Final Exam: Video News from Mijin Son

Summary: The first plant which uses experimental new emission technology opened in Victoria, Australia and it is believed to have potentiality to reduce the burning fossil fuel. Carbon dioxide will be compressed into liquid and be injected into permanent underground storage facilities. It is believed to be the most comprehensive and monitoring program and one of the largest projects in the world. But some environmental groups have not yet convinced that the plant is the best way to reduce carbon emission, so they think that funding should be allocated to other alternative energy technology such as solar, wind energy. But there are some worries concerned with costs and legal issues. This project is supported by Australian government and a lot of money has already invested. But it might take a long time to determine if it works or not.



Pre-listening activity: To build up students’ background knowledge, let the students do research. For this activity, the teacher can use the jigsaw. The teacher divides students into groups and let them research on the different topics such as causes, processes, and results of the green house effects. And then, let the students share their research.



Post-listening activity: I don’t want to focus on the details of news from the very beginning. So I am going to check if students can understand main idea of the new article first by asking some questions. I will do this comprehension check as a whole class work because I don’t want to students feel ant anxiety attack due to lack of their understanding. Then, for details, I will use the dictogloss activity, so let the students check their understanding as well as let them reconstruct the paragraph.



Post-listening productive activity: First, let the students brainstorm-generate as many ideas as they can- about how to reduce carbon dioxide. Secondly, let them choose the best idea in their group, and let them elaborate on it. Finally, let the students present their idea to the whole class.

Hello, Mijin!

First, you've chosen a well-known topic, which is so important that students need to be more familiarized with. Further, you are introducing here an alternative for emitting much less gas from fossil fuel. It is such an innovative idea to compress the CO2 into liquid for eternal storage so that I am sure that students or other adults will pay more attention.

Second, your pre-listening activity is well-organized in that you make them do research themselves to find some association between the listening material and their background knowledge. Plus, by encouraging them to talk about the research result, students will be able to have a chance to practice speaking and elaborate ideas on the topic.

Third, you intend to help students improve understanding of the topic through the dictogloss activity. However, I think this news article is too fast and high in difficulty for students to follow the main idea, so that students need to be familiarized with the contents in more detail. Some of the students may misjudge that it is not important to listen to the details and just idle away the class because it is way above their English proficiency. So, even if it may take some time, it may be better to help them understand the content more thoroughly by dictation or filling-in-blanks activity.

Considering the time limit, you've done a superbly wonderful job and just keep up the good work in your real class!

Hello~ Lady~
It's rainging out there today. How are you? I think you are so passionate teacher.

For your this work, I would like to say you chose the right topic for this moment.
The envirionment, yes, it's the most important and worth discussing together. So I like your topic. But to be honest, it was pretty tough for me to understand every details, comparing with mine. How could you understand the contents and make the summary so specifically? Wow~ Your listening ability is great. Also, the topic not only is familiar to us, at the same time it but also is new to us. We(at least) only thought how to reduce the CO2, never thinking how to deal with the produced CO2. So the idea is fresh.

Also, I like your pre-listening activity, researching with Jigsaw technique. Throguh my experiences, it is much easier to understand the topic with having background knowledge. Further, you gave every students some work to do, so there is nobody who just depend on other students, I believe. And, it's good to give them specific area such as causes, results and process, etc. Students may feel frustrated when they have to do research task without having a scope. So giving them subdivided field is really good idea.

By the way, I am a little bit curious about your comprehension check questions. You didn't say how you will check their comprehension, I mean, with oral questions or written question. Which do you think more effective to check comprehension based on your own
idea that students should not have anxiety for understanding. And I can't remember whether dictogloss work aims at whole comprehension or details. I have to find the text.
^^ I am just asking.

The post-listening productive activity's is a little bit smiliar to pre-listening activity, even though not exactly same. So, I hope students can do some other activities such as drawing a pictures, solving a quiz or making graph or etc. I know that your activity is good but just a little bit of variety will make your lesson more energetic.

HAVE GREAT DAY!!

Hello! I'm happy to make a coment with your lesson plan. ^^

At first, i thought you chose the topic very well! The students are high-school or middle school students and it is easy to contact environment problems in their text books or some articles which they learn in English class. So they don't feel strange when they hear this news first. I think it can be a big advantage for listening activity. Frankly speaking, even in my case, i can't feel comfortable when i have a class with listening video in English, and of course students can be iof little interest because it is just full-English video. So at this sense, your topic should provide comfortable to students.

Moreover, your all activities are impressed! and i have a question. In a pre-listening activity, are they supposed to use computer to research some information? if it will happen, it can be very useful and workable. Through some research through internet, students might feel that they are doing something by themselves, and i think it is very important point. And one more point that i want to mention is the whole-class activity that you chose for post listening activity. As mentioned before, they must feel lots of anxiety not full-English video but coming out of other students, so i think due to whole class activity, they can feel free to answer and maybe teacher can recognize their comprehention.

In post-listening productive activity, in my opinion, it is a really good point that make a connection between this video clip and the protection of environment. i want to give a big bonus point to this section! But it can be a little bit difficult for the students who have a level of highschool or middle school students. And probably the dictogloss activity which is in post-listening activity might let them feel so difficult to participate in this activity. So if you consider their level more, this activity should be better, i think. ^^

Hi, Mi jin. I think one of your outstanding writing styles is preciseness, in the meanwhile they have gist of its own parts so that I can easily understand what you are saying.
Firstly, I think the content of your video clip is pretty appropriate to the high-scholl students (not to the junior-high school ones) because though the actual content has the property of familiarity to the students, the speed and vocabularies of listening would be a hard work to the middle school students. In this regard, I think it would be better to let the students learn some difficult expressions beforehand. And,, I like your pre-listening activity to divide the students into more than 2 groups so that they can discuss the topic without any anxiety or pressure. Once they get nervous and afraid due to the fact that they didn't fully understand the news, this will be a disaster. By the way, I have a minor question about your lesson plan. That is, I am just wondering if the post-listening productive activity is carried out by speaking English in their individual group or not.

1. This video content is well familiar with all people. And this topic should be widely concerned as far as we human beings can't move into another planet. In this respect, I think that it's well chosen. Its topic would remind students of urgent environment problem related to the greenhouse effect, and make them reconsider the importance of taking an action for reducing the gas.

2. Many useful activities are applied in each section during a whole listening process. As you mentioned above, there are the jigsaw, the dictogloss, and free discussion for a good solution. I think that these activities are very useful and get a popularity among teachers. Also, in your lesson plan I could read your considerate attitudes toward anxieties that students may feel.

3. What I want to be clarified in your plan is more details as for each activity. In my case, I'm not used to applying these activities to a real class, so I hoped to see more elaborated explanations and procedures.

4. If I have to give one addition to your great lesson plan, students' prediction would be interesting on condition that the breathtaking plant works well. By removing the harmful effects on the temperature of the Earth which may result in a big disaster, plant may bring about a big hope or another worries. I think that the teacher encourages students to think two sides of the possible event.

I like so much the post-listening activities and post-productive activities because I think you are aware of the students and try to keep them calm and confident.

Firstly, in the post listening activities, you are trying to use the bottom-up processing for the students who might be afraid of doing something, such as listening activities which most students are frightened about. If you do that for them, they will get what you are going to do in the class. Good point though!

Besides, you are going to utilize the brainstorming for the extra part for the class. I think the strategy of it is always good to students due to being no harmful, relaxing, and helping each other. And let them select one of their ideas brought themselves a minute ago, and present it to students what they have got for their topic.

You have got many good things to use in the class, however, I think you need more specific. In the pre-listening activities, you let them do too much reseach and a bit complicating jigsaw in the relaxable situation. Probably they need their own computer as well. It is kind of difficult to do research with any resource such as books. probably magazine, computer for using the Internet and the like.

Generally, I like your lesson plan. It is good tool to help students much.
Cheers!

I didn't have any chance to talk to you in class so I'm so glad that I can talk to you here finally! Your video clip is really important issue i'm sure. But, this topic is related to scientific stuff, it can be a little bit tough for students. Even for me, I couldn't understand some parts and words. haha Just I'm not really good at vocabularies. Anyways, still, this topic is really good enough to catch students' eyes. We need to think about our environment. First of all, I like your doing project part for the pre listening activity. Students love to do it. They dont like just listening. While doing it, they can naturally learn or be familiar with some words which will be on a video clip. Also they can have fun in class! Secondly, I like your overall plan for every step. Just I want to know more specific ones to use for me! haha Also I have a one quesion, is that possible for middle school kids? I'm not sure my students whom I tutor can do it. haha Thank you for the good information. Good luck!

I enjoyed reading your lesson plan. After I read some other's lesson plans, I realized what Jason wants us to do. Whenever I read many lesson plans, there are so many wonderful and unique ideas. Of course there are common methods used so far. Above all your video is so related to our daily concern and it suggests good alternatives for the world. So it is good enough to attract students' interest and be used for the class.
My first impression after reading your plan is that it is well-structured considering the alloted class time. And it has appropriate various activities including speaking and writing.
I heard your teach at the high school so I can get a hunch your subject may be high school students. But isn't it better to make it clear? I think it's another good idea to give them home assignment that they find out some article related the class discussion. In that case I think it's okay the article is written in English or in Korean. And then next class you can give them some time to discuss what they find using the vocabulary which they learned previous class.

1. I think the news about environmental problems is one of the most attention-getting current issues. This article introduces the special plant in Australia as an new experimental way of reducing Co2, one of the main causes of greenhouse effect. And I like this article in that it deals with an unusual solution, since we already heard about solar energy or wind energy plants a lot.

2. The jigsaw activity for pre-listening stage is one thing I like most. Since there is difficult vocabulary related to science and technology, I'm sure that this jigsaw activity can really reduce students' anxiety to difficult topic and promote their listening comprehension ability. In addition, it also can activate background knowledge about the article, especially, about the greenhouse effect.

3.4.

I think "post-listening productive activity" is a little bit difficult for students to do, since they generally researched about greenhouse effect, not about Co2. That is, this article is mainly about environmental issues rather than about Co2 reduction. Therefore, I think that it would be better if you broaden the topic from just Co2 to global warming or anti-polluting energy production.

1. The topic of the news is kind of heavy, but I think this is a good material for students in some ways. First, they can listen to various English accents. Second, they can use their scientific knowledge while they are listening to the news. Third, they can learn about new technology related to greenhouse gas in Australia.

2. I like your lesson plan because you will make the students build up some background knowledge and you try not to give students a lot of burdens on understanding the details about the listening. In the post-listening productive activities, I think your idea is good because the mission is familiar to students and students will be able to use their knowledge that they got from science class while they are doing the activities.

3. When students do some research at the pre-listening stage, it is done during the class? Then, where and how?

4. I want to suggest you to add some vocabulary activities. Because the video uses some difficult scientific words, so it would be hard for students to understand the whole content sometimes. Moreover, even though they know the basic things about carbon dioxide, they may not know the exact words that are used in the scientific field.