Eng 345: ch 21, 22, 23

I found these chapters to be extremely helpful.  As an pre-service TESOL educator in my last classes before practicum, I feel that I haven't learned much about the skills required for listening until I read these chapters.  (Nor had I realized how important it is to incorporate into the classroom...)

One of the most important points I read was about nonreciprocal listening.  So much of listening in today's world doesn't allow the listener to ask clarification questions or comprehension checks.  Just thinking of media in general, the listener does not get to ask questions when listening to radio broadcasts, anything on television, answering machines and voicemails, even most religious ceremonies and meetings, as well as the majority of speech presentations, whether formal or informal.  This is a skill.  Students can't expect to know the skills they can use to comprehend what they are hearing unless we give them ample practice with real language.  As the chapters pointed out, the listening portions of many textbooks, as well as other sources of listening practice in the teaching world do not give any example of real language.  Authentic language has uses of pauses, ungrammatical fragmented language, as well as facilitation devices that students need to be exposed to and aware of.  Therefore, using authentic language as much as possible in the classroom will benefit the students and allow practice in developing this skill.

Part of chapter 22 reminded me of living in France.  "It is vital that students of a language be given practice in dealing with texts where they understand only part of what is said" (244).  When I first went to France, I was extremely discouraged when I couldn't understand everything.  They spoke quickly and the slang was over my head.  No one told me that I wouldn't understand every word that was said, probably because it never occurred to my teachers or family to tell me.  However, this feeling passed and I became better and better at using context clues.  Because of this, I found that this part of the text was extremely important to include in the classroom.  Students need to be reassured that not knowing every word isn't failure; instead, it provides an excellent opportunity for students to practice finding context clues and manipulating the language to fit their needs.