Listening Teaching Demos for Intermediate Level - Essay Example

? Listening Teaching Demos for Intermediate Level Listening Teaching Demos for Intermediate Level Parameter Topic: The Four Directions Rationale: This lesson focused attention on the four directions. I aim to choose this activity because at this level, the teacher should focus on giving more and more examples to the students for enabling better listening skills. In this manner, it will be easier for the teacher to know whether the students are able to understand correctly the words and sentences they listen to. Time: 50 minutes Audience: EFL female adult intermediate students in public schools in Saudi Arabia. Goals: Helping students to acquire listening skills appropriately by demonstrating their ability to use the four directions in English needed for their real-life purposes. Objectives: By the end of this lesson, students will be able to: Recognize the four directions in English by raising the correct flag city when they hear its location with 100% accuracy. Enhance their ability in listening skills by recognizing the city in a given direction with 100% accuracy. Create a more nuanced understanding of history, culture, and the means through which the students can seek to appreciate the way in which peoples around the world relate to one another and specify directions and intentions. Create an understanding of the fact that these concepts are global and can be implemented anywhere and everywhere, not just within Saudi Arabia. Skills: Listening, concepts of history, directional reasoning, and cultural literacy Materials: a board, marker, map, cards, and cities flags Procedures: Time Action Description (5 minutes) Warm up Teacher will warm up students by asking “Hello everyone. How are you today?” Then the students will settle down and the teacher will take attendance. (5 minutes) Quick revision for the previous lesson Teacher will check the students’ knowledge and understanding of the previous lesson by asking them a few questions and checking their responses. This is an effective means of engaging with the student body without providing a test that needs to be graded and the results of which can only be found long after the lesson plan is over. By engaging in this pertinent and time sensitive feedback, the teacher can modify the lesson plan based on what aspects he / she feels might need to be covered more thoroughly and / or in more depth. Likewise, the teaching presentation can be altered based on whether or not the speed at which the stakeholders are taking the information is slower or faster than may have been anticipated. Such an approach is especially salient when teaching in the elementary setting where the educator is oftentimes unaware of whether or not the students have been presented information before. (5 minutes) Introduction Teacher will introduce the lesson for the students by drawing cardinal points on the board to indicate the four directions, and then will proceed to a brief presentation regarding how these cardinal points have a long history, a brief discussion of the compass, and a segue to why Saudi Arabia, arguably the center of Arab culture, has been chosen for review. In this way, a brief history of the compass, an understanding of how cardinal points affect one’s life and allow individuals to relate to one another / identify with one another can be effected with the students. (20 minutes) Explaining & feedback The teacher will explain the lesson by writing on the board the directions such as north, south, east, and west, and will show the students a map of Saudi Arabia to recognize its boundary by (See the Appendix) referring to the four directions to find a city location. Afterwards, the teacher will point out if a city location is between two cardinal points using these terms: North South East West Northwest (NW) Southeast (SE) Southwest (SW) Northeast (NE) Then the teacher will ask the students randomly to answer a series of questions by using the Saudi Arabia map, such as: 1. What is to the north of Saudi Arabia? – Kuwait, Iraq, and Jordan. 2. What is to the east of Saudi Arabia? – Qatar, Emirate, Bahrain, and Iran 3. What is to the south of Saudi Arabia? – Oman and Yemen. 4. What is to the west of Saudi Arabia? – The Red Sea, Egypt, and Sudan 5. What is the general location of Saudi Arabia? – Southwest Asia Naturally, such a process cannot be effectively engaged without a high level of positive feedback on the part of the teacher. As such, the teacher will praise the student’s responses by saying “Excellent, well done, great”…etc. By positively reinforcing the cooperation on the part of the students, the degree and extent to which cooperation can be evidenced in the future, as well as the overall quality of this cooperation, will be maximized. Moreover, by allowing the students to know that their hard work is appreciated, the likelihood that this hard work will again be evidenced in the future is maximized as well. (10 minutes) Activity The teacher will introduce the activity by dividing the students into four groups. The name of the activity is “The Lost City.” Then the teacher will show the students a clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS4G0bvpwgc) about the boundary of Saudi Arabia and ask them to take notes. Thereafter, the teacher will ask the students to share their notes with their group, and will show the students the map of Saudi Arabia with missing cities. This will allow for a group dynamic to be built and for a reasonable level of teamwork to develop among the stakeholders in the process. Meanwhile, the teacher will provide the student with a random flag for a given missing city and will ask one of the volunteers to pick one card and read the direction of the missing city. The student then believing he / she has the missing city will raise the city flag. A volunteer will collect the flags from the students and post them on the map according to whether or not the information presented is correct. The final stage in the process is of course the evaluation. Any other approach would allow for a guess and check methodology to develop. Even though this guess and check method is useful in other teaching applications, for a situation such as this one, where a certain number of options exist, it is ultimately unfair to allow for such a methodology to be accepted as the students may only be tempted to keep guessing until they receive a satisfactory level of feedback with regard to their given choice. (5 minutes) Assessment Teacher will assess students with their responses and evaluate how well they have been able to recognize the four directions and the specified cities in question. In the event that some students show a difficulty in listening, the teacher provides tips for better understanding the spoken language and seeks to engage in an alternate approach that will present fresh information yet at the same time engage a different set of determinants so that these students can also be included in the overall learning process. Reflection From the information that is thus far been provided, it can be seen that delivering a discussion and class participation module with respect to cardinal points can have a primary, secondary, and tertiary impact upon a litany of different aspects of furthering the educational process. Firstly, it targets participation and encourages students to become actively engaged in the learning process through working in teams and seeking out solutions. Secondly, it utilizes only a handful of instructional materials as a way of making the point and providing the active forms of education that have been previously delineated. Thirdly, it organizes the classroom environment in a non-unidirectional way. What is meant by this is that the teacher is not responsible for providing the students with an endless stream of information and then expecting them to regurgitate this back to him / her. Rather, the active part of learning within this particular scenario is taken by the pupils themselves. Although it is understood by this particular educator that it is not his role to be responsible for teaching each of these different subject matters in their entirety, providing the linkage between them and allowing the students to explore and improve their education based upon these determinants has a marked level of educational benefit. Moreover, the exploratory nature of this particular exercise is unique due to the fact that many forms of education merely indicate that rote memorization should be engaged in order for the student to gain any degree of benefit. However, as has been noted with regard to the lesson plan above, by allowing curiosity and excitement of the unknown to help promote these determinants, the students are in fact able to partially motivate themselves as a means of engaging with the subject matter at hand. Although structure within the classroom is an effective tool that can be used to impact positively the degree and extent to which information is related to the student, the open form of structure implemented within this particular lesson plan allows for an even further level of growth and student identification. Whereas it could naturally be argued that teacher is responsible for gathering the information from the students to check whether or not it is correct, the process that has been engaged in this particular lesson plan allows for the students to handle the information amongst themselves, study it, and determine which approach is the most effective prior to coming to some form of a democratic agreement within their respective teams and representing this information to the front of the class. While it is important to engage in different forms of activities that strengthen knowledge and understanding, the juxtaposition of the ability to gain a geographic understanding, cultural appreciation, historical significance, teambuilding, and the democratic process all in one is a highly effective means of presenting any subject and is, at least within the mind of this educator, extraordinarily useful. From the information read in the courses that were held in the past, it is obvious to this particular educator that one of the most effective means of engaging the student and encouraging them to remember a particular action is not sitting them down with a pencil and piece of paper and making them regurgitate the fact that they had been preached. Rather, a more efficient approach is to allow them a degree of exploration and discussion amongst themselves in respect of the learning process, thereby integrating a degree of self-involvement and appreciation that it necessarily represents. Although no single process is in and of itself perfect and without need of improvement, it is the understanding of this particular educator, upon reflecting on the above, that the approach provided is essentially one of the most effective in teaching cardinal points and an appreciation for history, culture, teambuilding, the democratic process, and understanding all at the same time. Electronic References Adapted from http://productionhausmedia.com/believeinbroward/kuwait-map-middle-east-i1.jpg Missing City http://www.coedu.usf.edu/culture/Maps/Middle_East_map.gif http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHDLSchDVr4 Read More