I have two mp3 players; one has a big screen while the other doesn’t. I bought my first mp3 player which has no screen at the second year of my college. I had a lot of English tests so I mostly used it to practice my listening. But I sometimes enjoy some music, still English. Then I bought my second mp3 player and I found it’s a better way to learn English using this then use the one before, because I can download videos. However, podcast, it is totally new to me, all that I know about it is from the book.
McQuillan has some really good points about podcasting in his paper. The “Audio diary” he mentions is very interesting. I believe that something one hears is more impressive than something he or she sees. So if a language learner keeps an audio diary, it will definitely help him or her to improve the proficiency of the target language. And if the learners turn in the diary to their teachers for evaluation, that will be even better, although we know that if it is not an assignment with a due date, learners preferred to keep the audio diary for themselves. They can also use portable device like iPod or mp3 to listen to the diary and find out the mistakes they made.
The “Narrow listening”, which “involves listening to several audio recordings on the same or a similar topic, recorded by different speakers of the target language” is interesting, too. It is like a advanced version of “read articles of the same topic in different languages”. For example, I am going to practice my English by listening to a short passage, and it has Chinese version. So if I don’t familiar with the topic, I can listen to the Chinese version first then go to the English; otherwise, I will listen the English version first and then the Chinese version, checking if I get all the meaning right.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
About Me
- Ling
- My name is Ling, I came from a small but beautiful city located in the east part of China. If anyone wants to tranvl in my hometown,just call me(*^__^*), and I'm still working on my English!
4 comments:
I never tried the narrow listening, but it sounds like good practice.
I think many of the pod-casting activities described in the readings seem like they could be very interesting for students. However, I think most of them would also require quite a lot of very careful preparation on the part of the instructor in order to make them as effective as possible.
So, the narrow listening that you are describing-- do you mean that you listened to the same passages in both languages? I don't think I've ever tried that.
When I listened to the Chinese lessons (I have been lazy about that lately...) I would first try to make sure I could read the whole text before I listened to the audio. So, I tried to get in a little reading practice, too.
Another way I used to practice reading and listening was to find a newspaper article in Chinese that I thought might be interesting (but not TOO difficult!), and then I would ask a friend to read it into a tape recorder, and then I could listen a few times while I tried to decipher the text. I often helped them in the same way. I think it was a pretty good way to practice, but I would often feel discouraged because it would usually take me such a long time to finish reading the articles!
Hi Ling...it is nice to hear that you have first-hand knowledge of using your mp3 player for learning English. I agree with your comment about the "audio diary" as a good tool for improving oral profiency. It would have been helpful to try out some of these new technologies during my English and foreign language learning. It really adds a whole new dimension to learning! From a (prospective) teacher perspective, it's a bit overwhelming though. I need to get more comfortable with these new tools in order to effectively integrate them into my curriculum.
Hi Ling,
I read your information regarding “narrow listening” feature of the iPod. I’m not sure that I understand that feature. Is it like an RSS feed? Do you subscribe or download that feature on your iPod? It is helpful to listen to an audio recording in two different languages and check for understanding in your L1.
Patti J
Ling, I agree with your summary of prompt 7. It was well written and now I understand more of it with your summary. I agree with subtitles. I often say that if only the Spanish channels would have subtitles, I could learn Spanish. They seem so interesting just by the body language alone. Have you heard of the Novellas., my sister watches them and she gives me the details. She knows more Spanish than I. I think that sometimes I often forget about the help features with any computer program. I tend to ask others for help and forget that I could have used the help features.
Post a Comment