Dialogue Journal 3

The presentation in third lesson about listening and speaking made me recall lots of memory in learning English before. I remembered my junior and senior English teachers just asked our class to do some small activities on the textbook to practice our listening skills with a recording tape. In this class, I got more understanding of types of spoken language, basic principles in teaching listening, and some academic terms like bottom-up exercise, top-down exercise, and interactive exercise. Some exercises like selecting details, getting the gist of a sentence, and following directions are all activities that I am familiar with. After categorizing different levels of these exercises, I understand how to use them according to students’ language proficiency. And I think applying these exercises in teaching listening will still catch students’ attention in my future teaching because of hearing many of other classmates’ positive attitudes toward these activities. Moreover, the key principles in listening skills like using authentic contexts in beneficial to me for application as well.
Besides, I think the task-based method is also inviting to begging learners in learning a second language. It undoubtedly provide a chance for students to practice the idea of “learning from doing.” I was impressive about the video clip shown in the class because it looked like really close to life and practical. Only by practicing speaking on their own could they have the deepest impression on what was taught and then learned it afterwards. Learning such a useful dialogue can be applied by learners in their daily life. So I might very well apply this method in my future teaching on the condition that I have a small class of beginning level students and enough time.