Tasks in Class : My 4th Discussion Forum

1.Explain the two listening techniques: top-down vs. bottom-up and tell us when you employ each technique for what purpose.
 
 In short, top-down listening is for catching general idea on what you heard. The listeners don't have to know every bits of words perfectly, because through using their own background knowledge, such as contexts, topic, or situation, they can offset what they missed. In contrast, in bottom up listening, it is on the central focus to grasp every details of what they heard bit by bit. In this listening, listeners use strategies like dividing or analyzing listening contents.
 
 I thought when the learner's listening competence is in beginning level, using bottom-up strategy is much more desirable. The listeners have to develop their listening skills to some degree for utilizing background knowledge as a assistive strategy. Thus, bottom-up listening can be used for equipping learners with basic listening skills and knowledge. When they are geared with those basics, you'd better use top-down listening.  Top-down listening is much more close to real-world listening. It is more authentic and practical than bottom-up listening. Therefore, only with bottom-up listening, learners will comprehend few things in real conversation. Through top-down listening learners can develop their fluency more effectively.

2. What type of listening materials do you think good for top-down or? bottom-up strategies? Review the listening materials and select some for each.
 
 First up, I reviewed movies, audiobooks, and TOEIC listening CD as listening materials. Movies and audiobooks have something in common in the aspect that authentic languages are used in both them. It means they contain real-world language. However, there is difference between them. Movie scripts are mainly spoken language, but audiobooks' language is more related to written language, because its source is written texts. Meanwhile, TOEIC listening material is made for testing. It is very far from authentic use of language. Speeches in it are artificially made by its designers. That means it uses more clear and plain language than movies or audiobooks. For these reasons, I thought TOEIC listening materials fit well with bottom-up listening, and Movie is more proper for top-down listening.

3. What is podcasting? Discuss the benefits of doing podcasting for L2 learners.
 
 Originally, podcasts were audio files that broadcasted through internet by various people, but video files can be podcasts. It doesn't have fixed frame or rule, so anybody can be the broadcaster easily and freely. Also, the listeners or viewers can easily access to it just by downloading it from iTunes or from many webpages.
 
 As I mentioned, its diversity of contents is its primary trait, and that can be huge benefit in L2 learning. That is, with podcasting, we can cover each learner's various interests. This is very important point, because fulfilling learners' interests are directly related to their intrinsic motivation which becomes huge power to make them continue to study. Also, using podcasting in language class can be mentioned as a kind of CBT. Understanding Podcasting's contents become major goal, and language learning get relatively less attention in the classroom. We can induce subconscious and implicit language learning through it. Lastly, there are podcastings for learning English. It uses relatively easy English than normal podcastings. That would be very helpful for the learners at the beginning level.