Re:Week 6 - homework Shin Jisoo

[kellogg]

Let's see how well Jisu has managed to analyze and quote from her data. I'll just read through it WITHOUT looking at the data. If she's quoted and paraphrased the data, then it should be perfectly understandable.

I tried to build that "bridge." The questions that the students can answer just by looking are these: "What do you see in the pictures?", "What are they doing?", "How are they feeling? Are they happy or sad?", "Where are they?"  They can answer these questions easily because the answers are all in the pictures. So, the students don't really see the necessity to listen to the story yet.  However, the answers for the questions such as "Whose pants do you think they are? Whose pants are they? Guess!", "Why are they in the pants?", "Then, let's make a guess. What did he do to lose weight? What do you think?" , "why do you think he decided to lose weight? Why did he decide to lose weight? Why do you think?", and "Did they really marry?" are not visible. As the answers for these questions are not known in the pictures, the students get curious and begin to hypothesize. They have to LISTEN to the story and find out the answers from it. By doing so,  they "cross the bridge" between looking and listening.

Yes, it's perfectly understandable. Notice that the last TWO sentences are a little different, though; they are not about the teacher's questions; they have to do with the children's answers. That brings us to...

2) How does the teacher respond to the answers? Why in this way?

    Firstly, I used "Analytical questions."  Notice that this dos NOT answer the question. If you BEGIN with an analytical question you are NOT responding to an answer; you are trying to generate answers. I tried to go forward to what the students are going to learn, rather than just to test what they already know.

Again, this doesn't answer the question. In order to answer the question, we really need to SHIFT the focus from questions to answers, and from the teacher to the learners. I'm sure that Jisu is looking forward to what the children are learning, but she's really looking BACKWARD to the last question by focussing exclusively on the analytical questions.

Go back to the midterm question again. Here's the one that Jisu chose:

* b : Does the teacher manage to "build a bridge" between "looking" and "listening" by using questions that are answerable just by looking and questions that need to be answered by listening? How does the teacher respond to the answers? Why in this way?

There's absolutely nothing in here about analytical questions. In fact, she's answering a) not b)!

 So instead of asking "What's this?", I asked "What do you see?" and "Anything else?" I also made the questions subjective so that  I can get more than one right answer and help the students analyze the context of the story. For example, I asked "Whose pants do you think they are? Whose pants are they? What do you think?" and "why do you think he decided to lose weight? Why did he decide to lose weight? Why do you think?" (I deliberately asked the first questions first and paraphrased them next because this class is for the advanced students and they could understand even these grammatically complicated sentences.)

Good--but notice that Jisu is getting further and further from question b), and deeper and deep into question a). She's going backwards! Will she realize it before the end?

    Secondly, I used "uptake" skills. In order to build a bridge between looking and listening, I had to lead the students to reach the purpose of listening. So I "uptook" the students' answers and extended their answers relating them to each other so that the students can see the whole situation about the listening text. The examples are following.

주현: They are dancing.

T: They are dancing, maybe. Why?

Ss: ........

T: How are they feeling? Are they happy or sad?

Ss: Happy!

T: Yes, they look happy. Maybe they are dancing because they are happy.

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민지: They are...in....the pants.

T: Very good. They are in the pants. OK, then, whose pants do you think they are? Whose pants are they? Guess! 경희?

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예빈: Marry to the woman.

Ss: (laugh)

T: Yeah, it's possible. To marry this woman(pointing to the woman in the picture), right? Did they really marry?

광현: I don't know.

Excellent. But there is ONE word I would change. I would change the word "secondly" into "firstly". Do you see why?

     Thirdly, I asked questions "proleptically." When the students didn't answer grammatically successfully, I pretended that they did because I was looking forward proleptically to their linguistic abilities. Like this:

주헌: Thin man and thin woman.

T: Yes, a thin man and a thin woman.

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혜지: They are showing how the man....아후, 모르겠다.  lost weight? They are showing they succeed diet.

T: Ah~~ Do you think so? Because they succeeded in dieting?

Good! Notice that the second paraphrase is not exactly a paraphrase. In some ways, it is better.

Hyeji is having trouble because she really can't handle more than TWO verbs per sentence. She actually succeeds very well constructing the first sentence ("they are showing how the man lost weight") but you can see from the pause that she is pretty much at the limit of what she can do. She then USES this two verb sentence to try to construct a THREE verb sentence ("They are showing how they succeeded in dieting"). But this is too much for her.

Now, the teacher does NOT try to construct a three verb sentence. Why not?

I also asked questions proleptically so that the students can guess what the listening text is going to be about. I asked whose pants they are and why the couple is in the pants so that they can predict that the big man in the left picture lost weight very much. I asked what the man did to lose weight and why he decided to lose weight so that the students can attend to the regarding information while they are listening.

Consider a minute Hyeji's strategy. She tries to construct a three verb sentence by REPEATING the first verb "showing". This is a good idea. But of course it is NOT a proleptic idea; it's backward looking.

Now consider Jisu's strategy in answering the exam question. As we saw, she begins quite well, by uptaking the question and giving a very reasonable answer. But then she gets off track, because instead of going on to discuss the ANSWERS that the children give, she goes BACKWARDS, and starts talking about analytical questions. This is off track, because it's backward looking; instead of going on to the second part of question b) she goes back and starts talking about question a).

Now look at the third part. It's mostly about prolepsis. It seems likely that Jisu was reading the comments I made on Sangeun's proleptic uptake, and was as impressed as I was. But BOTH prolepsis and uptake are NOT part of this question: they are part of question a), because it's question a) that involves the "Open and Closed" strategy. So once again Jisu is goign backwards and talking about question a) and not question b).

What should she do? Change the answer, or change the question?

[kellogg]

Yes, uptake and prolepsis are possible answers--IF you can show how, on the one hand, they are linked to the children's responses and, on the other, they are linked to the listening text. I think that you will find that when you do that, it's not so easy to JUST talk about the teacher. You ALSO need to talk about the responses and the listening text, because the teacher is trying to bridge the two. Look at how many of your sentences begin with "I" as the theme. How about a few sentences that begin with "the data" or "the students" or "the text"?