Saturday, January 28, 2012

Week Three: Reflections on First Task


Hello Jodi, Sherie and all friends, 

          I’d like to share some of my responses to the article entitled “Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Material” by Lindsay Miller. 


        I previously thought that listening had been given 
the primary position  researching due to its validity
 in the ESL class. According to me, I do believe in its significant
 role to enhance the proficiency of the English language. To do so successfully, students must be well-exposed to the whole skills, and on top of them is the listening skill. Through listening, the ESL learner  have an access to the accent and pronunciation of the native speaker. Besides, it was so interesting to me to know that "more than forty percent of our daily communication time is spent on listening, thirty-five percent on speaking, sixteen percent on reading, and only nine percent on writing (Burely-Allen 1995)". 

        After reading this article and some of the topic-based lesson plans posted in  www.onestopenglish.com, the Pre-, While, and Post process of the listening was deeply reinforced through a variety of  resources (TV or radio news, videos...) that could contribute to the acquisition of the language. 

      I also liked how the article contrasts contextualized listening to a lecture that has some flaws and affects the listener's motivation and benefit.
      
Best regards, 

Nihmat, Lebanon 



4 comments:

  1. Dear Nihmat,

    I do agree with your thinking and the quotation.
    Again, sites for listening activities opened a wide range of resources to which I was ignored and really these will contribute a lot to language acquisition.

    With best wishes and good luck for the next week.

    Arifeen/ Bangladesh

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello Arifeen,
      It's nice being able to post comments to each other through the blog.
      I haven't been able to do so quite often due to the fact that students are many and I'm pressed for time. I'll find a certain way to intensify my messages in order to have better use of the web.
      Good luck for you in the course and all the tasks as well.
      Nihmat, Lebanon

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  2. Hi Nihmat,

    I also was surprised to know that most part of our daily communication is spent on listening. It means that we should pay more attention to listening comprehension. Why not? Students enjoy doing listening exercises and they want their accent and pronunciation be like that of the native speaker. Resources provided in our course will be useful in our teaching practice.

    Sincerely Zarifa, Uzbekistan

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  3. Hello Zarifa,

    I have to do believe that listening is significant to ESL learners.
    My students too are worried about their fluency in speaking and they try to talk like native speakers of the language. It means a lot to them to listen carefully to a discourse and speak properly.

    I appreciate your comment.

    Good luck in coming tasks,

    Nihmat, Lebanon

    ReplyDelete