading information presented. Online sites with news broadcasts could also be a good source for this activity because many include video, audio, pictures, relevant text, text unrelated to the news story, advertisements, links to other news stories, etc. Perhaps having students just navigate through all the multimedia distractions to find the heart of an issue is a task in itself. This could be designed to primarily focus on video/audio sources to practice listening skills, but reading and other strategic skills will most likely be put to the test as well. As an instructor, I would urge students to remain “flexible but focused” when dealing with this material so their brains will not explode.
I like the student-directedness that online listening provides. Having taught a "listening" class with a tape deck up on a desk and thirty students listening -- well, there just has to be a better way. Being student-directed means that you can provide time for more difficult, authentic audio recordings.
ReplyDelete-Jonathan Gourlay
I think one of the biggest advantages of listening activities with multimedia technology is giving the students the chance to listen to native speakers in natural contexts, with their normal pace and speed, not only the “robot speaking” they get from textbook cd’s. As Ryan said, news broadcast sites can be very useful. Besides reading texts/articles, students can watch videos and listen to newscasters, which can be more fun and practical than most traditional listening exercises.
ReplyDeleteIn listening, one doesn't produce anything, one merely receives. Because of this, it oftentimes isn't given the respect as it deserves. This is unfortunate, because its so crucial for language competency. Integrating listening activities is very important in the classroom and for maximum success, it's important to vary the activities - reflecting real world usage of the listening skills. Every activity can have: a different listening purpose (with students listening for different things), a different type of listening material, a different type of control over the listening material, different supplementive supports, different pre and post activities, and different types of feedback, amongst other variations.
ReplyDeleteAs far as where to get the material - we are lucky as educators to have the internet at our disposal. There is so much rich material out there, that, whereas in the beginning I was fretting over finding usable materials, now the problem is, which one to use for our lessons... podcasts, ESL radio stations, telephone conversations, real conversations, story readers, news readers, etc..
"Listening with the eye" as Gruba quoted Riley (1981) is an interesting way to look the receptive skill of listening. I thought that Gruba's study of how listening comprehension could be aided with visual support is something worth noting. He stated that by using the visual elements, an instructor has the opportunity to promote critical thinking amongst the students. With that said, it is imperative as it is with any task that the goal be meaningful and explicit. By doing so, student may display an eagerness to "play" with whatever the video text may be. As Gruba stated, some students found that using nontraditional texts was much more exciting that using traditional text books and audio cds. Simply put, changing-up the delivery methods of listening exercises can act as a catalyst by changing an unmotivated student into a energize one.
ReplyDeleteIn analyzing the skill of listening when accompanied with visual elements, Gruba states that "...telling students that visual elements simply support aural comprehension would diminish an opportunity to encourage critical thinking amongst our students; a better presentation would inform students that visual elements offer potential opportunities for developing understanding in tandem with verbal elements". This article answered one of my previous concerns about the lack of pre-reading, pre-listening activities when using CALL technology. The idea of thinking of the use of media through accomplishing the goal of media literacy allows for us to view digital texts and resources equally as printed texts. This allows for media use to be more like the pre-reading brainstorming/discussion activities. The use of images, video, and audio can offer students the opportunity to engage in a context and make cultural connections that they would have been unable to make without it. I agree with Mari that media use also allows students to see and hear actual native speakers using the language. Without a doubt media use is a great tool for showing the cultural, and dialect-based, variations present within a language.
ReplyDeleteFor most learners, it is more beneficial to hear a description while images are playing in the background. Video-mediated L2 listening could be more meaningful when first teachers introduce the material, maybe talk about the topic/title. While they watch the video, students can control what they are watching, possibly going back and replaying as a means of “checking” their own understanding, like self-corrective feedback. Following the above activities, students can engage in listening comprehension activities. Cloze exercises or matching can aid in identifying if students understood the passage. Students could also engage beyond the literal comprehension and possibly propose equally important “media/textual” characteristics such as, intended audience, tone, or even create their own role-play video continuing the video they saw. Making them produce their actual understanding of the media would be a consecutive task to the actual listening task.
The other day I was watching a Japanese television show with a friend. It was in Korean and there were no subtitles, but for the most part I could understand the plot. Did this help my listening? I don't doubt that video-mediated listening can be meaningful and it can certainly help critical thinking but how well does it improve listening? Are they relying more on the visuals to communicate and comprehend a message or are they truly listening?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, listening is an extremely hard skill and one that I struggle with even in my native language. For example, when I am on the phone I cannot browse the internet or look at a magazine because I don't remember what was said. When I have no visual input such as the telephone, It requires twice my attention.
I don't doubt the benefits of video-mediated listening, but I still have more questions about its use in terms of TEACHING listening.
However, I do agree with my classmates that overall video-mediated listening can be beneficial. As Laura said, it can help make cultural connections an allow students to engage in context. I also like Ryan's idea of using commercial websites.
I know that this is slightly off topic but the most exciting aspect to me of the article was the research on the students response to play and replay. There is something interesting about giving a kinesthetic aspect to audio/visual input, which is something I am constantly thinking about and searching for in order to incorporate it into my own lesson plans. Could the ability to actually have physical control over input beneficial kinesthetic learners or special ed language learners? In fact, the kinesthetic aspect and the ability for the learners to have more control over the input and output is one of my favorite aspects of CALL in general. It goes beyond a two dimensional world of paper and pencil.
-Sorry I realize I just went on a tangent
In response to what Sarah said, I will have to agree with her in that even though the authors mention that visuals help the students with comprehension, how can we really make sure that it is improving listening skills? However, I was thinking that Jones provides more options besides visual support from video clips. For example, he also mentions the usage of scripts, the forward/rewind features, pictures only, and others that will assist to improve listening skills more directly. Then, she mentions that video-mediated listening can be beneficial because it provides cultural connections. What I understand by cultural connections means that if there are Native Speakers talking in the video, students can compare and contrast facial gestures, tone of voice, space separation, speech acts, body language, etc. whereas in listening only could not be accomplished.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion I would mostly use video-mediated listening when providing input, after all it has been found to “provide meaningful input” (p. 105). I would use all the necessary sources so that my students clearly understand the new vocabulary for the unit. Then instead of videos for evaluation, I would only use images like from Screenshots so that they have an idea but do not depend solely on what the characters are acting.
Listening is a language skill that is often taken for granted because it is a receptive rather than productive skill. As such, listening is relatively low-key and perhaps even considered boring by students who want to interpret learning a language as being able to produce it orally and in writing. I can remember when taking French in high school the collective groan that would go up whenever the teacher pulled out a cassette player for us to do a listening exercise. Those exercises were inauthentic and, frankly, boring.
ReplyDeleteCALL offers a wide variety of possibilities for engaging students in authentic listening and language learning activities. Not only are recorded or live-streamed television and radio programs available for students, but the proliferation of podcasts and sites such as YouTube provide numerous and varied opportunities for students to practice their listening skills.
The use of video clips for listening are great for increasing student comprehension and, as Sarah and Liliana point out, also help to introduce students to the target culture. I thought that Overstream was a particularly useful application, particularly for lower-level students. I also like Liliana's idea of using screenshots to enrich a student's listening experience.
Apparently I didn't post anything to this. So here goes. Yes, listening is a huge area with CALL potential. With internet access, a student now has more listening opportunities than they could possibly handle. ELLLO site is a great source of listening activities for multiple levels. Randall's site is also of great use to students. The only issue is what to do with all of this listening. How do we provide proper checks so that the listening practice is valuable. Some of the sites are using short multiple choice quizzes - these seem to be pretty good but this is certainly a part of this industry that needs much more development. sorry for the late post
ReplyDelete