This is the page for: Listening & Speaking 2, Fall 2008

(Course-related content will appear here in reverse chronological order: the newest things at the top of the page, and older posts toward the bottom.)

Next Week’s Speech Contest

There’s some confusion about the Speech Contest and what students are expected to do. I explained it at the beginning of semester, but I’ll clear it up once more for you:

  1.  All students in English Language & Culture Department courses are expected to attend the two main Department events: Mosaic (in late November) and one day during the The Speech Contest event (which is on November 3rd, 4th, and 5th.)
  2. Attendance will be taken at these events and will affect your grade in English Language & Culture Department courses. Even if you are not a member of the English Language & Culture Department, if you are taking a course in our department, you are required to attend these events.
  3. You only need to attend ONE of the speech contest days: ie. Monday OR Tuesday OR Wednesday — it’s your choice. But you must attend at least one. The information about times and places (and who is speaking) is posted outside the Department Office, at 205 Dasol Gwan.
  4. Attendance at these events is in addition to, and not instead of, regular course meetings. It’s extra, and I’m not canceling classes for it. You’re expected to attend class as usual, in addition to attending these events.
  5. No, you cannot come for only one hour. You are required to attend for the full event if you want your grade to reflect attendance.
  6. Everyone is busy! (Even your professors!) So please don’t complain or feel frustrated, just try to have fun or learn something. I’m pretty sure you can do both if you try.

See you at the Speech Contest!

PDF Problems?

Some students have told me about problems opening PDF files. It seems that Adobe has upgraded to Adobe 9.0, and some older PDF files (especially made in non-Adobe software) isn’t displaying correctly anymore. If this happens to you, you can still access my PDF files using one of the following methods:

If these methods don’t work for you, then let me know and I’ll try find another way for you to access my PDFs, until I (maybe, someday) get a chance to ugrade them.

Your Midterm Exam MP3s

Here are the MP3s!

Once again, the link to the PDF for self-evaluation is here:

Remember, Wednesday is the deadline. I strongly recommend you fill out the form as soon as possible.

Midterm Self-Evaluation Form

Here it is! You need it, so get it here!

Listening & Speaking 2 midterm self-evaluation form (PDF)

Your MP3s should be available here soon. Remember, you have 48 hours to submit this to my mailbox. NOT (!!!) under my office door, okay? Good!

Your Exam

Some students have asked what the exam will focus on.

We’ll be watching an episode from Season 1 of the TV show This American Life and then discussing it.

The discussion will be anything students in the exam want to talk about. It will involve approximately 30 minutes of discussion. I don’t care so much what you talk about, but I do care that you find a way to talk… that is, find a way to make conversation about whatever we’ve just watched. Your #1 job, again, is to be interesting. I also expect you to be attentive, to listen to others, to encourage others to speak, to be able to change the subject, and to actually find a way to use what we watched as the basis for a conversation.

You will be asked to  submit a self-evaluation form from the website. The self-evaluation form will be very simple, and will help you evaluate two things:

1. Your performance on the exam, and

2. Your performance in the class up to now.

For the exam portion of the self-evaluation, I will ask you to consider the following things:

NON-GRADED (This will not affect your grade on the exam):

GRADED (This will not affect your grade on the exam):

Please understand, however, that your self-evaluation will not necessarily determine your grade. If I think you have been too generous — or too tough — in evaluating yourself, I will let you know. This self-evaluation is as much a tool for your learning as it is a tool for grading. As I said, I think examinations in conversation courses are somewhat nonsensical anyway. But I do encourage you to take seriously this opportunity for an interesting conversation, and for self-reflection.

Resumes

Some students have discussed the upcoming job seminar that will come after exams. If you’re looking for a guide to writing resumes, there are a few online. I recommend most students use a Skills-Based resume, because it lets you highlight your strengths (abilities) and deemphasize your weaknesses (lack of experience).

I can’t find the model resumes I have on file — they’re on a hard drive in a box somewhere, and I’m still moving from one apartment to another — but there are some good guides online.

Remember, the #1 rule for resumes is putting yourself in a good light. It’s your tool for selling yourself, so always find a positive way to express everything on it.

A Rant

I’ll add a pool for ranking here soon…

A Couple of Rants

Here are a couple of rants that I’ve found interesting:

Moving on

Hi there. I’ll be adding a grid to this site soon, so that students can see how they’re doing on the tracking system for tasks in this course. Some of you have completed Task 1, some of you have not.

For students who didn’t leave before the end of class on Wednesday, and participated in the exercise of meeting your classmates, you must submit your written notes about who you met (and something interesting about them) on Wednesday.

We will not be having class on Monday, as I announced at class, because I will be at a conference. We’ll hold a make-up class sometime later.

The Task List

Here is the first part of the list of tasks for all students to work toward completing during the Fall 2008 Semester. These tasks are like the Megabosses (the big bad guys) at the end of a level in a video game.

You cannot move on to #2 until you have completed #1. If you fail to succeed at #1, you need to try again, but cannot try again until the next class. In that way, this course is like a video game: you have to go to level two only after you pass level 1.

It is in your interests to work on finishing the tasks as soon as possible, since they get harder and harder as they go along. This means you will need more time to finish later tasks, and the last few tasks in the list (something like tasks #16-20) will require a LOT of time and cooperation from other students.

Therefore, it’s a good idea to start working on Task #1 right away.

Good luck!

Partial Task List for English Listening & Speaking:

  1. Introduce yourself to to the class, while explaining what it is you hope to learn from the course, develop in the course, or get out of the course, and why you want that. It should be interesting and memorable.
  2. Tell the class a funny story which is also a true story. It has to be a true story (though you can “stretch the truth”), a good story, and it has to make us (ie. me) laugh at least ten times in five minutes or less. Your job here is to be funny by whatever means available to you.
  3. Upload a video of yourself “ranting” (that is, complaining in a conversational, not an academic way) about something that bothers you. It could be your noisy neighbor, a problem with your parents, or anything at all. But remember, it will be on Youtube forever! So carefully choose something you don’t mind other people seeing! You rant must be at least eight minutes long, and you must not stop talking for more than three seconds at any point. (You are, however, allowed to breathe.)
  4. Listen to an episode of This American Life, a famous radio show that is podcast here. (You can listen to older episodes here.) This American Life usually features three or four interesting stories; choose one and write about your own reaction: why you loved or hated the story, what were the most interested sentences or words used, and what questions you wanted to ask the speaker after listening. Then record your own mp3 of a response to the person’s story. You can mix music and other sound effects into the mp3. For mixing, you can use the software Audacity (download it here) or any other software you like. Warning: the sound quality must be good. Terrible sound means you’ll have to try again! Warning: this story will be podcast from our site, and will be permanently archived on a web archive. It will not disappear from the web after the class ends, so make sure it’s good, and it’s something you don’t mind making public!Also, make sure you make a reference to the episode you’re responding to!
  5. Now, create your own mp3 in the style of This American Life. You should tell a funny story — your own, or the story of someone else you know. This story will be mixed with other students stories, three or four at a time, and podcast. Again, it will be put online forever, so don’t tell a story you don’t want permanently available in the world. But choose your funniest, most interesting story possible. If it’s boring, you’ll just have to try again! Make sure to include music you are legally allowed to use. Come talk to me if you don’t know what I mean by that.
  6. Collaborate with another student. You will walk around campus with the other student videotaping you, and you will speak ONLY in English to everyone you meet. You must try to get them to talk to you in English. When they do, you should interview them about whatever subject you find interesting. Your video should include both the interviews, but also the experience of walking around speaking only in English, and people’s reactions to it. By the way — you should not bug anyone who works at the University. Don’t visit professors or your friends to get this done: just walk around and try to talk to regular students and strangers — people who, like you, are not native speakers of English. Feel free to pretend you are a foreign student and cannot speak Korean, if you like. Also, you must only talk to the camera person in English. (The camera person can speak any language he or she wants.) At the end of your experiment, you will have a lot of footage. Choose the most interesting parts and make a video of at least 20 minutes long with these interesting parts, and add a short summary of your experience as a “English speaker” on campus, and how you feel about it.

These are only the first six tasks on the list. The later tasks will be even harder, so make sure to start working now: you’ll need more time for the later tasks.

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