Pear and Noodle

[kellogg]

Eunshil's kids are playing a game where one child uses a preposition and the other child has to position two cards according to what the first child says. 

Here's what happens:

Danny: Pear is inside the noodle.(sic)

Stephanie: Uh?

Danny: Pear is inside the noodle.(sic)

KT: The pear is in the noodle.

S1: Scissors.

I think S1 wants us to CUT OPEN the pear card and put the noodle card inside. This give Eunshil a rather strange idea: she's going to CUT OPEN her data and put her answers inside. Let's see if it works.

Midterm Exam1: Problems of "Listen & Do"

b) Does the teacher actually get the children listening, or are the children only looking? If the latter, what could the teacher do to be sure the children listen? Why doesn’t the teacher do this?

In this question, it’s very difficult to write separate answers because the examples are scattered so, I just wrote my answers under the examples.

OK—most grad students have found that when you leave the data in a heap and write a separate answer afterwards, it’s very hard to keep the data in your short term memory while you are answering the question.

On the other hand, if you just go through the data and answer the question, it’s hard to keep the QUESTION in your memory. But maybe Eunshil’s method will work better. Let’s have a look.

Notice how Eunshil reminds herself of the question before she sets out. It’s the listening or looking question.

Lesson 3. It's under the table (5th grader, 1st period)            

(After watching the video “in on under over in front behind” and doing with hand motions several times, we did this activity.)

 

T-T

KT: Now, look at this picture.  We’re going to play a game.

Ss: Yeah!

KT: We need two teams. Girls, all the girls are team A. All the boys are team B.

Loy: Older boys… ha ha older…

KT: Team A, choose the color. What do you want green or pink?(showing the color cards)

Girls: Green.

KT: Okay. Girls chose green. And boys, this is your color.

Girls: Ha ha ha

Boys: Wa~(clapping)

KT: What can you do? Let’s see. We’ll show you.

This means students can just look what the teachers present.

Good! Eunshil has found a good piece of evidence.

Carrie: Okay. I’m… You are pink?

KT: Yeah. (I held the pink cards)

Carrie: You’re a handsome boy.

KT: Yeah, I’m a boy.

Carrie: I’m a beautiful girl.

NT: First, rock scissors paper!(We did rock scissors paper and KT lost.)

Everybody can see it obviously without listening.

Exactly. So what will the teacher DO about this?

KT: Oh!

Boy1: Oh my god!

KT: She’s the winner. And?

Carrie: I’ll give her directions.

I wonder how many Ss can understand this sentence.

Careful, Eunshil! Don’t get distracted. That’s the danger with just going through the data. There is a lot to distract you. You might forget the question.

Remember that you are supposed to be looking for possible solutions to the “looking not listening” problem. There MUST be at least a potential solution in here somewhere. If there isn’t, we will have to write a hypothetical solution at the end.

KT: Like how? Tell me just.

Carrie: Like… “The milk is under the apple.”

KT: Ah! The milk is under the apple(I put the milk picture card under the apple picture card). Is it right?

In this lesson, “Prepositions” are focused on not the verbs. So, the teachers use just statements not the imperatives. And here, because they are using picture cards like food and stationeries it is not that difficult for the students to understand what the teachers are doing. And it means that students are still just looking here.

Good! See how Eunshil is back on track again—she’s worried about the question of looking but not listening. But so far, there doesn’t appear to be a useable SOLUTION to the problem.

 The teacher thinks that it’s quite difficult to get all the students listening since they can look each other when four people seat in one group facing each other. So, she thinks of this activity: One gives directions and the other listens and does something following directions at one time in whole class.

And this is a possible solution, because if each pair will be giving DIFFERENT directions, making it impossible to get the right answer just by looking. You need to explain this, though!

Carrie: Yeah.

KT: Then?

Carrie: If I give her GOOD directions I get one point.(She put one green cards on the left side of the white board.)

She tries to make Ss understand what she’s explaining by pointing to herself and showing speaking motion with her hand. When she mentions “one point” students nod. But it’s still hard to say if they listen or just look because the teachers use motions whenever they say something.

True. In general I think there is NO solution to the “looking but not listening” question as long as the teacher is interacting with the whole class at once. Children can ALWAYS look.

If you think, you will see that this means that our “looking but not listening” question is related to a lot of the other questions we’ve considered involving T-Everybody interaction (e.g. varying the topic, selecting correct answers, grammar one way and vocabulary the other). But let’s not get distracted. We still haven’t got a clear answer to our problem in the data.

Ss: 아하!

Carrie: If she can listen and understand my directions she gets one point.(KT put one green card on the left side of the white board.)

KT: Okay. So… One more time.

Carrie: If your directions are BAD no points.

She was not sure if Ss understood what she said so she emphasized this. But, because she didn’t give any examples of bad directions I think it can be a hard sentence for students to understand by just looking. 

Very true.

Woojin: Korean change.

It means that even though we explained with picture cards and hand motions, some students still don’t understand what’s going on. But, the teacher thinks it can be Woojin’ old habit of relying on Korean translation so she just shows the activity once again.

KT: No, no, it’s easy. It’s like…okay, one more time.

KT, NT: Rock scissors paper.(Carrie won again)

Carrie: The ice cream is on the hamburger.

KT: The ice cream is on the…

Ss: Hamburger.

KT: Hamburger.(She put the ice cream card on the hamburger card.)

Ss: 아하~

Students seem to understand the activity by looking. However, from now, students have to listen and do to win this game. Actually, the teacher plans this activity to do pure “Listen & Do” without looking but she spent a quite long time to make students understand the way of game by just looking. Besides, in this activity real listening can happen but because only two people can join it it’s not that effective way, I think.

It’s not economical at all. If they did this activity in closed pairs it could be more effective and still get students listening.

KT: So, both team can get the point. Okay, now, one boy and one girl we need. One girl, Cindy, and one boy, Gary. Come. You two, rock paper scissors. Ready, go!

 

Good. Eunshil not only ANSWERS the question, but she also comments critically on the answer. Bravo!

S-S

Ss: Rock scissors paper.

Gary: Oh, yeah!

KT: Give her a direction.

Gary: Pizza is under the hamburger.

(Cindy put the pizza picture under the hamburger picture.)

Here. Cindy really listens to Gary and puts the picture cards according to what Gary says. She can’t look anybody. I think that real listening happens here.

True. But what are all the OTHER children doing? Looking or listening? Can we REALLY say the problem’s been solved?

Gary: Ah~(He realized his direction was too easy for her.)

KT: Yeah. So, both teams can get one point. Thank you. You can go back to your seat.

And one boy, one girl. You two, come.

Patrick, Candy: Rock scissors paper.

Patrick: A milk is next to the ice cream.(sic)

(Candy put the milk picture next to the ice cream picture.)

Candy also listens to Patrick’s direction and put the picture cards according to her listening.

We can see that this example is REDUNDANT. It’s still relevant, because as Eunshil says it’s related to solving her “looking but not listening” problem. But it offers nothing that we haven’t seen in the previous example. So we can cut it.

Now, although Eunshil has given us a redundant example, she’s not being as wasteful as if she’d left all the data in a big heap. This example IS relevant. When you leave the data in a big heap, though, you include a lot of stuff that’s NOT relevant to your answer, and you also make it MUCH more difficult for your poor old professor to find the data that IS relevant to your answer.

KT: Next to…yeah! That’s right. So, both team are…(putting each color card in each team) And Peter1 and Amy. Ready, rock scissors paper.

Amy: Hamburger behind chicken.(sic)

Peter1: Uh?(He thought putting the picture card behind another picture card is impossible.)

KT: Hamburger is behind chicken.(sic)

Peter1: 어어~ hungry.

KT: Okay. Peter. The hamburger is behind chicken.(sic)

(Peter1 put the hamburger card behind the chicken card and students laughed a lot.)

KT: Thank you. Good job! Danny and Stephanie.(Danny won the rock scissors paper.)

Danny: Pear is inside the noodle.(sic)

Stephanie: Uh?

Danny: Pear is inside the noodle.(sic)

KT: The pear is in the noodle.

S1: Scissors. He /She shows he/she’s listening because he can’t understand the sentence with just looking.