Review
  • Final Review: Listening

    • Final Review: Listening

    Final Review
    Now that we have reached the end of the semester, we will review what we have learned and practice by applying listening strategies to improve comprehension of both directly stated information and implied information.

    Objectives

    Comprehension Objectives for the Semester

    1. Understands explicit and some implicit main ideas
    2. Understands most major details and salient minor details
    3. Recognizes and makes some inferences from the speaker's purpose and point of view.
    4. Understands and identifies target grammar forms.

    Strategy Objectives for the Semester

    1. Connects content to background knowledge.
    2. Recognizes organizational patterns.
    3. Uses suprasegmental cues to guess meaning.
    4. Asking clarifying questions to confirm/check comprehension.

    Background Knowledge

    Using background knowledge is an important listening strategy because it helps you to prepare before listening. This is especially helpful in formal listening situations when you need to stay focused for a long period of time. It also helps when you are unfamiliar with the topic or have never talked about it in English. Background knowledge helps you to connect with the speaker by using your previous experience to predict what will be said and what you should listen for.

    The TED Talk we will use for practice is called "The danger of a single story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Before you listen, consider these pre-listening questions to prepare your background knowledge on the topic.

    1. What type of stories do you think she will speak about?
    2. What assumptions do you have about the speaker based on her name?
    3. How does it impact your answers to the first two questions to know she is a novelist from Nigeria?
      • What do you know about Nigeria?
      • What do you think it is like to be a novelist?
    4. In the TED Talk, she shares experiences of living and traveling to other countries. What do you expect she will share about these stories? How would those experiences be similar or different to your own experiences?
    5. How are TED Talks traditionally organized?
    6. What grammar, vocabulary, organization would you expect to hear in a TED Talk about stories?
    7. The title includes the word danger, which signals the speaker's point of view and perhaps her purpose.
      • What questions does this create in your mind?

    Main Idea

    A speaker usually has a specific point he or she wants to make clear by the end of the speaking turn. In a conversation, main ideas are usually very simple, direct, and short. However, in formal situations, a main idea can be implied for a significant amount of time before the speaker explicitly states the message the listener is expected to understand. An implied main idea can be powerful because it is under the layer of an emotional story or memorable examples.

    Whether the main idea is directly stated or implied, the speaker will have a purpose for expressing the idea in this way. As a listener, noticing when and how the speaker says the most important idea will help you understand the speaker more fully.

    In this example, we will listen to the middle of the TED Talk (start at 8:20).

    1. Listen for how she implies the main idea before stating it directly. Consider why the speaker chose to speak in this way.
    2. How does this decision impact you as a listener?

    Organization & Detail

    As mentioned above, the placement and directness of the main idea can give us information about the speaker's purpose and point of view. It also helps us to understand what the speaker thinks is most important for the audience to understand.

    Take a look at these sentences from this TED Talk that represented the major points of her organization and think about the following questions:

    1. Why do you think the speaker chose to organize her TED Talk with so many example stories?
    2. Using this information, how would you summarize the TED Talk's major details?
    3. What minor details do you think you would need to listen for in order to fully support the major details?
    4. What do you think the speaker's purpose is? What does she want the audience to do with the information?

    Topic Sentences

    1. (0:31) I was also an early writer, and when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out.
    2. (1:35) What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children.
    3. (4:41) What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me.
    4. (6:26) This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature.
    5. (8:12) But I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty in the question of the single story.
    6. (9:17) So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.
    7. (10:03) Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.
    8. (12:49) All of these stories make me who I am.
    9. (13:36) I've always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person.
    10. (18:09) I would like to end with this thought: That when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.

    Exercise 1: Stories from home

    • Think about a famous/popular author (or story) from your home country. If you need to research some details, you are welcome to do so before class.
    • Share details about the author or story with your partner.
    • Ask your partner questions to learn more about.

    Exercise 2: Guest Speaker 

    • Imagine that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was going to attend our next class to talk about her TED Talk with the class.
    • As a group, make a list of questions you would ask her. Here is a list of ideas to get started:
      • Specific questions about her experiences she shared
      • Questions about her books or being an author
      • Asking about being a famous TED Talk speaker
      • Questions about how to change the "one story" problem
    • Be prepared to share your group questions with the class.

     

    This content is provided to you freely by EdTech Books.

    Access it online or download it at https://edtechbooks.org/advanced_low_listening__speaking/listening3.