Tutorial Task Week 9: Listening Activities in Textbook

After looking at the listening activities provided in Malaysian English Form 2 Textbook, one of the listening activities in Chapter 8 is fun and interesting because students are required to act out the scene in the paragraph, which is adapted from the novel "Robinson Crusoe". Students can do this activity in group, so that the "level of shyness" in some of them can be more or less reduced.

As for chapter 9, I think that teachers should modify some of the activities in order to really help sharpen students' listening skills, especially for intermediate learners. In my opinion, the activities provided in the textbook are good and suitable for beginners as the activities are not too difficult. As an example, the activity below (Chapter 9) is quite simple for intermediate L2 learners, but it can help beginners develop their confidence as they are still adapting themselves with the language. Not only that students need to concentrate and pay attention to what the teachers read so that they can fill in the appropriate answers in the blanks and choose the correct answer in the Multiple Choice Questions activity, they also had to have schemata on the vocabulary and how to spell the words.

Malaysian Form 2 English Textbook

All in all, I think that teachers are the one to make the activities become more fun and interesting,  and teachers should modify the activities (if the activity does not fulfill the criteria in sharpening students' listening skills) so that it really helps to sharpen their listening skills and also benefits their students. This is because the activities cannot change by themselves to become interesting, but teachers have the ability and also responsibility to make the activities suitable for their students, by knowing and understanding their students' learning styles and proficiency in the language, teachers should  modify the activities by incorporating technologies to make the activities more fun, interesting and engaging so that they suit their learners' need. (:

  p.s.: To think of it, I did not do any of the activities provided in chapter 8 and 9 when I was in Form 2  @_@