Day 4
Thurs. Sept. 5
Lecture: “Language is a physical skill”
Read summaries out loud. Practice:
Reading out loud
Connecting with listeners
Listening
Discuss and summarize Rubin (1975). Practice:
Observing features of a genre
Explaining ideas at length orally
Homework
➤ Read classmates’ summaries and transcripts
Read all your classmates’ summaries in our class’s shared folder on Box. Based on these summaries, choose a few transcripts and read them (or listen to the recordings) in their entirety. (If you wish, you can read all the transcripts — your choice.)
➤ Fill a sheet of paper with observations, inferences, and questions
Use the phrases on the handout to generate as many sentences as you can. (You don’t have to use every phrase, and you can use one phrase as many times as you like — it’s up to you.) Fill one side of one A4 sheet of paper in 12-point Times New Roman font, single spaced. Print it out and bring it to next class.
(We’re doing this as a way to brainstorm possible ideas for an essay you will start writing next week. The ideas you write don’t need to connect to each other. Just write as much as you can, and don’t worry about making things perfect.)
➤ Three speakers do verbal summaries
Summarize the main points of your assigned text in 2 minutes or less. (I’d suggest you practice in advance, with a timer.)
Amber: Rubin (1975), pp. 41-44 (“What we know already”)
Sonic: Rubin (1975), pp. 45-48 (“What I learned” — the section with the heading “Strategies”)
Eldar: Lydia Machova TED Talk (see below)
➤ Watch Machova TED Talk
Watch Lydia Machova’s TED talk, “The Secrets of Learning a New Language.” Consider: How is this relevant to the points that Rubin makes in “What the ‘Good Language Learner’ Can Teach Us”? Do you see any connections to what your or your classmates’ interviewees said?
