| Body | This activity was designed to help learners deepen their understanding of sounds in the target languages that are unfamiliar or seem hard to pronounce. It supports them by suggesting the strategy of reading along with subtitles or transcripts while listening. It was created for learners of all levels.
Learning outcomes:
Learners will be able to:
- Find a short listening clip (1-5 minutes) in the target language has subtitles or a transcript
- List 5 or more sounds in the listening clip that are unfamiliar or seem hard to pronounce
- Identify any patterns in the sounds listed by comparing their list with those of their peers
Mode(s): Interpretive, Presentational
Materials: Familiarize Yourself with Sounds: Listen while Reading Along video, What is that Sound? worksheet, video or audio clips with subtitles or a transcript, paper or online dictionary
Procedure:
- Show learners the Familiarize Yourself with Sounds: Listen while Reading Along video. Ask learners to name the listening strategy talked about in the video (listening while reading along, write down words that have sounds that are hard to pronounce). Ask learners to recall the sources for listening materials named in the video (YouTube videos, Lyricfind, DVDs or streaming services, audiobooks). Ask learners to name any additional sources they can think of where one can find audio or video that has subtitles or a transcript.
- Next, give learners the What is that Sound? worksheet. Tell them that their assignment to complete before the next meeting is to choose an audio or video clip in the target language to listen to. This clip can be from any of the sources brainstormed in step 1, but should have subtitles or a transcript also in the target language.https://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/uploads/contentUploads/202203/04/What is that Sound worksheet_03-04-22.pdf
- Before the next meeting, learners will listen to this clip and fill in the worksheet. On the worksheet, they will write down 5 or more words that have sounds that are hard for them (using the written transcript/subtitles to help spell the words), then write which part of the word has this sound, and finally write a phonetic spelling or any other information that will help them know how to pronounce the sound. If there are no sounds that they find hard to pronounce, they can identity sounds that are different from those in their L1. They should bring the completed worksheet back for the next meeting (see modifications for doing this step in person at the end of this activity).
- Once learners have filled out their worksheets, divide them up into groups of 3-4. In their groups, have learners discuss the sounds they wrote down. They should either identify the most common sounds they documented or, if none are shared, choose three to keep working together with.
- Next, each group will share their sounds and associated words. Write the words down on a board or shared digital document for all to see, and have learners identify the part of the words that contain the challenging sounds.
- Once you have a list of 3 sounds from each group, ask learners to compare the sounds on the list and pick out the 3 that were mentioned by the most groups. Or if none were mentioned the most, have learners vote on which 3 they want to work with.
- Break them into groups again (the same groups or shuffled) and assign them one of the 3 sounds to work with (or have them choose one of the sounds). Have them look up additional words that contain the assigned or chosen sound using a dictionary. They may wish to look up one of the words from the board first to find the phonetic spelling, and use that spelling of the sound to identify other words with the sound.
- Still in their small groups, have them write at least one tongue twister with the words they found in the dictionary. Once written, learners can practice saying their tongue twisters to their group. They can challenge each other to see who can say them the fastest.
- Have each group, or an elected representative of each group, read or recite their tongue twister to the class. Write the tongue twister on the board or shared digital document as they say it the first time, and then have them say it again one or two more times so that the rest of the learners can read along as they say it.
Notes:
- Modifications (proficiency level) - Learners at lower levels can choose listening examples that are shorter, and can look for sources where the speaker purposefully talks slowly and clearly. For example, News in Slow (https://www.newsinslow.com/) provides graded audio news stories in Spanish, French, Italian and German. Or some language learning YouTube channels have videos with slowed down speech, such as the video Slow Swedish #6 - Swedish Music (https://youtu.be/zCH4KdHWTik) from the channel Say it in Swedish.
- Modifications (group work) - Steps 2 and 3 can be done during the meeting and in small groups if preferred. Working in groups in an online setting could be done through using breakout rooms. For either in-person or online settings, learners can work together to fill in the worksheet, and then can choose the top 3 sounds they think are the most challenging to continue working with in step 5.
- Modifications (exploring dialect) - This activity could also be used to explore differences in pronunciation between two dialects of the target language. To do this, have learners find video or audio clips in two different dialects (or be provided with example clips in two different dialects). Have them choose sounds to listen for in both clips and write them down on the worksheet, paying close attention to documenting any phonetic difference they hear in how a sound is pronounced in each of the clips.
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