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Listening in EAP
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Mon, 03/16/2009 - 15:08
Hi all. I have found it quite easy to motivate EAP students concerning aspects of EAP teaching such as Writing, Reading, Speaking, vocab, academic style, less so in Listening. I have found it difficult to make the contexts real at a distance (teaching EAP so far from the country where the student will study, in situations where the only listening they will encounter right now is attending conferences). I´d like to know what your experience is in this respect.
best
Andrea
Mon, 03/30/2009 - 23:08
#2
Hi Kevin!!
Thanks for the useful websites. Could you explain the "reading before seeing the lecture" bit? I'm not sure how to approach this.
Regards,
Anita
Wed, 03/18/2009 - 02:07
#3
Hi, Kevin. That is really interesting, but don´t you think materials in general lay a lot of emphasis on lectures and pay little attention to other spoken text types/ genres? How about more interactive kinds of genre that demand more of the students in terms of understanding and responding, and also back-channelling, turn taking conventions, understanding different varieties of English, even within Academic English.
best
Andrea
Wed, 03/18/2009 - 22:14
#4
Hi Andrea,
This is becoming a two-person chat, but that's fine. Anyone want to join in?
The feedback I get is that lectures are the most difficult listening activity for my students. In fact, apart from listening to video or audio material, which can usually be paused, replayed, etc, you could say it is the only activity. I suspect we have a problem of definition here, as I would deal with the other things you mention under the heading of seminar skills, meetings, speaking, etc. From a listening point of view I think these are easier anyway due to the possibility of asking for clarification, repetition, etc
All the best,
Kevin
Thu, 03/19/2009 - 04:54
#5
Yes, absolutely. I believe it is a pity that most materials define listening as almost exclusively listening to lectures, and the rest belongs in "speaking"! Yes, it would be great to know what others think.
best
Andrea
Thu, 03/19/2009 - 19:57
#6
Hi Andrea and Kevin,
I guess I'm in a provocative mood right now but I'm wondering whether we aren't really wasting time working on listening to lectures with our EAP students? After all most lecturers these days use powerpoint slides which they put on the web for students to download. Some lecturers even podcast their lectures so students can listen again.
I suspect that our empahsis on listening to lectures and - worse - notetaking only serves to make the students more anxious when they go into their real lectures than they otherwise would be. Wouldn't they be better just sitting back, relaxing and seeing how much of the Big picture they could follow? Then they could get together with other students on the course and check out what the lecturer really said.
If that was the way of working then I agree with Andrea that actually skills for listening and discussing in seminars are a lot more useful.
Olwyn
Thu, 03/19/2009 - 21:56
#7
OK, I decided to be provoked :-)
First of all, I would say that the idea that "most" lecturers publish their slides is an exaggeration, in my experience in any case. If they are any good at doing PowerPoint presentations, there will also be an awful lot of content that isn't on the slides anyway.
My experience with my students is that they are initially worried about lectures, but the practice they get on the course makes them much happier about it. Also, they spend massive amounts of time as it is getting together to understand reading material, prepare for seminars, etc, and they would rather avoid yet more time meeting up to ensure they understood a lecture.
That of course is not to say that discussion skills etc. are not important. And, of course, we are all talking in massive generalisations here.
Kevin
Fri, 03/20/2009 - 13:45
#8
Hi Olwyn and Kevin. Yes, I agree, Kevin, with everything you say, but I also believe we should bear in mind that EAP teaching differs according to where it is done. Many people who learn EAP in Argentina will never go to Englland to study so they need EAP for professional purposes mostly or to study here, where the rhetorical tradition is different and most university tutors do not rely so heavily on lectures as part of instruction. In fact lectures are regarded as poor teaching by many.
For the most proficient here, it is more difficult to listen to the joke in the middle of the lecture and the questions after it, than to the lecture itself, and hardly anyone would have trouble with notetaking.
All the best
Andrea
Sat, 03/21/2009 - 02:07
#9
Hi Andrea,
Good point. I think we have another problem of definition though. What do you mean by needing EAP for professional purposes?
Kevin
Sat, 03/21/2009 - 04:06
#10
Hi Kevin. I don´t think it is s problem of definition but one of broadening definitions. What I mean is many people who study English for Academic Purposes are academics, i.e. researchers, teachers, supervisors, Ph D candidates, who are using/ will use the language to get published, attend conferences, present at conferences, read texts, do distance courses, all over the world, or because English is the medium of instruction here at Undergraduate/ Postgraduate courses, where lectures are not so popular among university tutors.
I think the fact that we´re able to discuss this is just perfect, as it clearly poses a good question: the contexts for teaching, learning and using EAP in the world today, a changing world.
Best
Andrea
Tue, 03/24/2009 - 02:10
#11
Hi Andrea,
It was a busy weekend...
What you describe is very different to my experience of EAP in the UK, where it has so far been exclusively students, for a first or higher degree, arriving with an IELTS score of 5 or 5.5. They will be going into a world of lectures, presentations and seminars that often become lectures. This obviously is rather different to the participants in an EAP course where you are, which reminds us to remember that even with what appears to be quite a clear term, like EAP, the reality of it can be quite different in different locations.
To go back to post 2 in this thread, I think there are very few suitable materials available for this kind of thing. I usually find it necessary to think up activities that help to practice different elements, such as turn-taking.
Kevin
Sun, 03/29/2009 - 16:38
#12
Hi Kevin and Andrea,
I have a nice activity for turn-taking and contributing in seminars which I got from Ann Smith at Nottingham University. The students in groups of 5-6 have a discussion topic and each person has a pile of matches. Each time a student contributes they must put a match in the centre (of the table if the group is at a table). Fairly soon, the talkative members run out of matches. They are then not allowed to speak unless someone who still has some matches nominates them or asks them a direct question. This gives the quieter students a chance for their voice to be heard and some control over the flow of discussion. The topics can start simple and familiar and progress to more complex.
Olwyn
Mon, 03/30/2009 - 12:36
#13
Nice activity, Olwyn.
Tue, 03/24/2009 - 19:35
#14
Yeah, absolutely!
So I guess there´s scope for material development in this area!
best
Andrea
Hi Andrea,
I can understand how difficult that could be. I teach on a pre-sessional course at the University of Southampton in the UK. There we have two real lectures each week delivered mainly by lecturers from the university. This is used as the basis of quite a lot of work during the week. This appears to be highly motivating, once they have found out how hard it is to understand a real lecture.
Using this as the starting point, there are lots of videos available online now of real lectures, mainly at American universities. You can find them on I-tunes, or here: http://mitworld.mit.edu/index.php and here: http://www.ted.com/, so if you are in a position to play these to your students, you can have some real-life examples of what it will be like. These can form the basis of comprehension work, activities involving note-taking, discussions, reading before they see the lecture, etc.
Hope that helps.
Kevin