Student Editors (changing the reference words into their referents): Listening Transcript

(TESOL Ideas--Using the Transcript after Listening)

Example Activity: docs, pub

I mentioned this activity before when talking about reading activities, but it also works great as a listening transcript activity.

To quote from my previous explanation, the basic idea (as it was originally presented to me), is:

Choose a short text that can be copied into a word document for editing. It should have a good number of reference words. Before the activity, edit the document by changing the reference words into their referents. Share the text with learners and ask them to read. They should notice that without the reference words, the text is repetitive and lacks fluency. Ask learners to improve the text by changing repetitive parts of the text with appropriate reference words. When done, show the learners the original text and compare them.

I've indexed this in my Activities That Can Be Used with Any Reading Text section, but the truth is, it doesn't work equally well with any reading text.  You want a reading text that has a lot of reference words in it.  You also, ideally, want a mixture of easy reference words, and some more complicated referencing--i.e. reference words that refer to a whole clause or sentence.  The reason is that most reference words are very easy to identify from context, and it is only the problematic cases that require training.

The same is true when using this activity for listening transcripts.  But if you have a listening transcript that has a lot of reference words, and some of them refer to whole clauses or sentences, then this activity can work great as an awareness raising activity.

The example activity linked to above comes from Reflect Listening & Speaking 5, No Time to Choke p.136-140.  

As an example of how it mixes reference words that refer to a single thing, and reference words that refer to clauses, see this excerpt.  The original, with the reference words underlined, is here:

 First, he turned around. Then, he watched the ball, and then he dropped his bat. Only then did he start to run, but it was too late and South Africa lost the match and was out of the tournament. “My legs felt like jelly,” Donald later said. “It was a dreamlike sequence, almost in slow motion.”

This incident is one of the more famous examples of what is called choking in sports.

And the re-written version is here:

 First, Donald turned around. Then, Donald watched the ball, and then Donald dropped Donald’s bat. Only after Donald dropped Donald’s bat did Donald start to run, but after Donald dropped Donald’s bat was too late and South Africa lost the match and was out of the tournament. “Donald’s legs felt like jelly,” Donald later said. “Having my legs feel like jelly was a dreamlike sequence, almost in slow motion.”

The Donald not running incident is one of the more famous examples of what is called choking in sports.

Understanding the meaning of reference words can be just as important in listening comprehension as in reading comprehension, so this activity is just as useful to do with a listening lesson as it is in a reading lesson.

In fact, I did this activity with one of my classes because they had taken a practice listening exam and the results came back that said they had scored the lowest on questions which required them to identify the meaning of reference words.  (IELTS exam style questions often test whether students can identify the meaning of reference words in a text.)

In my class, I did this as a post listening activity.

After the students had already listened to the text for gist and for detail, I showed them the edited version of the transcript on the projector.  I then asked them if they noticed anything strange about it.  After some prodding, they noticed that there was some unnecessary repetition of words in some of the sentences.  I then asked if they could fix this, and showed them how to underline words, and write the reference words above them.

To gamify this, I made this into a competition.  Students were put into teams, and told that it was a game.  They would get one point for each reference word they could correctly re-insert into the text.

I gave each group a copy of the edited transcript on an enlarged A3 paper, and groups were told to write their final answers on the enlarged paper.  But I also gave each student a smaller size transcript for their own reference.

Because this was a listening lesson, I made good use of the audio.  I played it once at the beginning of the activity, to aid students in noticing where the reference words where (and to help them notice that several whole clauses can be replaced by reference words.)  Then I let them work on it for a while in their groups, and played the audio again at the end for a final check of the answers.  

Then, I had them trade papers with another group, and handed out the answer sheet (page 2 of the google docs).  They corrected the other group's paper, and gave one point for each reference word that was correctly inserted.  Points for each group were tallied, and the winner was congratulated.

Student engagement with this activity was relatively high.  The students enjoyed the challenge of puzzling out where the reference words were.  I think they also enjoyed the novelty of it as well.  It was an activity they hadn't done before, so it helped to mix up the lesson.  (To keep the novelty fresh, I think this is the type of activity that words best in small doses--I use it once a term, but not twice a term.)

One final note:

This is a great activity to raise awareness of referencing in a listening text.  But because it's transcript work, it's more reading skills than listening skills.  So to follow it up, I play some excerpts from the same listening text, and ask students to identify the reference word.  

Below is an example.  It's from the same listening text that I used for transcript work above.  (That listening text was 5 minutes long, so the transcript work only covered the first 2.5 minutes.)  The time stamps at the top are for my reference (so I know where to skip to in the recording.)  I play the audio at the time stamp, and ask the students what the reference word on the slide refers to.  It's a great way to finish off the lesson by giving students some practice identifying the reference words in when listening to the text.