Saturday, October 22, 2016

Diego & Kim

On monday 17th, I went to observe the class that Diego and Kim taught. It was a listening. Listening and Reading are very hard to teach, specially if you lack of experience. It is necessary for our students to know the vocabulary that will appear in the listening. Thus, we have to introduce and practice such vocabulary before going through the listening. If our students do not know such vocabulary, they might get confused. Chants and songs are part of the listening skill too, and can be used as a listening in the class.



How to teach listening/reading?
In Listening/Reading you will have to follow the Pre-During, During, and Post-During pattern.

+In the Pre-During, the teacher has to present the vocabulary that the students are going to listen in the during part. Also, teachers have to practice the vocabulary so that they can make sure that students are able to identify such vocabulary.

+In the During, teachers must play the listening and afterwards they have to ask things about the listening. There are 3 durings. In during 1, teacher always have to ask what the listening is about, but not just that, as teachers you have to present some options, something like "Is it about animals? Or about food?". It is easier for students to answer if teachers do that. In the during 2, in this teachers have to ask students to order events in the listening. This part tends to be pretty hard as students might not understand if they are told to order the events. So, teachers have to model the instructions and to find ways to make the explanation easier. In during 3, teachers have to ask students information questions like "What is the color of the shirt?". This part is not as hard as the 2nd during, but it does not mean that it will be easy because sometimes students might not get the answer or will simply ignore the listening.

+In the Post-During, teachers must try to make his or her students speak because that is the goal of the listening (In the reading, the goal is to make students write). This part tends to be hard because kids are shy and cannot establish a conversation. Also, teachers have to figure out how to make students confident. Writting in the board what they have to say is a good idea. Teaching a listening is pretty hard, but as you gain experience it will get easy. 

My classmates taught a good listening class, but there are always some little details like things that can be improved. For example, Kim was speaking too much during his lesson and students might feel frustrated if the teacher talks too much. Also, Diego used an actity that he had already used in the last lesson, and teachers must have a great amount of different activities so that they do not repeat them. However, as I said before, these are just little details, generally, the class was good.


In the next link you can find several listenings for different topics. If you have to teach a listening class and you have not found the listening, you might find it there.

http://www.123listening.com





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