WONDERFUL OR BORING!
Listening
is often ignored in second language classrooms because sometimes (most of the
times), teachers opt for giving students activities regarding grammatical
structures. I think there has always been the belief that everything must be
connected to grammar, grammar, grammar
and all that boring stuff; but what if we used some other strategies, the ones
which are more practical and suitable for a real life context.
If the
activities we set up are interesting and funny for my students, it would be
easier to assess them too. In this entry I interviewed two friends of mine: One
of them was always motivated to listen to songs and he used to like it; instead, my other friend was always asked to fill in the gaps according to the
book activities and topics, she said that was a boring strategy. Have a look at these videos:
To have a
successful listening assessment and have students be familiar with meaningful tasks,
I would like to point out some kind of “Follow, do and create” criteria for
this assessment process: LISTENING. This is a little summary I did and It was
taken from an interesting video I found out by surfing the internet.
1. Even we don’t give students grades;
we have to find out a way to give them feedback about their listening
performance.
2. We have to set up authentic
listening tasks and make sure you find the way to give students feedback after
having finished those.
3. It is important that you know if they’ve
done a task like that before, because we cannot pretend to assess something
that they’ve not been familiar with before. They need to practice it several
times before being assessed.
4. We have to make sure that our task be
integrated into your teaching, we don’t have to wait for finishing the class
period, It’s better to take notes and observations after doing those activities, so
we’ll be informed of how my students are assimilating them and improving or
worsening their listening performance.
5. We also have to take into account
what language functions I’m assessing: If it is communicative language or if it
is academic language. I think they enjoy the most the functional/communicative
ones: songs, movies, video or even video games.
6. We must make sure they can assess
themselves too. Make them familiar with pair work may be by recording
themselves and then listening to what they said. It is fundamental that they
listen to their own speech as well as the teacher’s: That’s the first context
they’re supposed to be in contact with. Your job is making yourself sure they’re
listening correctly.
7. Finally, take into account that peer
listening is essential, but always take up a communicative purpose even when
you’re regarding structures: Ask them to
have a partner conversation and give feedback one another, so they can
experience a kind of “self/peer assessment”.
E.g: If you ask some of them to give a short presentation,
while the ones in charge of the presentation are assessing their speaking
skills, the rest of them are assessing their listening skills, and you can
assess both as well. This is practical, reciprocal and they wouldn’t be as
frightened as when they have to fill in a test.
Thanks!
Andrea
I think that most of teachers are still implementing grammatical tests in High Schools for some reasons: they are easy to design, administer and grade; teachers have extended the same traditional patterns their teachers used; they find it difficult when it comes to assess listening because of the hard times held before and they are not well prepared to assess this skill or understimate their children abilities.
ResponderEliminarI'm also a true witness about the innacurate listening tests administered in schools. Some current teachers might include listening exercises out of songs, videos and internet records, albeit they are directed to fit in traditional schemas as cloze exercises,transcription of dialogues and so on.
So what to do nowadays? good teachers and researchers suggest to head for alternative assessment of skills. But what is that in real life? or is it just a bizantin speech or a tautology that is in vogue and we have to repeat it as machines? The answer is that it's about the functionality or the use of the language in context. It's about giving authentic meaningful exercises or issues of student's daily life. That is what communicative approach stands for: MEANING, PURPOSE AND USEFULLNESS.
But césar, those meaningful exercises do exist. If we have a look at Applied Methodology class, for example, we'll find out that there are many activities or tasks for our Ss that are specifically listening tasks, those useful for a real context; the problem is when even having those alternatives we're still grading and administering "fill-in-the-gap exams". Those mathods are very practical but we can not affirm they are realiable and valid too. I mean, we state everything as a communicative approach, but there are many factors missing to make it happen, and assessment is a clear obstacle we find to do it.
ResponderEliminar