Active Listening Series, Part 4: Authentic Listening Texts

I came across a multi-part lesson on the skill of listening, taught by Professor Mahmoud Al-Batal of UT Austin. In his lessons and discussions with his students, the use of authentic listening texts is explored. They readily admit that one of the biggest challenges is finding authentic texts that are challenging yet on level for beginners. It is definitely more engaging for students to listen to an authentic piece such as a radio broadcast, a music video, a clip of a TV show, etc. but it is difficult to find something that is on topic for your unit, and neither too difficult nor too simple.

I agree completely with Professor Al-Batal that 21st century technology gives us a great connection to authentic texts in the languages we teach. However, sifting through the materials can be time consuming, but if do the work and save the links, you can have what you need for years to come. Take a look at this fabulous list of resources curated by Michèle Campbell.

The temptation to stick with the ancillary materials provided by the text book publisher is tempting...but is that what is really going to make language "click and stick" with our students? Will it make them order for themselves when we take them to the French restaurant, or better yet, when we take them to France? Or will it leave them only feeling "safe" using the language within the confines of the classroom?

When working with authentic texts for listening activities, it is up to you how deeply you want to explore the text. Since I spent the last five years teaching French 1 in a school with no French 2, I would often focus on a specific element of an authentic text, and not necessarily exploit all possible levels of meaning in the document. However, if I had a French 5 class, I would absolutely take one text and squeeze out every drop of meaning as long as it was engaging and useful.

Check out www.lyricsgaps.com to find lots of great songs for Cloze activities.
Here is an example of a Cloze listening activity that is always one of students' favorites:

• When I teach the days of the week, I love to use the song "Quand Vient la Nuit" by French pop star Nâdiya. Give it a listen here. With a clear class objective (to learn the days of the week and to practice reading, writing, speaking and listening to them), we listen to the song three times with three different goals. The first time, we listened for the structure of the song. Students must identify where in the song they hear the days of the week. This tends to be fun and students simply enjoy the music, while preparing themselves for the written activity. They notice that the "hook" is sung by a little girl. She sings the song containing the days of the week that accompanies a popular children's game that resembles "Duck, Duck, Goose." (You can read the rules of the game here). But each time she sings, she mentions only a few days of the days of the week, until the final hook of the song. 
• During the second listening, students have a listening sheet on which they fill in the blanks with the days of the week they hear each time they hear the "hook."
• During the third and final listening, students check their work and complete any missing blanks before we check out work.
• Once the work has been checked, if you can, have students play the game! Even if they are in high school, they will love to play like children again, and it is a great opportunity to encounter French culture in a playful way.

Students know a "fake" when they see it. Right? Whenever you can, offer them authentic listening passages that will give them insight into both language and culture. 

Active Listening Series, Part 3: Self-Guided Listening

Give students a chance to make choices about how they want to learn or demonstrate what they know and you will see that they will be self-directed and engaged.

In 2009, I was extremely fortunate to ask for, and receive, a set of 30 USB headsets with microphones for making and listening to voice recordings. What an invaluable tool! I used these headsets to make my own podcasts to support each unit. But students did the lion's share of the creating. They made their own Web 2.0 projects such as VoiceThreads, Voki's, videos and more. They were also able to plug into enrichment activities, such as cultural or tutorial videos. I can't encourage you enough to try to come up with this technology for your students!

One way that I used the headsets for self-guided listening was to set up individual students at a computer with a headset in a quiet corner of the room in order to practice vocabulary using either my unit podcasts or Quizlet flashcards that I made. Click to view podcasts I have made for my students as well as other MP3's I regularly use in my classes. This was a great differentiation strategy to use with my students who were frequently absent, easily distracted, feeling lost, having a lot of trouble with pronunciation, or generally struggling to keep up. It gave them an opportunity to get up to speed and return to the main class activity feeling confident. But of course, I encouraged all of my students to make use of these listening activities as part of their homework. In fact, the first year I used these, the student who won the French award at graduation for the highest GPA proudly show me that she had all of my podcasts on her phone by the end of the first week of school. She listened to them on her subway rides almost every day and it really showed, which created a lot of buzz and got other students into it, as well. As I told her, and all of my students, language enters in through the ear and comes out the mouth. Listening truly is the key to speaking.

Another way I used the headsets was the day that unit projects were due. I have zero tolerance for late projects, which facilitates giving students 100 different projects to listen to and choose from. Take a look at a sample digital portfolio page here. Instead of having all 25 students take turns displaying their recorded projects, students selected ten projects that they wanted to listen to. Of course, they often chose their friends, but sometimes a project "went viral" and became a popular pick. They were required to take notes on the quality and content of the VoiceThread while listening. This technique facilitates writing, speaking and listening at the same time. It ensures that students have an engaged audience of eager listeners who choose to listen to them. And what was kind of nice, too, was that I had a silent class that day so that I could circulate and collect the written version of projects and privately conference with students.

I just came across the web site www.lyricsgaps.com, which is a fantastic resource for self-guided listening. Students can complete Cloze activities on their own, whether in the classroom using headsets or at home for homework. The site even offers pre-made worksheets, classifies songs by easy, medium and hard, and enables teachers to see who has logged in and completed the assignment. For language teachers who are non-native speakers like me, this is a great way to familiarize yourself with more musicians and songs so you can bring more music into your classroom.

The difficult part for me, as the teacher, was listening to all of the projects and completing the learning targets rubrics for each student. It is time consuming, but it gives the students very specific feedback about how they are doing. By using digital portfolios of Web 2.0 projects, students also have a concrete record of how their pronunciation has developed throughout the year. As an 11th grade teacher of French 1, I regularly wrote around 30 letters of recommendation for college each year, and I found that including the students' portfolio pages in the letters enabled me to share concrete work samples with admissions officers. Having such a permanent and public record of work is highly motivating for students, and I can say that the work is worth it because of the results.

Active Listening Series, Part 2: Listening for Quality

I hope that the document I shared on peer evaluations was helpful for you!

Today I want to share my work around listening for content. As students become more at ease with the target language and with the qualities of an excellent presentation, they are ready to respond to questions about what they heard. This holds students accountable for listening to each other. It gives them increased comprehensible input. It gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their comprehension and to add something to what they heard. The learning does not stop with the writing, memorizing and presentation: the role of the audience is just as essential as the role of the speaker. Shouldn't communication be that way, anyway?

By teaching students to listen for content and share their ideas after each presentation, they become co-creators of each presentation, and demonstrate support for the student presenter.

Click to view a sample Listening for Content document that I use.

If you are familiar with the film Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, you know that there are some eccentric and truly "fabuleux" characters who are great fun to describe! Viewing this film and preparing characterization presentations was always my lead in to the Café Unit. This is a part of my French 1, Marking Period 3 work, so I feet confident that students can listen attentively to the presentations given by their peers and take notes on what they hear. After each presentation, we discuss what we heard. Call on several students to keep them all participating and engaged. See if anyone disagrees with the speaker's point of view or has other ideas to offer. Give the speaker a chance to correct herself/himself if necessary.

How do you encourage students to listen and respond in the target language, either at the beginner level or in more advanced language classes? Please comment and share your strategies!

Active Listening Series, Part I: Listening for Quality

Being an active listener is an essential habit of mind for success in school, relationships and throughout life. What I'm talking about here isn't simply listening to the teacher (although that is definitely something we all want!)...the key here is to teach students to listen to each other.

What are the benefits of teaching students to listen to each other in the context of a world language class?

• Authentic Communication in the Target Language Every speaker deserves a listener. Communication only occurs when a sent message is received. 
• Comprehensible Input In order to learn a language, students need to hear it. Although I love to get students speaking French on the very first day of school, noted linguist Stephen Krashen explains that it is still much more valuable for students to actively listen until they are ready to produce the language. Read Krashen's views on listening here.
• Raise the Stakes Require students to memorize their presentations. And then have students hold each other accountable. And then watch the magic happen! When I ask students to write a conversation, it needs to be memorized and presented before the class as soon as the next day. And it needs to be good. 
• Cultivate Classroom Community Studying a new language is inherently risky business. When students listen to each other and learn to give constructive criticism related to spoken language quality, they became each others' accent coaches, but they also become a team. The teacher is no longer the only one who knows how the language should sound. What I love is to watch 40 minutes of memorized French presentations, calling on students to share their critiques and only intervening when a necessary point wasn't raised. When students learn to actively listen to each other, they realize that they have knowledge and insight to share that they can use to help each other improve. It is so empowering for students to feel some authority over a subject that is inherently "foreign" to them.
• Self and Peer Editing Novice language students often protest that they don't know enough of the language to give each other coaching or to edit each others' work. Not so! If all students are using what has been taught, then all students have access to the same language. They are able to comment on the quality and content of presentations in order to improve each others' accents, syntax, word choice, and public speaking skills. When you empower students to teach each other, the knowledge is shared, and a stronger sense of ownership and engagement results.                                              

Here is one of my strategies for teaching students to listen for quality and offer peer evaluations during presentations. 

1. Teach students the language (either in English or in the target language) that you want them to use when they give constructive criticism. Require specific and clear feedback. "It was good" is far too general to be of any use to a peer who wants to improve!

2. Model it. 

3. After each student presentation, call on peers to share their feedback. Do not always choose the same students; call on those who don't have their hands raised to remind them that their listening is an essential part of helping the class improve! 

4. Require students to complete the written evaluation during each and every presentation. Collect it. Check it thoroughly, especially the first few times, so that the procedure becomes ingrained as a class expectation. 

Click here for the document. Feel free to modify it for your language.

Please comment below to share your thoughts on how or why to teach students to listen actively to each other!

Sharing Our Best=Giving Students Our Best

I decided to begin this blog as a means of exploring my own values as a world language teacher. My objective is to create a meeting point for all world language teachers to seek ideas and inspiration. Although my experience is as a teacher of French, it is always possible to modify my ideas to suit your curricular goals. I invite readers to share their own best practices, so that all of us can deepen student engagement and success. I am going to share my own best practices related to:

• Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening
• How to meet The Standards for Foreign Language Teaching in the 21st Century/the Five C's: Communication, Culture, Comparisons, Communities and Connections
• How to support students and teachers by incorporating the Common Core Curriculum Standards in a fun and engaging ways
• How to differentiate instruction in a world language classroom
• How to appeal to different learning styles and preferences
• How to use technology to enable students to practice the target language and discover the culture for themselves
• How to add value: make your subject feel relevant and important to students and colleagues in an era of severe program and staffing cuts

Furthermore, I hope that aspiring world language teachers will find this blog to be a source of ideas and support. The more we share our best ideas, the more engaged our students will be. If you share my goal of multilingualism an American value, please join me in reflecting and sharing what we all do best!