Listening Comprehension Questions - Le Mauril

hi there Steve Kaufman today I want to

talk about listening comprehension

questions with particular reference to a

language learning system that's being

developed by the Canadian government

called Lu Mithila

and I will get into that in a few

seconds I just thought I would pass on

for what it's worth my own reaction to

the corona virus pandemic that's

developing around the world I think we

should be sharing information on this

different perspectives I can just tell

you what I have done my perception is

that this is going to be with us for a

long time it's gonna be quite large and

scale people who are healthy even

someone in his mid 70s like me has a

very low chance of dying from it if

there are vulnerable people who are very

much at risk and therefore we should do

everything possible to limit the spread

to slow down the spread washing hands

I'm doing a lot of hand washing I bought

whites so that when I go out I will have

wipes available to protect myself from

anything that I might be touching I

bought some gloves that my wife and I

will be using if I go somewhere where

I'm going to be touching something that

a lot of people touch just to prevent me

from getting it not because I am likely

to you know die from it but because if I

get it I can spread it to other people

and the more things that we can do to

slow down the spread the more we will

protect people who are actually very

vulnerable to this that's just as an

aside and if that's useful I got some

you know my son Mark sent me something

from a person who has a lot of

experience in this kind of thing and

those were some of his recommendations

one other thing I did was buy some zinc

tablets because apparently that boosts

your immune system so anyway a little

small things that we can do I don't

think it's gonna go away in a hurry

hopefully we can delay the spread of it

and as I say help the more vulnerable

people in our populations and somehow

we're gonna have to learn to live with

it that's kind of my view on this thing

getting back then to listening

comprehension questions so

got a notification from the Canadian

government that they were inviting me to

bid on a job to produce listening

comprehension questions for a new

initiative announced here at the end of

May and 2019 so it's almost been a year

and the idea is to get the CBC Radio

Canada which is the bilingual Canadian

or at least its to broadcasting systems

one in French one in English they are

going to use their programming and their

podcasts as the core of a language

learning system for French and English

which will then be available to

Canadians that's the way it was

announced for Canadians to learn the

other official language or if they're

immigrants to learn one or both of our

official languages so the request for a

proposal I had to pay $27 to get into

the government you know website where

you bid on everything from road

contracts to gosh knows what and so then

I read this thing and because I don't

have any teaching credentials and I

haven't taught an attendent teaching

school I'm not qualified to participate

nor is anyone at links okay but then I

looked at it and it got me to thinking

so what they want people to do is to

develop listening comprehension

questions you know first of all to help

the CBC hire Canada

select out episodes from amongst their

various programs and podcasts that they

would they think that we who were bid on

this work I think are appropriate for

different levels of language competence

now in Canada there is this system

called the 12 language benchmarks and I

think that 12 is is a unnecessarily

complicated system I actually think that

beginner intermediate and advanced is

plenty if you go as far as the European

framework you've now got six so beginner

a be intermediate a be advanced a be

which they call a1 a2 b1 b2 c1 c2 that's

more than enough however the system that

the CBC ru Canada is developing

which is called by the way look more

HeLa in honor of a politician who worked

very hard on behalf of francophones in

Ontario ma you are il ma hill by the way

words in French that end in RL are half

the time the il is pronounced as ela and

half the time it's not pronounced like

Leonor he is your bellybutton for

example but anyway leaving that aside he

is more healer he was and the system is

called thermo Gila and so they said ok

come in select episodes that are

relevant to different levels within the

Canadian benchmark system and then

develop for each episode a series of

comprehension questions along with two

possible correct answers so that the

whole thing is based on testing people's

comprehension of these episodes episodes

that will be selected by whoever's

behind the system and then people be

tested on their comprehension my view is

this is not going to be very effective

it's obvious the people behind this are

teachers teachers want to test teachers

want to put you in levels and it's

possible and you can somehow construe

these questions as a means of

establishing levels for people

it'll be arbitrary of course because

some people are better in vocabulary and

make grammar mistakes or whatever so you

know to me that's pretty arbitrary and

then also to try to determine what is of

interest to whom I mean we understand

things better if we're interested in

those things so if we select what we

want to listen to ourselves we have a

better chance of understanding it or

trying harder to understand it also the

in this request for proposals they want

people who create these comprehension

questions to select out words and

phrases or structures that they think

are appropriate to different levels so

again we're going to be guiding the

learner

at this level you should learn these

words and these structures at this level

you should learn these words and these

structures but of course in real life it

doesn't work that way we gradually get

used to a whole slew of different words

and structures and then forget them and

relearn them and it's much more of a

random fuzzy process so I don't I don't

think that's gonna do much plus I react

Nevitt negatively to being asked to

remember or to demonstrate that I

remember something in something that

I've listened to or read I read it I

listened to it it was in another

language I got it right I got it wrong

my business as you know I'm very keen on

the sort of circling questions where the

objective is not to test the learners

knowledge of what he or she just

listened to or read the objective is to

give some concentrated and repeated

exposure to certain structures or

certain phrases or certain vocabulary

items because obviously if you have a

certain question you say you pull a

statement out of the podcast you say why

when did he yes or no so that repeats

the most of the words and then you give

an answer which repeats most of the

words so that it is this circling

reading and listening to these questions

that helps with the comprehension but

testing people are in the comprehension

I'm not convinced helps people with the

comprehension comprehension will

gradually improve as vocabulary improves

so I sent a letter to the people there

saying I think first of all I would hope

that you would simply provide

transcripts for all your programming in

English and French that's the best thing

you can do for language learning in

Canada or elsewhere insofar as English

and French is concerned Harry Potter has

done much more for English learners or

for that matter because many people use

Harry Potter in translation to learn

other languages that's a much bigger

benefit to language learning than any

number of curriculum programs books etc

that have been developed for language

learning so I ask them please make

transcripts of your pro

available we would love to have that I

would I'm not learning English in French

but I wouldn't encourage our learners to

go there and use this material and then

to decide what they're interested in and

then save the words and phrases that

they're interested in and then I would

recommend that they hire people to go

into these episodes on a random basis

and select out you know certain

statements in these episodes and develop

circling questions around these episodes

which then should be available for audio

as download with transcripts obviously

and so you just create more

comprehensible input and just let

learners deal with the input deal with

the language and gradually improve their

comprehension and if they can choose

things of interest and if they see a

process that is enabling them to

understand more and more they will

continue whereas if you force them to

try and remember things it's much more

like tests back in school I think a lot

of people will be turned off the other

thing was in the Montiel terms of

reference they say that this is

targeting people in these sort of

Canadian benchmarks range of level three

to level eight so assuming that six is

the midpoint so my and it's sort of

halfway between B 1 and B 2 on the

European scale you know I think that for

people to be able to really make use of

podcasts films radio TV prog the

program's you need to be at least a B 1

and maybe a midpoint maybe level 6 on

the Canadian benchmarks is where you

need to be in order to be able to use

this material assuming transcripts are

there and and so therefore they're

eliminating a whole bunch of people so I

also suggested that they should look at

the kinds of mini stories again the sort

of point of view simpler stories such as

AJ Hoge has developed for English this

just take his stories Pam

get AJ Hoge stories lots of people love

them

and bring people who are level 1 to 3

bring them up to that level 6 so that

they can start enjoyably accessing these

podcasts radio TV programs whatever it

might be

and then continue to use the circling

questions technique in order to allow

people to enjoy the programs rather than

worrying too much about proving that

they understand something slotting them

in to some level trying to tie content

to certain levels because they have the

inevitable you know for example the

content selected within the CBC in the

radio Canada must reflect the diversity

of languages you know across the country

so it's very important to have you know

for the English will have some

Newfoundland accent there and some

whatever accent it it doesn't matter the

same with the French accent most people

can't hear the difference they're mostly

interested in acquiring words and

phrases but so there's a fair amount of

politically correct nonsense in the

terms of reference as well the

government announced this they're going

to spend 16 million dollars they

announced it in May of 2019

it is now March of 2020 following their

terms of reference this part of the

process will be completed by the end of

2020 so I mean I think they'll manage to

spend their 16 million dollars what they

end up with and how effective it will be

and when they launch this thing remains

to be seen so listening comprehension

Turmel I mind I'd go back to one of the

people that I really enjoy listening to

when I was learning Portuguese was Ruben

Alves who passed away but he was a

wonderful Brazilian educator and he said

nothing destroys the pleasure of reading

as much as and we can add in listening

nothing destroys the prized pleasure of

reading as much as being asked what you

understood to being asked to analyze it

break it down all of these things

and I think the goal should be to

encourage people to read and listen in

the language they are learning and not

to make it more cumbersome to do so or

more frustrating okay there you have it

thank you for now