Wednesday, July 25, 2018

The Grimm Brothers' Fairy Tales: Story Time ESL Listening

(TESOL Worksheets--Story Time, Listening, Reading, Extensive Reading, Comprehensible Input)

Google Drive Folder HERE
Quizlet Folder HERE
Youtube Playlist HERE
Slow Speed Youtube Playlist HERE
Normal Speed Youtube Playlist HERE




This is a continuation of the Story Time project I started earlier this month.
Up until now, I've only been adding audio to old material that was already in my reading lesson archives.  (Jack and the Beanstalk,  Peter Pan Part 1Peter Pan Part 2Peter Pan Part 3,  For Whom the Bell TollsSlime IntroductionSlime Part 1Slime Part 2Slime Part 3Slime Part 4Slime Part 5,  Slime Part 6Slime Part 7Slime Part 8Slime Part 9).
From now, I'd like to start creating new material for this project.
But what to do?  That is the question.

The most obvious thing to do is to start using beloved fairy tales from the public domain.

...but in fact it's too obvious.  So obvious that there are hundreds of people who have already created ESL listening exercises using old fairy tales.
Truth be told, I wanted to start a project like this years ago, but held off because too many people had already done ESL material based off the Brothers Grimm.  Better to do something more original, I thought.

However, since I've failed to come up with any better ideas in the past couple years, I've decided it's better to do something rather than nothing.  While I wait around for better ideas to strike me, I'm going to try to get the ball rolling on this using the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales.

And, as I mentioned in the previous post, The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales are something I've been meaning to read through anyways, so this will kill two birds with one stone.

There's a lot of Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, so to create ESL materials around them all might take me years.  But it's something I plan on working on gradually while I also try other projects.

(Sidenote: Jack and the Beanstalk doesn't count.  It's an English Fairy Tale and not one of the Brothers Grimms'.  That's just a fun bonus factoid for other Fairy Tale nerds).

My eventual goal is to create an archive of material that I can use to give my students extra homework outside of class.
I'm hopeful that this will solve a practical problem that has long plagued me.  I'm always telling students that they should do a lot of extensive reading outside of class, but I have very little material to give them.  (For example in my current school, we have a lot of graded readers in the school library, but the students are not allowed to take them home.)
Many students have also asked me in the past where they can get extra listening practice, and until now I've not been able to help them out much.  (Part of this is just due to my unfamiliarity with material that is already online--but I'd just assume create my own material that I have complete control of.)

I'd like to view these as vocabulary building exercises as well, so I want to include quizlet vocabulary exercises to supplement the fairy tales.
I'm using the The Online Graded Reader Text Editor to help me spot potentially unknown vocabulary.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I've spotted some bugs in the Online Graded Reader Text Editor.  So I run the text through 2 filters.  One is for the New General Service List level 1, the second is for General Level 5 (Early Elementary: 400 Headwords).  As far as I can tell, General Level 5 is just internal to the Online Graded Reader Text Editor.  So I don't know exactly which headwords are in the 400, but it seems to be working relatively well at catching difficult vocabulary.
I take the vocabulary that is outside of either list, and put them into a wordlist at the top of story.

I'm going to suggest the following order for my students:

Suggested Use:
Step 1: Look at the vocabulary. Check any words that you don’t know in your dictionary.
Step 2: Listen to the video.  (Listen only.  Don’t look at the reading yet).
Step  3: Practice the Vocabulary on Quizlet 
Step 4: Watch the video again.  This time look at the reading. Read and listen at the same time.
Step 5: Practice the vocabulary on Quizlet again
Step 6: Listen one last time.  The last time, don’t look at the reading.

Is this the best way to do it?  I don't know.  It makes sense to me.  Let me know if you have a better idea for a suggested study order.

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