Readings for Week 6

This weeks readings were really interesting and informative in an area of ESL teaching that I was unfamiliar with. I found through the readings how important listening skills are in a second or foreign language. It seems that ability is often overlooked as something is simply acquired and it does not require organized instruction. I thought that same thing until I read the assignment for this week. One would assume that when a student is surrounded by listening they just "pick it up" but it takes time to teach the skills of listening.

In the M.C.M. book I learned that there are different types of listening contexts and there are different purposes for listening. It is very interesting that the subject of listening can be broken down into neat and organized subheadings. To read about listing in this way makes it seem that it is actually possible to teach something as extensive as reading in second or foreign language.

I learned that listening can be bidirectional, unidirectional, or autodirectional. It seems that throughout the day we all "listen" a lot more than we thought. The M.C.M. book claims that throughout any given day we listen twice as much as we speak, 4 times more than we read, and 5 times more than we write. That is a lot of listening and it comes from a number of sources. The radio (unidirectional), our friends and family (bidirectional) and of course our internal thoughts (autodirectional).

I thought it was interesting that intonation in a speaker's voice can affect the message along with the speaker's body language. I once read that body language accounts for 80 percent of communication. That is, if Jack was telling me that he really liked me and he had his arms crossed in front of his body and he was looking down, I would know he was lying to me.

Today, Thea and I present and I am excited because we have a couple fun things planned for the class. We are NOT relying on technology so this presentation should go better than the last one I did.

Oh! I forgot to mention that I absolutely LOVE the idea of a listening lab!!! It seems like a great way to get students excited about listening to English. The fact that students can have a choice about what to listen to and when to listen to it is amazing! I like the idea of a reading lab too but then again that is another chapter, isn't it? : )