Kyung and I have been meeting twice weekly so I could get these 15 hours in before I leave -- 2 weeks from now! The 100-hour certificate is in my view! I can see it.
Anyway, for this session -- #9 -- we went over that VOA article, which was about the passing of the health care reform bill. VOA is excellent in that there is a section to their website that devotes itself to English learners. MP3s can be read to the student, too!
This was a pretty long article, so I gave it to him before we would have to meet the following week. I had originally stuck to the plan of having him listen to it in-between lessons, so I could give him a fill-in-the-blank handout with some words taken out. I planned on reading the article back to him, so he could plug in some of the vocabulary I had taken out. I even gave him a vocabulary sheet of words to focus on.
I thought this was going to be a very well-planned lesson, but the first time I read the article back to him, everything that required some word above the line had the correct word already filled in above it.
I have done this sort of exercise with Kyung before -- it was actually one of my first lessons for him! And I remember how much of a struggle it was for him the first time. He had to listen to the mp3 about 12 times before he mentioned with his pen.
So after only reading the article once to him, I must say I was quite surprised. I asked him how many times he listened to the mp3. He replied, "About 50 times."
So that's why!
I sort of panicked after this because I for a second didn't know how to continue with this lesson. Lucky for me, I had another newspaper article in my possession -- it was an FSView article written about The Kudzu Review (and I was quoted within the article). I pulled that out and had him read that to me for the remainder of the session.
I consider it a bit narcissistic of me to provide an article in which I was featured. And if I'm really going to play that game, I might as well give the website for the article in question now. :-P
Kyung and I went paragraph by paragraph after we discussed them. I would ask him, what's this paragraph saying, what words were unfamiliar (Kudzu being one of them), etc.
It was a sort of spur of the moment lesson, but I think I did safe myself in the end because he stayed interested and I'm glad we kept things moving.
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As you can see, not everything always (almost ever) goes as planned! The important thing is to stay flexible, and don't freak out. Also, with listening activities, make sure to pause to give students time to process what they heard, especially if answering comp. questions or fill-in-the-blank exercises.
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