Welcome to English Listening Comprehension 3!

1
Welcome toEnglish Listening Comprehension 3!

• Instructor Chris Gunn
• EJ 721

2

• In todays class, we will
• (1) Discuss the course aims.
• (2) Discuss the course content.
• (3) Discuss assessment in this course.

3
Course Aims

• The aim of this course is to improve your
  listening comprehension/paragraph writing skills
  with the end goal of helping you pass the
  National Teachers Exam.

4
Improving Academic Listening

• In the first part of the National Teachers Exam
  there are usually 8 listening comprehension
  questions.
• As such, improving our academic listening skills
  should be beneficial for this part of the exam.

5
Improving Academic Writing

• During round two of the National Teachers Exam,
  students are asked to write up to 10 structured
  paragraphs in 4 hours.
• As such, improving academic writing skills,
  especially paragraph writing, should be
  beneficial for the second part of the exam.

6
Course Content Listening Comprehension

• We will be doing listening activities from a
  variety of sources, but the core of our listening
  will be coming from the series
• Contemporary Topics
• Academic Listening and Note Taking Skills

7

• The listening selections in this series present
  vocabulary/phrases/sentence structure at a
  moderately high academic level.
• The language used in these listening selections
  is based on a corpus of academic language so it
  is very appropriate for the task at hand.

8

• On the other hand, the overall difficulty of the
  listening should not be beyond students in this
  class.

9
Course ContentParagraph Writing

• We are also going to look at one particular type
  of paragraph writing
• Expository Writing

10

• Expository writing means writing to explain
  something.
• It can involve describing something such the
  benefits/problems/characteristics of something.

11

• In the last National Teachers Exam, candidates
  were asked to describe the characteristics of
  corpus-based dictionaries.

12

• Expository writing can also involve comparing and
  contrasting something.

13

• For example, in the last National Teachers Exam,
  candidates were asked to contrast two lesson
  plans based on lexical choice, syntactic
  complexity, and meta-language used.

14

• In all of these questions candidates were
  required to write structured paragraphs.

15

• Fortunately, almost all of the paragraphs can be
  written using a few simple formats (which we will
  study in this course).

16

• So in summary, we are going to be looking at
  academic listening and expository paragraph
  writing with the hopes of better preparing
  ourselves for the exam.

17

• It should be noted however, that this course is
  in no way trying to anticipate what the exam
  questions are.
• Instead my hope is to give you exam writing
  skills that will be useful no matter what
  questions happen to be on the exam.

18
Assessment

• The class will be assessed on a curve.
• In other words, there will be a relative scale.
• Some of you will get As, some of you will get Bs,
  and some of you will get Cs.

19
Assessment

• Your individual assessment will be based on
  several factors.
• (1) Participation in Class
• (2) Attendance
• (3) Your Notebook.
• (4) Paragraph Portfolio
• (5) Midterm and Final Listening Comprehension
  Exams

20
Participation in Class

• This counts for 10.
• Good participation includes being awake,
  participating in discussions, asking questions,
  arriving on time and turning off your cell-phones.

21
Attendance

• This counts for 10.
• Missing 1 hour will result in 1.
• Illness, military, and death in the family are
  excused absences.
• MTs and sports days are not.

22
Your Notebook

• This counts for 20.
• You need a proper notebook. There is a heavy
  emphasis on note taking skills in this course.
• Your notebook should be organized and clearly
  reflect the amount of work you put into this
  course.

23
Your notebook.

• Your notebook should include the dates as well as
  good titles and task instructions when I put them
  on the board as well as excellent notes from the
  listening selections.
• You will need your notes for writing selections
  sometimes weeks after you have done the
  listening. If you dont have good notes you will
  not be able to do the writing.

24
Paragraph Portfolio

• This counts as 20
• You will be required to write several expository
  paragraphs during the course.

25
Midterm

• This counts as 20.
• It will have short listening sections where you
  will be required to simply answer questions as
  you listen.
• It will also have one lengthy listening selection
  where you will be required to answer questions
  based on your notes and then write a paragraph.

26
Final

• This counts as 20.
• It will have short listening sections where you
  will be required to simply answer questions as
  you listen.
• It will also have one lengthy listening selection
  where you will be required to answer questions
  based on your notes and then write a paragraph.