Final Exam: Video News from Joo, Un-jin

The China government launched crackdown on plastic bags. People cannot produce plastic bags and shops must not hand out them after June 1. But in the country where so many plastic bags are used, it won't be implemented easily. And plastic bag makers are worried about losing business. However it gets better for cloth bag makers. After the regulation came out, they started to get more orders. But it cannot be the ultimate solution for huge consumption in China.

pre-listening activities:
1. Introduce the topic and involve students in context building:
Show a picture of a garbage landfill filled with plastic bags and ask several questions about it.

Questions: What can you see in the picture?
What do you think of them(plastic bags)? How do you think they affect environment?
What do you think we have to do?
What kind of regulation will the government propose about them?
What do you think the side effects of the regulation are ?
Talk to your partner and tell him/her your ideas.

2. Check that students understand key words:
Hand out worksheets which include the questions about the definition of words and the ones to help students understand key words more clearly.

vocabulary: plastic bags, crackdown, ban, hand out, convince, implement, regulation, struggle, ultimate

worksheet:
1. Look at the examples and guess the meaning of the words. Match the word on the left with a definition on the right.

2. a) Which bag do you prefer for the environment, a plastic bag or a cloth bag?
b) Which of these things is banned: ⅰ) ⅱ) ⅲ)
c) What is the ultimate aim for you to learn English?
d) Finish the sentence: I struggled to _____________________________.



post-listening comprehension activities
1. Provide students with global listening activities which are in the form of interviews. The interviewee can answer based on the news article. Work in pairs.

activity(worksheet 1)
:
interviewer(student A): These days, plastic bags threaten our environment. I know that the government made a policy about them. Please tell me what it is.
the government administrator(student B):____________________________________________

interviewer(student B): The government decided to ________________________________________ about plastic bags. It seems that the plastic bag users in country and plastic bag makers are worried about it. But I heard that the situation was different to you, cloth bag makers. How about your business?
a cloth bag maker(studentA):________________________________________________________
2. Provide students with more detailed and difficult questions.(worksheet 2).

post-listening productive activities

Provide students with post-listening productive activities

activities:
1. In your group, talk about
a) which policy you would make for too much use of plastic bags if you were an administrator . Think of some specific regulations on them.
b) what led you to make that policy.(the reason why you made that policy)
c) what pros and cons you expect for the policy.
d) how to improve your policy for the people who don't agree with you.

2. Present them to other groups. You can use visuals.

You seem like a real teacher here! It's really well-thought-out plan. You made whole class worksheets to come with your video clip. What an excellent job! It would have taken painstaking efforts for me to work out this plan. I guess your teaching style is prearragned and well-managed in your regular class. I can see that! The comprehension questions were really impressive and to the point in that they are based on the content of the video clip and helpful in deepening students' understanding of the topic. What a good job!

1. I am of the opinion that it is the time for China to care about its environmental issues. I know its action was not from its interest in environment but from preparation for Olympic games. However, what is more important is that it took its first step for the environmentally friendly nation. Still it is not going to be easy to put into effect as the reporter said. We should see how it deals with problems in its way to be green China.

2. Activities on your lesson plan are highly related to their real life which make them meaningful. This will, in turn, greatly motivate students. In addition, this lesson plan enables students use language in a natural context. Students can communicate and interact each other with low defenses which impede students' learning. In this context, I like your interview activity and questions in post-listening productive activities. The interview activity put communication and meaning first. Moreover, this is meaningful to them in terms of link to real life. By supposing students are lawmakers themselves, it enables students to think freely and creatively. They will enjoy and participate actively in their activity as if they are real legislator. Last but not least, I am impressed by the way you let students infer the meaning of the words themselves. This is largely because words they learned in this way will last longer in their cognitive system.

3. I am wondering about the way to ask questions as a part of pre-listening activities. Is it pair work so that students can share their thoughts with their partner? Or will you ask students generally and listen some of volunteers' opinion?

4. You can add writing activity in post-listening productive activities. Your plan is largely dependent on speaking ability. Therefore, it would be even better if students can develop various language skills more balanced.

1. So far, China has put more energy in the industralization and development than the protection of environment. Now, China began to concern about the environment. It's good news. In Korea, we already implement the policy that customers pay the grocery bags or use their own cloth bags. At the first stage of the implementation, many people complained because carrying cloth bags is annoying, but the policy was gradually established. Maybe China will go through the similar process.

2. I think your post-listening comprehension activities are really good. The most common post-listening activities are comprehension check-up quiz, such as "fill in the blank" or "True or False." But your activity is somewhat different. In the activity, students have to get the information from the news first and then apply it to the interview situation.

3. In your pre-listening activities, your worksheet has two parts. The first part is matching the words and the definitions. It's really relevant to the vocabulary comprehension. But I'm wondering about the second part. I can't understand the activity fully, especially the procedure.

4. You can add an activity making their own policy that students can do to protect the environment. This group activity can be added to the post-listening productive activities.

I think your lesson plan is full of creative and brilliant ideas and I like them very much. First of all, I think it's helpful if students do some matching exercises as you described in the worksheet in pre-listening activity. I also think your post-listening comprehension activity is unique and helpful in that teacher make some interviews style dialogues in which students are required to recall from the original articles and fill in the blanks with sentences on their own. I think your productive activity is pretty good because there are many questions for discussions. However, I think it would a good idea if teacher would give students more materials or input related with that issue before doing the discussion.

I think it's appropriate topic for students who really need to know about our current environmental issues. And this issue of the article is not only for chinese case but also the problem all around the world...It might give students a good opportunity to think about the environmental issues..

I think your lesson plan is well organized to make students get the whole idea exactly. Especially, in the case of post listening activity for students' comprehension which enables students to enhance their listening ability(to get their own script, they need to be exact while listening) and speaking ability(when they can be an interviewer or interviewee, they can get great chances for speaking practice) as well, that looked great as a post-listening activity to me..
Also, your idea about post-listening productive activities was convincing as well.. Teacher might get a chance for checking how much students know about environment and they actually care about it while making them get a chance for speaking practice. In this part, it might be one of better ideas that students are given a chance to talk about some policies in the environmental field over the world(like real examples in other countries..)before actually getting into main group work since there might be quite large number of students who are quite unfamiliar with this issue..Thanks for your impressive plan..^^

Oh~! What a coincident!! A few minutes ago, I saw the same video article and her name is very similar to yours. It is a good chance to compare the same video with different lesson plan. I like your topic because the content is so related to our daily lives and in Korea we also concern about plastic products and environment pollution. Moreover I like your comprehension check activities. They are very well-organized I think. But I don't understand what you mean by the last activity (of the post listening productive activities). I think you'd better give us more specific information about the visuals. And how about using other kinds of activities which the students can get involved easily? I think the activities are just focused on problem-solving activities, so if there are any other interesting and creative activities related to the content, the lesson plan can be even better. It's just my opinion. And I can feel that you spent so much time preparing the plan.

Wow, you were orgnized the lesson plan so well.

In the pre-listening activity, you force your students to do some tasks with vocabularies-definitions and pictures-some questions. I am certainly sure that you can draw their attentions to what you want to teach them. I can see what you are doing in the class. But there is one thing I would like to ask you. Why, in the worksheet, do you want to ask students their aims of studying English? I am a bit curious about it.

In the post-listening activities, you are going to use the intervew for the comprehension check. I love it. Even though they don't know much about the vedio news story at first, they are allowed to ask each other with what is related to the news story. And they might feel comfortable after listening to the video news. When you are the interviewer, you maybe know the information inside the video news indirectively. After that, even though the interviewer is changed into the interviewee, he or she can understand what the answer will be related to.
The second part of the activities is much better understandable to me and it must encourage students to focus more on what they are doing in class.
Good job!^^

1. what I think of the video content

Another great lesson plan with the news of "Crackdown on plastic bags in China".

I really enjoy reading through several different lesson plan on the same video news. It seems like many of you find this news to be interesting enough to teach in class.

As I mentioned on the other lesson plan, the video is very timely considering that the world is concerned about the environment. Then this lesson will get students to think about the issue of environment, which means this lesson carries beyond just the listening activity for the class, making students do something for the conservation of environment on their end.

2. What I like about your lesson plan

I think your lesson plan is ready to be used immediately for its well-structured concent.
Showing a picture of a garbage landfill filled with plastic bags and asking questions are to the point and effective in order to activate students' prior knowledge. Before listening to the news, students are given a good chance of focusing their attention by looking at the picture and answering questions based on it. Above all, I think It is very innovative and interactive to adopt interview activity global listening as a post-listening comprehension check. Specifically, I like the idea of pair work. Listening activity may fall into boring project requiring students' linguisitic knowledge but you've made a fail proof lesson plan for students to engage in the classroom.

On the whole, I think it is very well organized with a couple of engaging activities.

Thank you very much.

Joo Un-jin wrote:pre-listening activities:
1. Introduce the topic and involve students in context building:
Show a picture of a garbage landfill filled with plastic bags and ask several questions about it.

Questions: What can you see in the picture?
What do you think of them(plastic bags)? How do you think they affect environment?
What do you think we have to do?
What kind of regulation will the government propose about them?
What do you think the side effects of the regulation are ?
Talk to your partner and tell him/her your ideas.

2. Check that students understand key words:
Hand out worksheets which include the questions about the definition of words and the ones to help students understand key words more clearly.

vocabulary: plastic bags, crackdown, ban, hand out, convince, implement, regulation, struggle, ultimate

worksheet:
1. Look at the examples and guess the meaning of the words. Match the word on the left with a definition on the right.

2. a) Which bag do you prefer for the environment, a plastic bag or a cloth bag?
b) Which of these things is banned: ⅰ) ⅱ) ⅲ)
c) What is the ultimate aim for you to learn English?
d) Finish the sentence: I struggled to _____________________________.



post-listening comprehension activities
1. Provide students with global listening activities which are in the form of interviews. The interviewee can answer based on the news article. Work in pairs.

activity(worksheet 1)
:
interviewer(student A): These days, plastic bags threaten our environment. I know that the government made a policy about them. Please tell me what it is.
the government administrator(student B):____________________________________________

interviewer(student B): The government decided to ________________________________________ about plastic bags. It seems that the plastic bag users in country and plastic bag makers are worried about it. But I heard that the situation was different to you, cloth bag makers. How about your business?
a cloth bag maker(studentA):________________________________________________________
2. Provide students with more detailed and difficult questions.(worksheet 2).

post-listening productive activities

Provide students with post-listening productive activities

activities:
1. In your group, talk about
a) which policy you would make for too much use of plastic bags if you were an administrator . Think of some specific regulations on them.
b) what led you to make that policy.(the reason why you made that policy)
c) what pros and cons you expect for the policy.
d) how to improve your policy for the people who don't agree with you.

2. Present them to other groups. You can use visuals.