Internet has always served me a great source of language activity for students. For this time, I will suggest a webpage for listening and writing activity. This website acquire us to dictate the listening text into words. It uses the news format and the topics are fresh and coming from all over the world. It is suitable for lower and secondary school students, depending on the texts.
There are a lot of topics and recent news for us to choose, depending on your interest. After you choose the topic, you need to decide which mode do you want to try before listening to the text. There are three modes available which are; full, quick and blank mode. I believe it would be better for teachers to show to the students on how to do this task since it can be confusing for some of them especially for beginners.
Students get to listen to the text and need to dictate the words for a sentence in the box provided. The sentence will be repeated for several times and it helps them to listen carefully before writing it down.
Teaching suggestion:
Teaching suggestion:
Teachers can use this in the listening lesson to give opportunity for students to try new way of improving listening skill. It is suggested for teachers to divide the students into pairs if they want to do this task in the classroom. It is because students can work together and figure out the answers with peers' help. If teachers find out that this task take 'forever' for students to accomplish during the lesson, it is better for them to make it as homework, and leads to autonomous learning.
I found that this website is quite useful and practical for language teachers and learners in improving their listening skill. This is because:
1. Students have opportunity to practice listening skill (as mentioned above) since the text is repeated for several times.
2. It helps to develop students' vocabulary on their own. They may be exposed for words that are rarely can be found in a normal text and that is I believe an advantage to use current news because fresh vocabulary can be introduced to them!
3. This is NOT only a good listening practice, but it is also a spelling task for all.
4. Students from all level of competency can try this out because there are variety of levels that can be chosen!
5. It encourages students to work independently at home and not depending on teachers' homework.
6. It is free for all and fun for learning!
Nevertheless, there are several disadvantages of this application:
1. Some of the news' source may not reliable and students may have false judgement over certain issues. Thus, teachers should choose and decide for them if they plan to do this task in the classroom. They should also suggest the topics that can be picked by students to be done at home.
2. Speaking about autonomous learning, it is strongly related to the availability of facilities. It may become a problem for students because some of them may not have access to internet and computers and home. What is the best that can be done for teachers is by manipulating the IT rooms at school and book a session for the students after school time. This will at least provide opportunity for all students to try this task on their own.
That's all from me. Happy learning!
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