Listening comprehension and pronunciation.

 Exercises Listening comprehension and pronunciation[pic 1]

Description of the group: This activity is designed to be developed with the students of 2º from primary education in "Agave Education Center". It is a private center located on the outskirts of the town of Huércal de Almería, a residential neighborhood situated  about 17 km from the provincial capital. It is a territory susceptible to the proliferation of industrial polygons given the proximity to the capital. The population of Huércal, mostly aged, is about 167000 inhabitants. The socio-economic level of the locality is low-medium and the great majority is dedicated to the tertiary sector or services. It is important to emphasize that the great majority of the students who come to this school come from the capital.

The class is composed of 24 students, 12 boys and 12 girls aged between 7 and 8, all of Spanish nationality so their mother tongue is Spanish, except two Chinese children, that although their mother tongue is Chinese, they speak and understand Spanish perfectly because they have grown up here in our country since they were kids. They have spent more than a year working together and are perfectly integrated, know the dynamics of the school and its hidden curriculum. None of the children have special educational needs worthy of mention.

The school is involved in having students acquire a good level of English and for this reason, during breaks they have a native English girl who plays and interacts with them speaking exclusively in English.

Length of time for the activity:  These activities need a previous preparation so that the listening is more effective, and the comprehension and pronunciation will be worked in different ways to try to give all our students the same possibilities, so we will require the whole session, that is to say 45 minutes. In addition to the English classes, we do splitting, so we actually work with smaller groups of 12 students which we try to be as heterogeneous as possible.

Teaching / learning objectives:.

• Develop the listening skills of our students by trying to understand simple oral messages
• Work their abilities to extract the main idea of ​​an audition
• Learn to rescue valuable information from an audition to respond to the specific requirements of a task
• Develop preparation techniques prior to auditions
• Train in the analysis of intonation and phonetic aspects
• Develop and perfect the pronunciation of their productions
• To motivate our students to be implicated and actively participate in the activities
• Encourage the development of a positive attitude towards learning the foreign language, reducing possible states of frustration or anxiety when they to face difficulties in understanding an oral message
• Encourage respect for possible individual differences regarding the listening competence of each of our students from understanding, tolerance and mutual respect.

Materials used: our class, blackboard, blu tack adhesive mass, audio player, speakers, the story “Aprende inglés con cuentos cortos – Colores”, the song “Rudolph, the red nosed reindeer”, and finally, the cards. 

Classroom arrangements: For this activity, the best arrangement is in U or horseshoes, in this way, by putting the hearing device in the center of the class, everyone can listen in the same conditions. Furthermore, it seems to me that this is the most appropriate way for students to be able to maintain visual contact between themselves, which facilitates interaction in group and interactive activities and at the same time allows to see the blackboard and explanations of the  teacher, and on the other hand, it allows you to work individually on your desktop and focus on your task. 

Lessons procedure: There is only one way to favor the listening ability and comprehension of oral messages of our students, and this is giving them situations in which they have to listen to live, real, close, interesting and relevant conversations for them, always taking into account  their capacities and level of competence.

We must look for exposure to listening, and that must be frequent, adapted to their capabilities / level, and must be a quality exhibition. Generally, the rest of competences are usually worked more easily by themselves in their houses individually, but in the case of training of the listening, generally these do not, they are separated; They do not work with the same intensity or frequency. In my opinion, it is not because of a lack of resources, but because they often feel frustrated when they do not understand the messages and for this reason do not usually propose to work this aspect in their homes, so that we only have the time that we dedicate in our classes. Many times we teach them to produce messages which sound vocally perfect, an ideal pronunciation that sometimes is not the one to be found in real communicative situations, so it is so important to expose them to different types of accents, from my point of view. Begin to work on the recognition of vowels and consonants, then see words related to the context closest to them in order to make them more familiar, and gradually expand their vocabulary. Then try to build simple sentences, learn to pronounce them correctly by giving them the proper intonation and emphasis, and listen to them and repeat them many times, because in this way it will be easier for them to recognize and understand the meaning of the auditions that we work with them in class. For this reason the role  of the teacher should be the guide and facilitator of learning, the person who will provide them resources and learning situations that require their interaction, can make questions and correct them when they are wrong, but always allowing our students to be the real protagonists, and for this reason we must get them to take an active role and participate.

The first activity would be focused on working on listening comprehension. We would propose to listen to a brief history.

Vocabuflash.(13 de noviembre de 2013). Aprende inglés con cuentos cortos – Colores [Archivo de video]. Recuperado de https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCtG850lHps

First of all, we would analyze the title together to see what is suggested for them, what about they believe the story can deal with  story, what colors they know, etc. Before beginning the audition the teacher would explain part of the vocabulary that we guess that could have greater difficulty. Next, we would explain what the activity will consist of and what we intend to achieve with it, what is our objective. It is about trying to get the main idea. We can ask in group form what they have understood but without giving them the solution. Later, we will listen to it a second time and this time they will have to pay attention to details. Finally, we will give a card to each one of them like this:

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