ACTION PLAN: SYSTEMATIC PRESENTATION OF LISTENING SKILLS NAME: ZURAIMI BIN MOHD ZUBER (850728115451) INSTITUTION: POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH
PART A INTRODUCTION I am teaching English language at Politeknik Sultan Idris Shah and have been teaching for three years since 2011. Apart from my teaching responsibilities, I am also involved in developing assessment items for English language subjects and also responsible for managing my department’s staff trainings. Since I am teaching at a polytechnic, most of my students are of technical background. Most of the students are from Electrical Engineering Department, Civil Engineering Department and Information Technology Department. Some of them are from Department of Department of Commerce and Tourism and Hospitality Department. The students have to take English language subjects in polytechnic as a requirement for them to complete their diploma. There are three English language subjects that students have to take throughout their studies. These include Communicative English 1 which focuses on developing their oral communication skill, Communicative English 2 which focuses on developing skills to cope with their working environment and Communicative English 3 which focuses on job hunting and job interview skills. Besides, the students also have to sit for MUET (Malaysian University English Test) as a part of the requirements for them to further their studies at local universities. The group that I have chosen to carry out this action plan on is DKA1A students. This group consists of 46 Diploma in Civil Engineering students who entered Politeknik Sultan Idris Shah after finishing their secondary school. Out of the total number, 7 students scored an A for English language subject in SPM; 13 students achieved B; 12 students achieved a C while 14 of them achieved either D or E for the subject.
ISSUE IDENTIFICATION Based on my previous lesson on listening, I found that most of my students face difficulties in understanding listening texts that I base my activity on. I realized this after checking the answers in the worksheets that they submitted after the listening activity. Most of them were not able to show their understanding of the listening text. This is evident in the incorrect answers that that they produced in the worksheet given. After reflecting on the activities that I carried out, I realized that this situation is rooted in the way I conducted the activity and the students’ lack of exposure in listening tasks. Upon reflecting, I realized that the inability of my students to give relevant responses to the listening tasks is partly due to the way I conducted it. As I recalled, I asked the students to listen to an audio text which was played twice and the students need to answer the questions on the worksheet given to them. I realized that I did not present the skills in listening systematically to the students. The student did not go through the necessary steps in understanding the listening text. They were also not guided throughout the activity. Instead, they were only given a worksheet as a guide for them in finding the main ideas and the details. As a result, the students ended up listening without any purpose and they did not know what they should listen for. The activity was carried out in such way because I had mistakenly assumed that the students are familiar with listening tasks at school and already acquired the necessary skills in listening. However, I found that this was not the case for my students. Based on a survey I carried out, I found that most of the students are not familiar with listening tasks. Majority of them stated that their teachers had not carried out any listening activities when they were in their secondary school. Therefore, I believe that the lack of exposure is the main cause of their inability to respond appropriately to listening tasks. I found that there is a need to expose the students to (1) listening for main ideas and (2) listening for details so that the students can become intentional listeners who have a purpose for listening. As mentioned by Brown (2008), listening is a complex activity, therefore teachers have to help students comprehend what they hear by activating their prior knowledge. As listeners, students do not only receive and record aural input passively. They need to actively involve themselves in interpreting what they hear, bringing their own background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to comprehend on the information contained in the aural text. Language learning requires intentional listening that employs strategies for identifying sounds and making meaning from them. Therefore, I strongly believe that the students need to be made aware that they need to set purposes in listening as to make them able to use their background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to help them comprehend what they listen to.
PART B THE ACTION PLAN Aims and expected outcomes The aim of this plan is to expose students to listening for main ideas and listening for details. Besides, students are also expected to carry out a group discussion using the inputs that they get from the listening activity. Thus, by the end of the lesson, students should be able to: 1. Identify at least five questions posed throughout the video. 2. Identify at least one opinion from one of the teenagers for each questions posed throughout the video. 3. Carry out a group discussion on the topic ‘Cyberbully’ by using the questions as a guide. Strategies chosen There are a number of strategies that I am going to use in the lesson. These include: 1. Questioning: As to promote active participations from the students I will employ questioning strategies while carrying out the activities. According to Nystrand and Gamoran (1997), only authentic discourse can engage students, and it is important that the questions asked to be able to stimulate pupils to think and reflect on the consequences of their ideas. To make my lesson in line with this, I will pose question to lead them to think of their past experience and put themselves in the shoes of the victim in the video that I am going to use. I will also ask question to make them think of possible ways of solving the problems identified. By asking such questions, I believe that my students will participate more actively during the lesson as well as think critically and creatively. However, it is important also to note that there is a limit to this strategy. Based on previous lesson, I noticed that some students are reluctant to respond to questions. This is partly due to their low confidence level which is rooted in their lack of proficiency in English language.
2. Activation of prior knowledge: Brown (2006) states it is important that a listening activity make use of students’ prior knowledge in order to improve listening comprehension. Parallel to this statement, I plan to activate my students’ prior knowledge to enable them to understand the listening text that they will listen. This will be done through questioning strategy that I have mentioned before. This strategy also has its own drawbacks as I am dealing with a very big class which consists of almost 50 students. Therefore, it is important to note that I might not be identify whether the students are able to use their prior knowledge or not.
3. Use of authentic listening material: Based on my observation, most of the listening activities carried out by my colleagues are audio text based listening tasks. For example, the students are asked to listen to audio texts played and answer questions based on the texts they listened to. The tasks that are involved usually include filling in the blanks, answering wh-questions and answering true-false questions. In other words, most of the post listening activities are worksheet based activities. In terms of listening materials used, the texts that are usually chosen for this kind of activity are audio texts which involve pre-recorded dialogues, a talk on a subject matter, a speech or a long and dull audio text of a person reading an article. However, I found that most of the audio texts used are not real in a sense that they do not represent the actual listening that the students do in real life. It is often the case that the students do not experience the listening situation as represented by the texts usually chosen for listening activities. Therefore, they find such listening text as boring and dull since they cannot relate it with their real life situation. They only listen for the sake of answering the worksheet given and not to get new knowledge from it, which I think goes against the objective of teaching listening skills. Therefore, in this lesson I will use a video which shows an actual event where teenagers give their opinion on the case of cyber bullying which has caused Amanda Todd to commit suicide. The language used by the teenagers is not scripted and is more real than the language used in audio texts that are normally used in listening tests or tasks. I believe that using an audio text which portrays the real discussion will help the students grasp what kind of language that they should use in the group discussion that they are going to carry out in the production stage. Despite the fact that using authentic listening audio material can help students to understand the language use in actual situation, the students might also face difficulties in understanding the content of what is presented in the material. This is because the speakers in the audio material are native speakers. Hence, they might find it difficult to follow what is being said by the speaker. This in a way might impede their understanding of the text.
Procedures of the plan Stage 1 Set induction (Warm up) Duration: 5 minutes
Procedures Teaching Aids 1. Lecturers shows a picture to students and asks them an Picture of a issue that comes to their mind when they see the steering lock picture. (The issue is a road bully – Steering Lock Lady Driver) 2. Lecturer illicit students’ responses on the issue.
Rationale: This stage is important to carry out as a warm up and to draw students attention towards issue that is about to be brought later. This issue is chosen because it is a common issue and students are familiar with the incident that happened.
Stage 2 Pre Listening (Activating prior knowledge)
Procedures 1. Lecturer plays a video recording of Amanda Todd. 2. Lecturer illicit students responses on the video. Questions that can be asked: What happened to the girl? What did she/he/ others do? Why do you think this happened? What would you do if you were in her situation?
Teaching Aids Video posted on Youtube by Amanda Todd four hours before her death.
Rationale: This video was chosen as I believe that it can trigger students’ emotion and create awareness in them about the seriousness of the issue. I will also ask question to guide students’ thoughts towards the issue that is about to be discussed in the video that is going to be shown in stage 3. This is important to be done to activate students prior knowledge of the issue and also to familiarize the students with the difficult words that are going to be used in the video that will be played in stage 3. Stage 3 While listening (Getting inputs)
Procedures 1. Lecturer tells students that they are going to listen to responses from some teenagers regarding this issue. Lecturer also informs the students that the video will be played three times and that they will have a task to carry out. 2. Lecturer plays the video for three times
1st time: Lecturer asks students to watch and listen only.
Teaching aids Video from youtube – Teens React to Cyberbullying.
2nd time: Lecturer asks students to jot down questions asked throughout the video. A3 papers and o Lecturer asks students to sit in groups of five. marker pens. Provide an A3 paper for each group. o Then, the students are to share the questions that they managed to jot down. o After that, lecturer appoints one student from each group to become a spy. The spies need to go to other groups and spy on the questions that they missed out. Once they are done collecting the missed out questions, they are to report back to their respective group. o The students need to write the questions that they get in the A3 paper provided.
3rd time: Lecturer asks students to jot down responses from at least one of the teenagers for each of the questions asked.
3. Lecturer asks students to go back to their group and share their findings. Lecturer reminds the students that it is important for everyone to be involved in this session since they are going to use the inputs in stage
Rationale: The video for this stage was chosen because it portrays what a real discussion really look like. I prefer this type of video to be shown because it shows how people give opinion in the actual way compared to pre-recorded audio texts which portrays very artificial and unreal discussions. The video also will be played three times to get the students adapt themselves with the speed of speech of the speaker. This is important to be done so that the students will have a second chance to clarify word, phrases and information that they are not clear of. Besides, students will also be given tasks to carry out during the second and third time the video is played. This is done so that the students will have a purpose in listening. In the second play of the video, the students are required to jot down questions posed during the discussion. This is planned to be done this way so that I can present the listening sub-skills namely, listening for main ideas and listening for details, in a systematic way. This is important so as to give a clearer purpose of listening in each stage.
Stage 4 Post listening (Production)
Procedures Teaching aids 1. Lecturer asks each group to choose FIVE questions that they think are very important to ask their friends regarding the issue. The questions are to be divided between the group members. As a result, each person will be assigned with one question from the five questions chosen. 2. Lecturer tells the students that they are going to carry out a discussion which is similar to the discussion in the video they watched. 3. Lecturer asks the students to take turns asking questions. All students are expected to give their responses to each of the questions posed by their friends.
Rationale: This activity will be carried out as to give students an opportunity to use the inputs that they get to further improve their speaking skill, which is productive in nature. It is important to connect listening and speaking to make students aware that there are purposes in listening where they can listen to understand an issue further or they can listen for vocabularies and expressions that can be useful to improve their proficiency level. Closure
1. Lecturer reflects back with the students on the activities that have been carried out throughout the lesson. 2. Lecturers discusses on the processes that have experienced themselves in each stages by making them aware of the purposes set for listening. 3. Lecturer discusses the importance of listening with a purpose with students.
Rationale: This stage is also important to create awareness in the students of the challenges that they face in listening as well as making them aware that there are strategies that they can use to overcome the difficulties. Besides, the students can also be made aware of how listening to authentic and actual conversations can help them improve their proficiency level.
PART C REFLECTION
The Strengths of the Action Plan After carrying out the activity, I was able to identify the strengths of the action plan that I carried out. Most of my students were able to identify the questions posed during the discussion in the audio texts thanks because in the beginning of the activity, I have set some tasks for them to carry out. Therefore, they have a purpose in listening to the material and tend to focus while listening to the audio material. Besides, I found that most of my students were able to use the points that they jot down during the while listening stage in their group discussion. I also found that some of them even used a number of polite expressions in carrying out a group discussion.
The Limitation of the Action Plan There are some limitations to this lesson plan. I found that it is difficult for me to monitor my students when they were carrying out the group discussion. This is due to the class size which is almost 50. Therefore, I find it hard to point out and correct mistakes made by my students throughout the lesson. Besides, I found that some students really struggle to understand the audio listening material. This is due to the speed of speech of the native speakers in the video. This makes it hard for them catch the words uttered by the speaker. As a result, they find it a challenge to grasp some of the main ideas in the discussion. This is due to their proficiency level in English language. Besides, I believe that this is also partly due to their being not familiar with listening to speech of native speakers.
The Impact of the Action Plan on Me
There are a number of things that I learned while preparing this action plan. These include the importance of a thoughtful planning, the importance of referring to various sources and the role of reflection in improving my teaching methodology. While preparing the action plan, I realized that I have to consider variety of factors in planning a lesson. This involves the activities that I am going to carry out, the materials that I am going to use in the lesson as well as my students background knowledge and level of proficiency. I realized that I overlooked at some of these factors while preparing for this action plan. For example, I overlooked at my students’ level of proficiency. This result in my mistake where I chose a material which is difficult for some of them, especially those who have low proficiency level to comprehend. Therefore, I realized that I need to consider a lot of factors in planning my lesson next time. In preparing the action plan, I was also required to relate my action plan with some of the theories and principles in English Language Teaching. In doing so, I have to read from a number of sources to achieve a better understanding of what I am about to plan and carry out. This has broaden my view of my teaching perspectives. I realized that there are still many strategies that I am ignorant of. As I read through the articles written by experts in ELT, I came to understand that teaching is a creative process and I have to be flexible at times in carrying out my lesson. This in a way has improved my knowledge and skills as an English language lecturer. This action plan also requires me to reflect on my teaching activities. While doing the reflections, I realized that there are a lot of mistakes that I did while carrying out the activities. Upon realizing the mistakes, I began to think of the causes of the problems and ways to improve my lesson. Doing a reflection also has enabled me to be empathetic towards my students. As I stepped back from the lesson and see the implementation from the eyes of a student, I came to understand the challenges that my students face in understanding listening in second language. Therefore, I realized there are still rooms for improvement for the activities I carried out as to make my students become a proficient listener as well as speakers of English language. In a nutshell, I believe that this action plan has improved me to become a better educator. I have learnt that I need to be careful in planning my teaching and learning activities for my students, I have learnt that I need to read a lot to broaden my perspective in teaching methodologies and I have learnt that it is important to step back to see the loopholes in my teaching processes.
References Brown, S. (2006). Teaching Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nystrand, M. & Gamoran, A. (1997). ‘The Big Picture: Language and Learning in Hundreds of English Lessons’ in Nystrand et al.’ Opening Dialogue: Understanding the Dinamics of Language and Learning in the English Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press pp. 3074..
