Learner Problems and Teaching Solutions
Issue 1. Unfamiliar vocabulary
While teaching higher- level students irrespective of
their nationality, unfamiliar vocabulary has always been
recognized as one of the major factors which hinders
listening comprehension [3]. The reason for it lies in
the authentic nature of presentations like TED Talks.
As this genre can cover all types of topics, a listener
may have problems with understanding colloquial
expressions, idioms, phrasal verbs, professional jargon
vocabulary, etc. The following issue may lead to utter
misunderstanding of the listening passage or partial
loss of the essential parts of the TED Talk lecture/
presentation.
Suggestion 1
Aim: Pre-teach single lexical items and multiword
units causing problems in understanding a lecture/
presentation. (Appendix 1)
Procedure:
– Find one of the TED Talks which you like most
– If there is a script/subtitles of a TED Talk,
read it through and think which words, chunks
or collocations may cause breakdown in
understanding. If it is a video, watch it to catch
those problematic vocabulary units and write them
out for your students.
– Give students a list of sentences with the vocabulary
units causing problems in understanding
– In pairs students contextually try to guess the
meanings of the words
– After students match the words with their definitions.
– Lastly, a teacher and students check their answers
in an open-class feedback.
Evaluation:
In the bottom-up model of processing, learners
benefit from the opportunity to investigate unfamiliar
vocabulary. Learners think, discuss and process new
knowledge making deductions about the information
they are going to listen to. Additionally, working with
unknown vocabulary decreases stress and removes
fears of listening.
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