Listening and Speaking Lesson PLan

Teacher: Fatima                                                

Course Title: Listening and Speaking

Session: 50 min

Class: 11^th grade

1)      Unit: Listening and Comprehending

2)       General Instructional Objectives: The student will be capable of listening to different types of genre and be able to comprehend them, explain them, apply some activities, and pay attention to the details while listening.

3)      Learning Outcomes:

 a) Student will be able explain in his own words what he had listened to and identify the topic.

d) Student will be able to differentiate between content and function words by stress pattern.

4)      Rationale: Students learning English as a second language need to be exposed to different types of genre through listening. They need to listen to different dialects in order not to have difficulty later on while interacting with people. Despite the fact that one listening session cannot improve the listening abilities of the learner but the accumulation of such sessions enhances the ability of the student to understand oral material through listening and be able to comprehend it.

5)      Materials: cassette recorder, purse, comprehension question sheet, computer, the quiz. 

6)      Instructional Procedures:

Welcoming: I welcome him first. "Hi, how are you? Is everything OK? How is your studying going?"

Of course the student replied that he is fine and things are getting tougher in school.

I asked the student if he takes a listening session in his school. He said that once a month the teacher let them listen to some thing and then they should answer a set of comprehension questions. They had never listened to something which is not graded and this surprised me because nothing is interesting in such listening session and usually students hate it as he said because as if it is a drop quiz session.

a)      Focusing Event:

The purse:  I put in front of the student a handmade purse. I asked him to look at it for one minute and then describe it in his own words. The student wrote: "This purse is too small, very nice, has one color which is beige, and it can be held by ladies only."

b)      Teaching procedures:

Poem:  After that I asked him to listen carefully to a poem written by Bertolt Brecht "A Worker Reads History". (At the end there is a copy of the poem.) The student listened carefully to the poem. On the first time I asked him what he understands from the poem. He said that the poem is about different civilizations and how some people are characterized in the history and how many achievements are linked to them even though there were a lot of other people who are the real contributors to those successes.

I repeated the poem and asked him to pay attention to the different examples mentioned in the poem.

Thus when I was rereading the poem, it was not a continuous poem; however, I paused a lot for the student to understand it very well. To make sure that the student understood the poem, I asked him to write on a piece of paper the main points of the poem. (The paper of the students is provided at the end.)

I said to him "Excellent!"

Then I asked him "How does this poem relate to the purse that you described at the beginning of the session?"

He answered that when he first described the purse it was a materialistic description that focuses on the shape of the purse and what he sees with his eyes but he didn't recognize that this handmade purse had undergone a long process before it reached to our hands. Many people worked to make this purse and a lot of effort was exerted to create it.

I said "This is what happens most of the times in our lives whenever we buy anything we don't think of how that object is made.

  Extraordinary people: Since we mentioned a lot of famous people in that poem that history speaks about, I asked the student to name for me an extraordinary figure that he considers as someone who achieved something amazing. The student said that he considers Imam Khomeini as an extraordinary person because he achieved somehow the dream of all the prophets by constructing an Islamic Government.

Song: At that moment, I felt that the student is about to get bored so I let him listen to a part of a song that I had prepared to use for this purpose. (The song is with the file.)

But the song is not only to let him get excited. I asked him to pinpoint for me a word in the song that some sounds of it are not pronounced clearly.

The student said that in "higher" the last part of the word is not pronounced and the "r" sound in most of the words is not pronounced too.

Proceed with the extraordinary people's part: I asked the student whether he knows anything about Rosa Parks or Albert Einstein and the student said that he knows nothing about Rosa Parks but he knows Einstein and how he was genius and he is the one who created the formula E=m.c²

In this way I prepared the student to what he is going to listen to in order to facilitate the road for him to answer any question related to what he will hear. (This part is taken from the "Shining Star" cassette side B, unit 2).

I asked him to take note that he feels will help him.

I provided him with multiple choice questions which are the following:

Choose the best answer:

1)      a-African Americans and white people were separated on buses

b- African Americans and white people were separated in bathrooms.

c- African Americans and white people were separated in schools

2)      a- Rosa accepted the request of the bus driver.

b- Rosa rejected the request of the bus driver.

c- Rosa rejected the request of the bus driver but she was not arrested.

3)      a- Rosa led a bus boycott.

b- Martin Luther King led a bus boycott.

c- The police led a bus boycott.

4)      a- Albert Einstein was a mathematician.

b- Albert Einstein was a physicist.

C- Albert Einstein was a physician.     

The student answered all the questions correctly but he had difficulty in the last question because he couldn't differentiate between physicist and physician so I said to him that a physicist is the person who studies physics; however, a physician is a doctor who specializes in medical rather than surgical treatment of patients.

Comprehension questions: Then I asked the student two questions: Why was Rosa Parks arrested?  In what way was Albert Einstein's brain unusual?

The student asked me to repeat the part regarding Einstein because he didn't take notes related to that question. I repeated the tape and he answered the questions correctly.

Identify the topic: Under the same theme, I asked the student to listen carefully because he is going to tell me the topic of what he will listen to and who is the extraordinary person?

The cassette was playing and the student took notes. I asked him questions like "What is the extraordinary thing regarding Steven Hodkin?" The student misunderstood an idea in the paragraph. He thought that the person invented an instrument for voice synthesis which made me explain to him that this is untrue. I repeated the paragraph where I showed him that the writer says that he –Steven- couldn't speak and need voice synthesizer to speak.

Content and function words: I asked the student whether he knows anything about content words and function words but he said that he knows nothing. I explained for him that content words are words that make difference in the meaning of a sentence and function words are those words that you can eliminate them from a sentence without any change in meaning. I gave him example:

The boy is on the table. I asked him to try to identify both types. He answered correctly. Function words: The, on, the, and content words are: boy, is, table.

I said to him that we can differentiate between content and function words by the stress that we hear. Stressed words are the content and the unstressed ones are the function.

I let him listen to a part on the cassette and then try to identify words by the stress of the speaker.  

c)       Closure: Here we come to the end of our lesson. I hope that you hadn't gotten bored and I wish the lesson benefitted you. Now I just want to make sure you grasped all the information before you go. Remind me what are content and function words. The student answered correctly. I reminded him of how he must take notes while listening to something.

7)      Assessment: I assessed the student's achievement through the quiz that I presented a copy of in the report. It measures how much the student is able to focus while listening and how much he is able to comprehend oral things. The grade is over 10. After he did the quiz, I graded it and then he and I redid the quiz in order to explain the student's mistakes and how he should grasp the important part of any thing he listens to. (Copy of the quiz is provided at the end. The listening part is taken from the TOEFL cassette Side A)

8)      Evaluation for myself: I think the session was so interesting. I liked my choice regarding the poem. I think I could have provided the student with much more techniques that can help him in any listening session or in any circumstance later on in his life; however, I think the variety of activities were so interesting from the song to the poem to the short paragraphs, and the quiz. I was confident and tried

Report

After this listening session, you can see how I started it with something weird that students will think that it is not a listening session. My aim from using the purse activity is to attract the student's attention and to show how our perspectives can be changed after hearing something. The poem is so nice and it influenced the student's perspective. It has a lot of meanings that I found it great to use it in a listening activity. I believe that listening activities should not aim only at enhancing the student's abilities of listening and grasping the meaning. They should also be beneficial and related to what the student is taking in his school. By applying what the communicative approach emphasizes on I let the session be not only listening to things and then answering questions but I intended to let the student share with me a lot of information using his own words. It was an interactive session.

The material that I provided the student to enhance his listening abilities was varied. I used a poem, song, paragraphs, and short sentences. My aim was to prevent the student from getting bored and even when the student felt bored I had prepared for him a song that was interesting while integrating some pronunciation activities. Based on the humanistic approach I should pay attention to the student's needs and emotions so whenever I feel that the student is getting bored or facing difficulty in handling the material that I provided, I should then find something that attracts the student.

Of course, in such a session I won't use anything from the audio-lingual approach because my aim is far away from habituating the student to any activity.

The paragraphs of the extraordinary people were short and clear. I chose that topic because the student is taking a unit related to challenges and achievements.

I tried in that session to integrate different skills from note taking to listening to writing to speaking which are all based on something the student must listen to.

Moreover, the activities were different where each has its own characteristics. For instance, I wanted in that session to apply the bottom-up processing (like in the activity related to the content and function words and listening to the directions of the quiz) as much as the top-down processing (identify the topic, answer comprehension questions) and the interactive processing,( re- explain in the student's own words).

You can see that this session is not full with strategies that may help the student in his listening abilities because I believe that this aim cannot be achieved in one session. There must be a whole program full of activities where the student must be exposed a lot to listening material and be observed to enhance his abilities.

I think I applied a lot of goals that the comprehension-based approach talked about since in the session listening comprehension is viewed as the basic skill that will allow speaking, reading, and writing to develop spontaneously over time; on the contrary, I believe that student should speak even though he is not ready because he will be fluent through practice.     

Quiz

Listening Comprehension

Note: All the directions are to be provided in the cassette so listen carefully.

1)      a- He only comes here on special days.

b- He comes here from time to time.

c- He frequently drives here.

d- He seldom comes here.

2)      a- Ali wants to change the house into a store.

b- He wants to renovate and fix it up.

c- He wants to give it back to its owner.

d- He wants to sell it.

3)      a- School is starting early this year.

b- School usually begins in September.

c- School usually begins in October.

d- School never begins in November.

4)      a- Now, it is warmer than it was yesterday.

b- The temperature is ten degrees.

c- The thermometer is broken because it was dropped.

d- It is colder now than it was yesterday.

5)      a- Lena now earns $18000 a year.

b- She always earned $1200 last month.

c- She always earns $1500 a month.

d- Lena earned $1500 last month.

6)      a- Danny failed the test and was sad.

b- He was happy to hear the good result.

c- Danny's score made him nervous.

d- Danny is nervous because he will sit for the test.

7)      a- Samir boarded the train early.

b- He carried a board with him onto the train.

c- The train left an hour earlier.

d- Samir didn't catch the train.

8)      A- She bought a steak.

b- She ordered a hot dog.

c- She always finds what she wants.

d- Mary wishes to buy a hotdog at the beginning.

9)      A- The speaker is in a grocery shop.

b- He is in church.

c- He is in a dentist's clinic.

d- He is in a barber's shop.

10)  A- He is always late.

b- He leaves an hour before he is due.

c- He is always early.

d- He leaves for work just before he is due.

Poems for April 11: Bertolt Brecht’s “A Worker Reads History” & Roque Dalton’s “Like You”

April 11, 2010 — Lew Rosenbaum

A Worker Reads History by Bertolt Brecht

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?

The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.
So many questions.