REFLECTION | 06 Student talk and listening

LISTENING STAGES

1. VOCABULARY (before de activity): preparation task.

2. LISTENING: main task

3. QUESTIONS (after de activity): post task. After the listening, we can do a pair work and a personalised activities (when learners can talk about their personal things), but we musn't forget that the most important thing is to encourage creative speaking.

STUDENT TALK

When I was a child, my English teachers used to obly me and my mates to speak in English in front of the whole class. This is why sometimes childent develops what is known as: LATHOPHOBIC APHASIA, when you don't want to speak in English because you are sure that you will commit mistakes. This is why there should be a balance between taking risk and feeling safe and secure when prepearing and doing activities or lessons.

For doing speaking activities we can start de class wiht a game, for exaple Taboo or 20 Questions. We can also focus on a song, but not considering it as a listening activity. I mean... from the vidioclip we can talk about what is happening, or doing a presentation or a role-playing. The idea is to go from listening activities to speaking ones, which is the aim.

There are also three steps we must follow to help our students to get enough authonomy to speak English:

1. AWARENESS-RAISING ACTIVITIES

2. APPROPRIATION ACTIVITIES

3. TOWARDS AUTONOMY

I want to discuss about the firts step, which I think that is the most important. This step consist in getting conscious abot something. The best way of doing is using recordins and transcripts, focusing on selected language speech (speech acts, stres and intonation) and giving the students the opportunity to realise where the mistake is when doing an specific ativity (speaking, listening...).

*The next post will be about the appropriation activities