Blog #4

1. What are the most common ways that you have experienced listening and reading comprehension as a learner in FL classes?  Please identify and evaluate the approaches or techniques that were used most often, explaining any difficulties you experienced with listening or reading comprehension. In your critique, make sure you reference the Omaggio text.

I have not have had many foreign language classes threw my educational carrier but in the few that I have taken I have seen a similar trend. In all of my classes there has been a lot of “teacher talk” I like this approach because it makes the student fill like they are part of a real conversation in the targeted language. I personally liked this approach because it made the class open for conversation but I also know that most of my other classmates did not like this approach and one of the reasons was that the teacher was talking too slow and that would make the class very boring for them and that is one of the down falls of this approach like Omaggio says that “it consists of a simplified code, characterized by slower, more carful articulation” so for a native speaker this approach might not be the best one. Another way I saw listening and reading comprehension in my foreign language classes was by students doing “Oral presentation of a written text” unlike “teacher talk” this approach involved students more because the students are the ones that had to write the text that they are going to present to the class. I like this approach because it gives time to the student to think and practice what they are going to present to the class before they have to. That is a good idea because if students don’t get that chance to write something down and the teachers just puts them on the spot most students will just freeze and will have a very hard time saying what they want to say in Spanish. And finally the most important reason why this approach is important for foreign language students is because it involves both writing and speaking the two most important things a foreign language student needs to learn in order communicate in the targeted language that they are studying which is the goal of the class in the first place.

2.  What strategies have you used for listening and reading comprehension that you think might be helpful for your students? What strategies did you use that you would not recommend?

Some of the listening comprehensions strategies that I think might be helpful for my students is the use of multimedia software. Like Omaggio says multimedia can be used to bring authentic material to the classroom. For example if in my class I am teaching the student about day of the dead I could use multi media to show them a video of the day of the dead or could even make it more interactive by asking a native speaker in his native country to video call us and explain to my students what day of the dead is. An example of reading using multi media is giving my students a newspaper article of a Spanish speaking country about the day of the dead. This way my students are exposed to readings made for native speaking people. I have not use a lot of strategies yet because most of the time I just help my CT but one of the strategies that my CT uses that I would not recommend other teachers to do is give the students a text to read in Spanish and have the translation on the back. Most of the students will not even look at the Spanish and just go strait to the English side. this defeats the purpose of the class.