Angelena CO #3

On Tuesday, January 15^th 2:00 to 2:50, I attended Derrick Pollack’s Group 2 Level 3-4 Listening Class in Room 313. Materials that were used were the student’s textbook, notebook, and a white board. At the beginning of the class, the instructor wrote what they would be going over throughout the class and then told students to pair up and review the vocabulary words that they already learned. In their groups, one student would read the definition of a vocabulary word and the other student would say the correct vocabulary word for the definition. If the students needed assistance, the instructor would help them come up with sentences using one of their words. The instructor also encouraged students to write out sentences so that they could review it for the next day.  Afterwards, the instructor went over expressions and cue words with them and stressed the importance of cue words to help students understand what people are saying. He explained that this skill is especially important in a lecture since it could be difficult for them to understand what someone may be saying because of accents or the fast speech.  Students would say some cue words or phrases that could be useful for them to know and the instructor would then write these expressions on the white board.  The instructor then read short passages from a lecture two to four times and told them to listen to the cue word/expression the first two times and then to listen for the topic of the lecture the third and fourth time.  The students then wrote what the main cue word/expression and topic were. After the instructor went through all of the sentences, he went over all of the sentences again. Then, the instructor went over each sentence and asked each student what the cue words/expressions and topics were to test them and make sure that they were correct. Towards the end of the lesson, the class reviewed the vocabulary words. Each student would come up to the front of the class while the instructor wrote a word on the board and the rest of the class would say the definition of the word. The student standing up would then have to say the correct vocabulary word.  In this exercise, students were encouraged to use synonyms as well as the definition for this activity. Before the end of class, the instructor told them to prepare for their quiz for the next day and told them the format of the quiz to help prepare them. In this class, I learned that it is helpful for the professor to give a little extra attention to some of the students who may be struggling or lack motivation to come up with a sentence.  For example, one student was not writing many sentences like the other students and it looked like he may have been a bit confused and discouraged.  Because the student was not writing much, the instructor spent a little extra time with him to encourage him more.  This appears to be necessary in cases like this since learning a new language could be difficult and it could be easy for some students to get discouraged. I really enjoyed this class because the students had a good sense of humor and seemed to really enjoy the class. It also is important to help students become more familiar with important cue words and expressions to help them understand what someone is talking about. Repetition is also key in the cue words/expression exercise so that students could double-check their work and become more familiar with the words.