Classroom Rituals: Classroom Circle and Culture

Most people say that listening is a receptive language skill. In my listening class, students must be active to maximize the skill.

Communication plays important role to transfer ideas to knowledge. It is quite experienced in the context of education. By considering the proximity, teacher and student manage their communications so that the classroom environment performs.

Communication exists to facilitate sender in delivering message for receiver. As the result, it is hoped that the feedback happens then.

There are various ways of communication happen. It is done by verbal and non-verbal ways. First, verbal is done easily by uttering spoken language, while non-verbal one is done with body language, gesture, attitude, and emotion. Do you remember when your teacher gave you a chalk, showed it in front of you, directed your sight from the chalk to the blackboard and said "Would you answer the question I've written on the board, please?". The tone of teacher in asking you affected your bravery to come forward and did the challenge, didn't it? Compare this goal when the teacher used directly bare imperative. I bet you were afraid of your answer (minimally shocked at the first time before doing what she asked).

The communication performance is also influenced by culture. You will feel more comfortable to follow your class in your home culture than other country. You need time to adapt, don't you?

This is known as intercultural communication. It studies communication by its participants with different cultures. Intercultural communication involves the term named "ritual". This term shows the participants to do certain activities which have been internalized in their consciousness. It's such a habitual issue.

In the United States, a student will raise his hand if he wants to express his curiosity to his teacher, or there is a question which needs to answer. It is different in Jamaica where you find students flap or snap their fingers to do such thing. In several countries, students stand up when teacher enters the class. They are the examples of intercultural communications across countries.

I taught this topic for my lecture on the tenth meeting of critical listening. My students were encountered to listen intercultural communication existing in the audio. This meeting directed my students to identify intercultural communication. The result was amazing. They were able to express this issue related to their daily activities.

It is also important to allow students convey their views why this happening exists among us. I did it!  Let them active on doing analysis. Moreover, this lecture had reached critical level. They have been part of society and affected their existences as functioning human being. Quoting from the listened audio, they were directed to interpret more than just words.

This topic attracts our knowledge that there are various ways of performing communication, especially in the context of education, or classroom - where we transfer knowledge and values, see their emotions, and appreciate their ideas.

Critical Listening Skill : Being Critical Means Being Responsive

Listening skill deals with how language users receive, integrate, and evaluate the information by auditory sense

The information related to particular subject is so much various. That was why I asked my students into groups and divide their members for finding details fairly. It happens because the nature that we need preparation and working cooperatively is a choice.  It is a common decision, but in critical listening case? How to correspond this background?

Several students came forward. Then, they told their findings. That was the second meeting of my lecture on critical listening skill. What did the others do? The activity in the meeting was inspired by Flowerdew (1994: 11) claiming that there are five processes in optimizing listening skill in advance. They are decoding, comprehending, identifying main points, deciding when to record, writing quickly and clearly. His five processes are listed in the response of academic listening as the essential component in university context (ibid, 1994: 7).

Actually, critical listening guides students in catching the meanings expressed in lecture. It is appropriate because being critical is also reflected in the way of responding concept or abstract.  It happens in lecture listening mode. Critical level performs improved standard of advanced listening as Carrel, Dunkel, and Mollawn (2002) state the importance of taking note from lecture, answering question performance, and recalling information.

In the meeting, the topic was Anthropology. It was sourced from the listening book by Dunkel and Pialorsi (2005) I used. The result of my lecture was inspiring. They were several strategies my students applied for getting the meanings from their friends presenting the topic in front. There were several students focusing on the explanation said by one of his friends; and the others on multiple presenters. It is particular skill applied by each individual to get information: how much information someone gets and relevantly requires to fulfill his need toward the topic. They might agree, disagree, restate, or add their friends’ presentations.

Timeline and 4-Digits Rules: The Following Tips are Recommended

Post-Listening Activity, My Student is Explaining His Timeline

Teaching listening on thematic topic is really interesting. It guides students to comprehend the way of discourse is expressed in contextual arrangement. Various topics exist in society along with their suitable genres. Together with the use of specific genre, it involves particular language feature.

The first topic in my intermediate listening class in this semester is by listening history. People like to have attention on history in order to know the events happening in the past. How do they know this goal? By focus on the sequential events. The events happening on particular period are predictable. This way is by listening date, age, and year. While listening them, we know the continuance of events which are being talked.

The important  thing in my lecture when we discuss this topic is by listening numbers. Napoleon did many things in his entire life. What kinds of number will exist? I ask students to master numbers up to four digits (i.e the maximum digits reflecting year up to currently time, like in 2016). Ensure that they know the differences of listening year and thousand. For example, How is 1998 pronounced? Nineteen ninety eight or one thousand nine hundred ninety eight? Make sure that they are able to listen perfectly either year or currency. Which is much possible of both?

Timeline and Sequential Markers

The other point is to make timeline. Drawing timeline is useful so that we know someone’s journey, nation’s development, revolution, and so on. Anticipate that timeline is not only expressed in years. It is possible in representation as reflected in age and extent. For age, we should be responsive while listening “In 25 years old...”  or “his 18,...” . Extent reflects the period passing from the exact year like “4 years later,...”.

Timeline is the essential thing in listening history which involves sequential events. That is why, comprehending sequencing markers is important too such as first, next, after that, finally, and so on. This is what I said that particular language features stand on the right genres. So, let’s see what will happen with the other themes on the next posts!