Text to Ponder : Phonology Course Oral Exam Preparation Hosted by Lala Bumela

This is your LIFE. Do what you love and do it often. If you don’t like something, change it. If you don’t like your job, QUIT. If you don’t have enough time, stop watching tv. If you are looking for the love of your life, STOP: they will be waiting for you when YOU START DOING THINGS YOU LOVE. Stop over analyzing. Life is SIMPLE. All emotions are BEAUTIFUL. When you eat, appreciate every last bite. Open your minds, arms, and heart to new things and people. We are united in our differences. Ask the next person you see what their passion is, and share your inspiring dream with them. LIFE IS ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU MEET, AND THE THINGS YOU CREATE WITH THEM, SO GO OUT AND START CREATING. LIFE IS SHORT. LIVE YOUR DREAM AND SHARE YOUR PASSION. 

tugas review book method of teaching

Book Review

Reviewer               : Ririn Rianingsih / PBI-B (V) - 14111320123

 

a.   Summary of the book

The book entitled understanding the teaching of listening and speaking by Mr. Wakhid Nashhrudin presented in two parts; the first is understanding the teaching of listening comprehension and the second is understanding the teaching of speaking. All of the chapters in this book were presented the way to understand the teaching of listening and speaking can contribute to the body of knowledge in the area of Teaching English as Foreign Language (TEFL) in general, and more particularly can provide insight for readers having interests in English Language Teaching (ELT).

Part one is preparing students to face Listening Comprehension test, diverging tasks in listening activities, and desperately listening. Chapter I is preparing the students to face listening comprehension tests, such as in TOEFL, IELTS, TOEIC, or in National final examination. This chapter provides the students with three approaches of listening (bottom-up, top-down, and interactive) and two kinds of strategies (before test and while-tests). That will make students feel more confident in facing listening tests. Because,  listening is a difficult skill in second language learning. The difficulty is caused by many factors varying from the difference of sounds between the second language learner’s first language and the second language he or she is learning, his or her lack of vocabulary, his or her grammatical unawareness, to pragmatic differences between the two languages. Students can be successful in following listening tests not only because they are good at listening, but also because they are supported by techniques or strategies to do the listening tests, such as before test and while test strategies. Before test strategies refer to technique applied b teachers to teach listening comprehension in the forms of familiarization of test formats, extensive listening, segmentation, and reading the transcripts. Despite the fact that students should be prepared before the test, they should also be prepared with strategies during the test. While test strategies include using pictures , using multiple inputs, catching main ideas, paying attention to voice changes, remembering specific information, interpreting, and finding hidden meaning. Longer conversation such as academic conversations, class discussions, academic talks, and lectures can also be understood using those strategies. Chapter 2 is diverging tasks in listening activities. This method discussed how teachers can diverge listening tasks in their listening comprehension class. The word “diverge” means to separate and go in different directions. The notion of “diverging tasks in listening activities”, suggest that teacher can design varied and different listening activities that will direct students to the mastery of listening comprehension skill. The chapter has emphasized that diverging tasks and setting the purposes in listening instruction are important. It highlights the micro- and macroskills of listening comprehension. this is intended to provide a guidance to lead students to master listening skills. The purpose of listening tasks have also been discussed. In this case, students need to choose what information they need. It is the basis of importance of knowing the purposes of a listening task : whether it is listening for specific information, listening for details, listening for the main idea, listening for opinions, inferring meaning, recognizing context, predicting, or identifying emption. Thus, the micro- and macroskills of listening comprehension combined with purposes in listening classes. One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that different tasks should be given to aim at different purposes. Chapter 3 is desperately listening. The study reported in this chapter is to try out ‘listening while reading’ technique in helping EFL learners listen English to speech. This is a way that learners can use so that they can see the printed words while they practice listening how the words are spoken. This chapter tells the result of a pre-experimental study on Listening a spoken text while reading the text. The strategy of this chapter may not be used for advanced level students or at intermediate level continuously ever time students practice their listening skills. Since it will be contra-productive. But at least it will make the lessons of listening be more not frustrating for low level students. As a suggestion, teachers teaching low level students can benefit from this technique. Consequently, students who start learning listening at the beginning level can feel comfortable listening to “difficult” text spoken by native speakers of English using this technique. Further research can be directed to what learners can benefit from this technique and whether types of concentration (distributive, focus) influence students in listening tasks. The design can be also improved as I realized that pre-experimental is not the best method for doing experiment.

Part two is Helping EFL Learners Pronounce Wh-questions; Rehearsal, Performance, Debriefing: An investigation of speaking strategy in EAP; Expecting speaking course: A reflection from student’s perspective; and strategic interaction approach to promote speaking skill. Chapter 4,  Helping EFL learners pronounce Wh-Questions. This research try to analyze and solve Indonesian student’s problem in producing questions using questions word, using drill techniques and supported by authentic materials. Chapter 5, Rehearsal, Performance, Debriefing : An investigation of speaking strategy in EAP. This chapter examines the three principles in teaching speaking (Rehearsal, Performance, and Debriefing) to promote speaking skill. Chapter 6, Expecting speaking course: A reflection from student’s perspective. This chapter tells the result of questionnaire delivery, asking student’s opinion about a teacher’s teaching speaking and what they expect from speaking classes. However, student’s perspective will enrich teacher’s knowledge on handling their speaking classes. Chapter 7, Using the strategic interaction approach to promote speaking skill. This chapter provides reader about student’s and teacher’s opinion of the application of strategic interaction approach for teaching speaking.

b.       Implications of the research to the teaching of oral language

There are two points in this book. The first point is that the teaching of listening should not test listening skill and the second point is that the teaching of speaking should be done by providing students language input before they can start speaking.

Part one presented how to understand the teaching of listening comprehension test. Chapter I is preparing students to face listening comprehension tests with two strategies (before the test and during the test). The before-test strategies refer to what teachers should do before students do tests, which is the teaching of listening comprehension in the forms of familiarization of the test formats, extensive listening, segmentation, and reading the transcript. Familiarize the students with the form of the test, before facing is dealing with the National Examination for Senior high school students in Indonesia, for instance, students need to be informed that the have fifty questions, fifteen of which are on listening. The fifteen questions for listening are divided into four kinds of questions : questions about pictures (3 questions), question and response (4 questions), short conversation (4 questions), and short talks such as announcements (4 questions). The questions are all in form of multiple choices. Extensive listening, make students realize and believe that practice makes perfect. In this sense, students should know that in preparing listening tests, they cannot rely more on their teachers by expecting them to teach or train them in the classroom, but also outside the classroom. The basis of the idea comes from Harmer (2007:303). He suggests extensive listening to be conducted in accordance to extensive reading, extensive listening will have a good effect on the improvement of listening skill. Segmentation, a suggestion about improving second language listening comprehension comes from field (2003 : 327) in the form of what he calls “lexical segmentation in L2 listening”. Lexical segmentation is aimed to identify words in connected speech in order to train students to use their knowledge of phonetics. He suggests one technique in lexical segmentation, that is “to dictate ambiguous sentences, then to disambiguate them by adding additional words”. For example, the teacher may ask the students to write an ice cream. But, when the students are writing the phrase, the teacher continues the dictation by saying a nice cream dress. Next, reading the transcript. Obermeier and Karlsson, Kjisik, and Nordlund (2003) support the use of reading the transcript in the training to prepare students to do the listening tests. It suggests that students may re-read the transcript and check unfamiliar words so that student’s vocabulary will also increase. This will help students comprehend the text being learned or other texts. The learning of the transcript will help them able to recognize words when the words listened on the next time. Alternatively, Karlsson et al. (2003) propose that students can also try to transcribe the listening text, and then replay to check whether or not the transcription is correct. By doing this, again, students can check and recheck their comprehension of a listening text.  Then, while-test strategies include using pictures, using multiple in specific information, interpreting, and finding hidden meaning. Using pictures, in certain tests, for example TOEIC pictures are presented in the test booklet. This is to help test takers answer some questions related to the pictures. The pictures bring details and may function as a clue or description in listening comprehension. A good point is to imagine that the test takers can understand more about situation in the picture. By being in the pictures, test takers can understand more about situation and condition which were going on. Using multiple inputs, when students listen to the questions, they also read the possible answers in the booklet test. Use the written answers in the booklet to check their listening. They are probably not that good in listening, so they can make use of texts (answer options) to guide them. Next, catching main ideas. Main ideas are usually indicated by words that come up frequently. Pay attention to such a complicated explanation, for example by saying that the main idea of the text. Such an explanation should be given during the teaching of listening comprehension. Next is paying attention to voice changes, remembering specific information, interpreting, finding hidden meaning, academic conversations, class discussion and academic talks.  Chapter 2 is diverging tasks in listening activities. This chapter presented micro- and macro skills of listening comprehension which combined with purposes in listening will help teachers to determine what tasks should be given to the students in listening classes. Microskills of listening comprehension are: retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory, discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English, etc. Macroskills of listening comprehension are : recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse, recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to situations, participants, and goals. Chapter 3 is desperately listening. This chapter presented pre-experimental design. There are 2 practice test, the first is pre-test and the second is post-test. Each test contains 100 questions (50 questions for listening comprehension and 50 questions in reading comprehension section). Then student’s pre-test scores were compared with student’s post-test score using t-test.

Part two pordingly, EFL resented how to understand the teaching of speaking. Chapter 4 is Helping EFL learners pronounce Wh-Questions intonation. English Teachers should give an emphasis on “falling down at the end” or glide-down as normal intonation for pronouncing wh-questions. The other two intonations (Glide – up and Take-off) should be introduced to students in order to make students familiar with them. Accordingly, EFL students should pay attention to intonation of their speech since it will affect the ideas or messages they want to deliver. One important intonation is the intonation applied in wh-questions. By applying some principles based on the audio-lingual method, the students of EFL will get the benefit of drill technique. Another important issue in the teaching of pronunciation is the use of authentic materials, that is, native speaker’s recordings, which will make the learning more successful because students can get the language input of the English native speakers in terms of pronunciation. This is particularly the case if the teachers fail to produce good examples of English pronunciation due to the interference of their native language or other reasons. Chapter 5 is Rehearsal, Performance, Debriefing : An investigation of speaking strategy in EAP. In rehearsal stage, the teacher asks the students to study their text carefully and to discuss any questions about the information or the language in their role text.  Stage 2 is performance and stage 3 is debriefing. Debriefing stage talks about the best way to persuade someone to take a view, and not just the correction of individual language errors. Chapter 6, Expecting speaking course: A reflection from student’s perspective. The method of this chapter is focus on student’s perspective in teaching of the speaking. However, the data collected in this study were taken from student’s reflections after mid-semester examination and student’s opinions are the key points in the discussion. Chapter 7, Using the strategic interaction approach to promote speaking skill. The method of this chapter is using the strategic interaction approach (SIA) by using questionnaires (for students and teachers) and field notes, the researcher could see how the teacher and his students feel towards strategic interaction approach. The teacher’s activities during the stages of the SIA are included : brainstorming, rehearsal-performance-debriefing stages, questionnaires and field notes.

c.       Limitation of the discussion

The starting point of Mr. Wakhid’s book begins with the orally skills, listening and speaking. He thinks that the important skills are only listening and speaking. When learning to listen it is important for language learners to understand the oral messages at both phonological and semantic levels. He attempts to show how listening and speaking can be made easier. Various ways are discussed to achieve the goal in learning to listen and to speak. But, in the fact there are four language skills that the students should expert on, there are reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

He did not explain how to prepare to be a good writer or good reader. It means that the students only expert on speaking and listening skill without know how to be master in all of the language skills. In fact, reading and writing are the most important skills that the students should expert on. Reading is a complex process. Within the process, a reader should analyze, select, relate and arrange ideas in order to construct the meaning. If the reader feels left out or has no clue about the content of the text, reading can be a hard task to do and it leads them to think that he or she is incapable of performing the task or basically. Meanwhile, Writing is even more complex process. In writing, a writer has to consider two things. A writer must really understand what he writing and convey. Usually in writing activity, students have already found problems since the beginning of writing process. They feel confused how to start, arrange and display ideas are common problems faced by students. In fact, writing frustrates most students and leads them to have less enthusiasm in writing. In fact , writing helps improve student’s academic performance, it can make the students success from mastering writing skills because they call for creativity, decision-making, researching and presenting, regardless of the career path you follow after you graduate, if you are a good writer, you can excel in your classes and other areas of your life where you express yourself. Meanwhile, Reading and writing have a strong connection. While reading retrieves and processes the information, writing presents the information. Both of activities are performed well with the existence of the background language.

The second point is the teaching should benefit the learners, because teaching means help students learn. So that , the teacher should able to facilitate the learning process. But , there are various strategies to face listening and speaking test in the book. It makes the reader confused to choose what the appropriate strategy in teaching both of them. Then, the explanation of each strategy is unclear because he explained just a little.

The last point is about the systematic of the outline book. There are no pictures and the book is not colourfull , so that the reader will be bored to read on the book. The second is the cover is not makes the reader interest on. The last, I think it will be better if the writer put references on the last page, not very chapter in the book.

d.       Proposal for further research based on the reviewed book

I will take a research entitled understanding the teaching of listening and speaking for young learners. I think it more difficult to teach the learners in preschool. Because the teacher have to think about what he say in class and to make his language more accessible to young learners, he also think about how the way to make listening more fun and easy, not hard and boring. The teacher as their model so he always think about how they are going to introduce an activity before go to class. Writing out instructions as part of lesson plan will really help the teacher to notice what language that using for young learners. The language is too complex for the beginner pupils. He has to imagine as a beginner learning a new language and see if what he say is too difficult to follow. He needs to modify what he says. Instructions, if well thought out and accompanied always with demonstration.

Preschoolers love to play with words. They talk continuously both to themselves and others, keeping conversations going by asking endless questions that may be hard to answer. Conversing helps them learn to listen and speak. While they may still speak only in three or four word sentences, they use rules of language naturally. They use their growing vocabularies and communication skills to express their feelings, ideas and curiosity about the world around them.

There are some ways to teach children effective communication skills. The teacher play a music, then he sing a song. If the song is about watermelon, he uses watermelon as a tool to teach them. Then, the learners are imitates the teacher’s instructions. They will learn about vocabulary and how to pronounce each of word. Kids love stories. Then, the teachers start off a story and have them to finish it. He can tell them a nursery rhyme and have them make up an alternate ending or add on to the story. This exercise is great for teaching beginning verbal communication skills. Other strategy is the teacher commands the students to write out directions from their house to somewhere fun; for example, the ice candy shop. They should able to write how the way to find the road from their house to some places. Then, they present it to their friends in front of the class. Kids love games. There are some games that usually used in learning process. Such as simon says, Red Light (green light), I spy, obstacle courses, follow the reader, and others.

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