The clip you are taking is from a class preparing learners to take IELTS/TOEFL and is particularly relevant to teachers who work with learners who are studying English for Academic Purposes.
The learners will need to achieve a particular score on one of these tests or something equivalent in order to be admitted to an Anglophone university. The focus on the class immediately is to prepare students to take the IELTS listening paper but the teacher is also trying to help learners with the skills they will need when they have to listen to lectures in English. The teachers and the learners are speakers of Chinese and the students are aged between 17 and 20. In the video you can only see female learners but the class contained both males and females
Because of the popularity of exams like IELTS and TOEFL, it is now possible to obtain published practice materials. However in this case the teacher decided to find her own materials. In this case she found a video of a lecture explaining why the leaves of some trees change colour in the autumn or all. She also found a text on the sample topic. The text below is an extract from the text that the teacher found.
One of the most captivating natural events of the year in many areas throughout North America is the turning of the leaves in the fall. The colours are magnificent, but the question of exactly why some trees turn yellow or orange, and other red or purple, is something which has long puzzled scientists.
Summer leaves are green because they are full of chlorophyll, the molecule that captures sunlight and converts that energy into new building materials for the tree. As fall approaches in the northern hemisphere, the amount of solar energy available declines considerably. For many trees – evergreen conifers being an exception – the best strategy is to abandon photosynthesis until the spring. So rather than maintaining the now redundant leaves throughout the winter, the tree saves its precious resources and discards them. But before letting its leaves go, the tree dismantles their chlorophyll molecules and ships their valuable nitrogen back into the twigs. As chlorophyll is depleted, other colours that have been dominated by it though the summer begin to be revealed. This unmasking explains the autumn colours of yellow and orange, but not the brilliant reds and purples of trees such as the maple or sumac.
Activity
What do you think of the teacher’s choice of materials? The teacher said she would have like to have a video recording of an actual lecture in an Anglophone university but she could not obtain one. To what extent do you think that the video she chose and of which you see a clip is similar or different to an actual lecture?
If you are familiar with IELTS, TOEFL or similar tests of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), how appropriate do you think the video is for a class preparing to taken an EAP listening test?
The clips do not show how the teacher prepared the learners for the clip or, indeed, if she did anything before she played the video. Are there any reasons why the teacher might chose to play the video to the learners without any preparation? Would you do anything before playing the video and, if so, what? Chapter 14 of Teaching and Learning the English Language (Badger, 2018) may help you address this question.
A second question the teacher needs to decide is how she will play the video. She has quite a lot of options here. She can play the whole video or she can play it in sections. She can play the video once. What would you suggest she does? Again chapter 14 may give you some ideas.
After playing the video, may teachers would ask the learners to answer some questions or write a summary of what they have seen and heard? What kinds of questions would be appropriate? How would you evaluate a student summary?
The teacher had a text on related topic and she showed this to the learners after they had answered some questions about the video. Why do you think she did this? Are there any other ways of using the text which might help the learners develop their listening or other language abilities?
