Honing Listening

Skills with Audio & Video

Deborah McGee MifflinJohns Hopkins University

mifflind@jhu.edu GWATFL / MFLA Fall 2010 Conference

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Session Goals

• Consider the learner challenges when listening in a foreign language (L2)

• Look at the basics of creating listening activities

• Experience 3-4 German language examples & activities

“Listening”

What are students doing?

“Listening”

chunking

looking for clues top down interpretation

making a mental representation

matching words they hear with

words they know tuning out distractions

bottom up processing comparing with world knowledge

Choices – What to listen to!

• Pros of authentic materials: – language in action – high validity – encripted cultural information

• Cons of authentic materials:– assumes a native speaker audience – fast, idiomatic, dialect influences

What now?

• Finding & Storing (Internet,

Books, Youtube)

• Evaluating appropriateness, theme, level

• Manipulating & Editing (Audacity, PowerPoint, other software programs)

• Identifying purpose & linguistic challenges

• Creating activities

Template for Activity Sequence

• Pre-Listening – Getting students ready – Providing vocabulary support – Previewing selected content

• Listening – Providing motivation to keep listening– Multiple times, depending on purpose

• Post-Listening – Working with meaning – Solidifying vocabulary knowledge – Evaluation

Types of Activities

• Inferring content from title, pictures, portions of text (Vermutungen)

• Matching– vocabulary w/ visuals– vocabulary w/ L1– vocabulary w/ L2 definitions – sequences

Activities, continued

• Listening – for specific vocabulary items– for longer expressions – for grammatical items – for words to complete a text (Lückentext)

• Content – true-false– multiple choice– matching – fill-ins– short answer …

Example 1 / Beispiel 1Der relaxte Outdoor-Single

Ein Ausschnitt aus Leonhard Thoma: “Idealpaar” (2007, Hueber)

Stufe: ab A1Themen: Language, Cognates, LehnwörterSoundclip: 7,21 Minuten (Audio)

Einstieg & Vorentlastung Hören: Clip 1: 1,59

Clip 2: 1,05

Clip 3: 1,15

Example 2 / Beispiel 2

Erich Kästner: Ein Auszug aus “Als ich ein kleiner Junge war” (1957) (‚Erinnerungsorte’, Cornelsen)

Stufe: B1 – C1; Intermediate to Advanced

Themen: Heimatort, Kindheitserinnerungen, Sehenswürdigkeiten, Dresden vor und nach dem Krieg

Soundclip: 2,25 Minuten (das Vorlesen einer literarischen Passage)

Example 3 / Beispiel 3

Der kleine Nils von Youtube

2 – 3 minutige Radiosendungen

von RTL

Beispiele:

Der Friseur (2,50)

Der kleine Nils will heiraten (3,03)

Der Führerschein (2,55)

Pro: Short, Conversations, idiomatic, “real”

Con: not ‘book’ language, slang, dialect

Example 4 / Beispiel 4

Das Jahr 1968 in Bildern von Stephan Trinius (2009)

Pictures w/ narration

Downloadable from www.bpb.de

Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung

http://mediathek.bpb.de/Geschichte/objekt_648.html

Stufe: C1

Thema: Geschichte, die 1968er Generation

Handouts and Materials from this presentation are available at

https://jshare.johnshopkins.edu:443/dmiffli1/GWATFL_MFLA%20Listening%20Mifflin