TED as an Authentic Material

Listening

TED as an Authentic Material 

I think that websites like TED are mainly not helpful for language learners. TED is designed to share knowledge or ideas about many different topics. These topics are usually shared through scholars, scientists…etc. Such people are well educated and usually use language that is very advanced and difficult to relate to daily spoken English. In other words, a learner of English will be more interested in learning the basic vocabulary that helps him to use the language probably.

 So, if I am the teacher I will not use this website for my beginners or intermediate students. While for advanced students I might use it but I would be very careful of the material I am going to choose. The material should not be very difficult and I might introduce some pre activities to prepare the students to understand the gist of the video I am going to give them.

However, the only exception that might conflict my argument is if I am teaching English for specific proposes. That is if I am teaching a class of students who are for example going to attend law college. In this case I will use many materials form Ted to the intermediate and advanced students. Since such students need a lot of exposure to the language that suits their target language content. 

LISTENING...

LISTENING

MAY 22, 2014

THURSDAY

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Why listening is selected? 

     This skills is the favorite of mine. Many researches are made to discover it, because I personally it is the most ambiguous one between all the fourth skills.    

What is listening?

     Listening is one of the four language skills. In fact, it is a receptive skill, where it involves responding to language rather than producing it. In this summary, we are going to explain and show this skill with certainly the help of several trusted websites and the issued book (TKT-CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH).

What are the characteristics of the spoken language?

     1- Stress:* the way that a word or syllable is pronounced with greater force than other words in the same sentence or other syllables in the same word.

     2- Intonation: *the sound changes produced by the rise and fall of the voice when speaking, especially when this has an effect on the meaning of what is said.

     3- Connected speech: sounds and single words connected together to formulate a form of speaking.

     4- Facial expression: the express appeared in the face during the conversations, 

     5- Hesitations:  *the act of pausing before doing something, especially because you are nervous or not certain.

What are the characteristics of the written language? 

     1- Punctuation: *The most common punctuation marks in English are: capital letters and full stops, question marks, commas, colons and semi-colons, exclamation marks and quotation marks.

     2- Logical sequence:  The organization of the whole essay or the paragraph, and how it is gradually connected to each other.

     3- Complex: stylish and highly developed sentences with the use of the Punctuation.

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     Some important terms in listening skills

     1- utterances: * the action of saying something

     2- text types: spoken language such as, conversations, stories, songs, and many other examples.

     3- interaction: Different way of organizing the language according to the speaker.

     4- relevant: suitable/appropriate

     5- linking: a connection between words and sentences.

     6- listen for gist: listening looking for the main idea

     7- global understanding specific: listening for well-known thing.

     8- infer attitude: listening to see what attitude a speaker is expressing.

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    TYPES OF LISTENING

In the mentioned website, there are:

*Informative Listening

 Informative listening is the name we give to the situation where the listener’s primary concern is to understand the message. Listeners are successful insofar as the meaning they assign to messages is as close as possible to that which the sender intended.

*Relationship Listening

The purpose of relationship listening is either to help an individual or to improve the relationship between people. Therapeutic listening is a special type of relationship listening. Therapeutic listening brings to mind situations where counselors, medical personnel, or other professionals allow a troubled person to talk through a problem. But it can also be used when you listen to friends or acquaintances and allow them to “get things off their chests.” Although relationship listening requires you to listen for information, the emphasis is on understanding the other person. Three behaviors are key to effective relationship listening: attending, supporting, and empathizing.

*Appreciative Listening

Appreciative listening includes listening to music for enjoyment, to speakers because you like their style, to your choices in theater, television, radio, or film. It is the response of the listener, not the source of the message, that defines appreciative listening. That which provides appreciative listening for one person may provide something else for another. For example, hard rock music is not a source of appreciative listening for me. I would rather listen to gospel, country, jazz, or the “golden oldies.”

*Critical Listening

The ability to listen critically is essential in a democracy. On the job, in the community, at service clubs, in places of worship, in the family—there is practically no place you can go where critical listening is unimportant. Politicians, the media, salesmen, advocates of policies and procedures, and our own financial, emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual needs require us to place a premium on critical listening and the thinking that accompanies it.

  

*Discriminative Listening

The final type of listening is discriminative listening. It may be the most important type, for it is basic to the other four. By being sensitive to changes in the speaker’s rate, volume, force, pitch, and emphasis, the informative listener can detect even nuances of difference in meaning. By sensing the impact of certain responses, such as “uh huh,” or “I see,” relationship listening can be strengthened. Detection of differences between sounds made by certain instruments in the orchestra, or parts sung by the a cappella vocal group, enhances appreciative listening. Finally, sensitivity to pauses, and other vocal and nonverbal cues, allows critical listeners to more accurately judge not only the speaker’s message, but his intentions as well.

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Finally, it is really important topic to talk about, and to search it. I highly recommend all my classmates to make a check.

 Regards,

* this mark is an indication of the usage of the below websites.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/kline-listen/b10ch4.htm

  

COURSE BOOK REVIEW

          The listening workshop and the morning discussion that we went through was how we can teach the listening skills to especially military students which was the main purpose of our study. At first we explore the concept of receptive listening and that means to listen more than speak, and how can we make sense of the meaning sounds we hear it, of course by its context and our knowledge of the world.

     
           The second important step was to know the characteristic of the spoken language. It differs from the written language because it has features which can be disappear as it is spoken, fast or slowly, and stresses,  also most important the sentences sometimes are not complete in connected speech. It also has facial expressions etc.

Moreover, there were pre-teaching key words involved through the books we looked at, for an example, there is a banana. This was like repeating task followed by sentences with authentic materials pre- listening tasks, so the students can speak as they pronounced, which was contractions, hesitation, utterance, and interruption.

         I liked the way these books were presenting the listening activities, by giving them some pre- teaching key words in authentic texts, so the the student have the time to process and understand the language, then they followed them by some listening tasks to know what kind of interaction patterns these conversations were taken place. Sometimes they were while- listening task and some of them not in great number in post- listening tasks.

Finally, we mentioned that since we are teaching military students we must concentrate on the most important skill which was listening intensively, because they are not normal students, they must listen carefully according to their jobs.
  


  

Listening Website - Nujeem

As an English learner and teacher, you need many of resources to develop the language skills. Listing is one of these skills and the most important, I believe. Before using the Internet at schools, to find such resources for the listening skill you need to search through bookstores and ask teachers to provide some CDs. But with the existence of Internet at schools, this problem has been solved. Many of students use it now as a resource to develop these English skills. Teachers need to encourage students to visit websites in order to enhance their skills. One of useful and helpful website is http://www.esl-lab.com . It has many of listening exercises divided into three sections: easy, medium and difficult. Each section has a lot of listening exercises which would be helpful to learners and for the teachers to use it as a practice for their students.

I myself will use it for sure, and I would advise English teachers and learners to visit it and comment afterward.

How useful is it for students to listen to speeches recorded on websites like YouTube and Ted - Mohannad Alhumaidi

Involving students in real life materials is so important for English learners in general. Teachers have a big responsibility to raise the awareness among their students on how to use things around them to improve their English and how that can enhance the process of learning.

The web is one of the biggest examples that learners use every day and spend hours and hours using it. YouTube, Ted is a recorded speech website which can give them huge materials to use. The good thing about these websites is that it can provide variety of videos with different styles that can match any taste, so a learner can listen to something he/she is interested on.

Another good thing about it is teachers by this way can involve students into technology and get them to be familiar with it, because even with all the technology around us teachers will have some of their students who are not using technology in his life so much. However, using websites such as YouTube and Ted can distract learners and sometimes it will draw their attention to something else and make them forget their goal (which is learning English)

Authentic materials – Listening

Authentic materials – Listening

            In my opinion, I believe that a teacher Must play authentic listening materials to their students. Materials such as songs, podcasts, radio…etc. these materials can improve the student’s understanding of the language in different ways. From my own experience, I mainly learned the language from listening to songs and watching movies and T.V shows rather than high school or the university books. From listening to the songs I understood and learned many idioms and expressions. Also, I learned an important thing which is infer attitude where the singer says one thing out from his voice understand that he means the opposite.

            From watching the T.V. in terms of listening a learner will learn things that ordinary books will never teach. You will learn the current use of language. In other words, you will learn the vocabulary that native speakers use in their daily life. However, in books they teach you chunks that you might never use in regular basis. Also, a single vocabulary can have different meanings. For example any learner knows the word paper as the piece of sheet that you write on. However, only songs or movies will introduce another meaning to it, which paper means “money” (dollar). Also, the word green learners know it means a type of money but from listening to an authentic material that deals with the American culture you will know the other meaning which is also “money”.

            In conclusion, I believe that listening to authentic materials gives the learner an access to more than simple language. It gives him the chance to understand the language and its culture which allows him to use it better than a learner who only listens to ordinarily audio tapes that comes with the books.