I chose a text of Michael Rost named “I’m only trying to help: A role for interventions in teaching listening”
In this commentary the author exposes that several times teachers want to help (in listening activities), but often feel underappreciated for their efforts.
The author also mention that in the case of language teaching technology must help teachers to teach better and if it doesn’t do that, teacher should not use that kind of technology. Besides, as teachers, we have to take into account how much comfortable learners feel using a particular technology, and if this technology doesn’t fit with students emotions we have to stop using it.
In this commentary, the author identifies three “intervention phrases” in the listening process: decoding, comprehension and intervention. These are very important for teachers because before using any technology we think will be supported; we need to understand the learners’ goals during the listening processes.
The author divides the text into three articles that provide frameworks for evaluating technology in the teaching of listening. The first article “Help options and multimedia listening” confirms that the additional interactions with support options promote language acquisition. In the second article “Are they watching?” the author (Wagner) provides a survey of recent studies on the use of video to teach listening. He claims that multimedia experiences provide learners with richer, more authentic and more memorable encounters with the target language.
Michael Rost is in favor of using different multiple modes for teaching listening; he argues that listeners need redundancy of all sorts because it is an essential condition for effective processing. In the third study “Using digital stories to improve listening comprehension with Spanish learners of English” for the author the key theme is a shift in participation patterns of the learner and their teachers, through the use of a website.
In the end, what we can do as teachers to help students learn to listen better is make sure that our learners have access to a wide range of relevant, motivating input. But most important is to know our students and know what specific interventions in classes will help them.
I personally think that as teachers we should show our students different kinds of technologies to help them to develop their listening skills, and after they feel comfortable with one, make them work with the one they think they are going to learn better and more.
