Final Reflection

1.  Write a list of listening skills that you learned about from each of the units that we studied.  Find them on - page 9, page 35, page 58, page 82, page 107.

a,Identifying main ideas.

Taking notes, consider the title, and separate the main idea, and add some details to support it.

b.Making inferences.

Speakers may give facts, examples or make inferences to state their ideas or opinions.

c.Listening for examples.

Speakers often provide examples for their listeners to understand the key concepts better. Rising intonation works like a comma to let the listener know that the speaker is not finished.

d.Recognizing appositives that explain.

An appositive is a phrase that gives additional information to help the listener understand more about the scientific topics or words.

e.Organizing notes with a T-chart.

After listening,  the most important thing is to organizing what you have heard. Use a T-chart to separate the ideas into two columns can easily show others what’s the speech going.

2.  Which listening skill (mentioned above) did you find the most valuable?  Why?

Organizing notes with a T-chart.

At the beginning, I had no idea about how to take notes. In the past, I always wrote what I heard and I thought it’s important down, in a casual way. When I started to organize the notes, I had to pay lots of attention to read my notes, and kept thinking of what the speaking talked about. It was really time-costing.

I still remembered last time, I went to talk with Professor, I told him the obstacle I faced. He told me I can try to separate location/time, and what had happened. And the next time, I tried to use this way when listening to the slum dog. When I wrote the summary, it’s much more convenient and easy for me to organize. Thanks for providing the method, making me organize in an efficient way.

3.  What are some ways in which your listening in English has improved this semester?

Through listening to lots of different topics speech, I get more ideas about how to take notes, and how to organize my notes as well. What’s more, I am getting familiar with the British accent. I can easily tell which part is important through the listening. Listening to English speech every week is one of my college schedule actually. However, due to too much things to deal with, and the laziness of myself, I didn’t do it before. Through this class, I am forced to listen to English in a serious way. But it is what I really want. Thank you for pushing me!

4.  What are some challenges that you still face in your English listening?  How do you plan to overcome these challenges?

I think my note-taking skill is still need improved. If the speaker speaks too fast, or there was too much noises in the radios, it’s hard for me to capture what the speaker is talking about. And my writing speed is too slow to chase the speaker says. When he/she starts to talk about the next topic, sometimes I am still stay in the last part. It makes me lose some important parts.

As to improvement, I think practice makes perfect. Hope I can listen to Ted everyday in the winter vacation, and try not rely on the subtitles, take notes on my own. After a whole month nonstop practice, I believe my listening will definitely improve!

5.  Based on your experience with listening to many different types of activities in English this semester (listening to radio reports, radio interviews, TED talks, the audio book, a song, etc.), what is the most efficient way that you can train yourself to improve your English listening on your own?  Explain your answer.

To me, I think listening to the audio book is the most efficient way currently. Because I didn’t go abroad before, I am not familiar with what people talk in a casual way. In audio book, the speaking speed is suitable for me, and it’s clear without any noises. For a beginner, it’s an efficient and best way to practice their listening skills. After that, I think TED talks would be nice for me, because I can get more ideas about people’s different accents and intonation through their talks. Speakers in TED talks always have lots of speech experiences, their speech always proceed in a logic way, it’s also a point that I think it is a good method to practice listening skills.