This song is based on a painting by Francisco de Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid. The lyric refers to Goya as 'he', the girl in the painting as 'you' and the singer himself as 'I'. It speculates as to why the boy stands holding the parasol for the girl.
On the surface of it, unscripted language is a total mess, and it's a wonder that anybody can understand any of it. It stops and starts, interrupts and stumbles, slows and accelerates, and generally breaks all the grammar rules you’ve ever learnt. So, how can we help learners to make sense of it?
It’s nearly time for the 38th TESOL-Spain National Convention, where this year, as well as catching up with friends, I’ll be presenting on Learning Listening: The challenge of unscripted language.
This is a sample lesson from Authentic Listening Resource Pack based on a video in which Alan interviews Maria and Ning about university life in their home countries, Russia and China.
This is an authentic listening activity based on a video recording of a 3-minute lecture. Swiss scientist Bechara Saab talks about the possibility of a colony on Mars.
None of us throw our class into a listening unprepared, do we? It would be unfair - after all, in real life, we're normally listening with certain expectations. But often in ELT, our pre-listening activities are limited to a bit of discussion of the topic and maybe some pre-teaching of new vocabulary.
This is a sample lesson from our book Authentic Listening Resource Pack (Delta Publishing). You will find the photocopiable lesson on PDF below, as well as the audio material as a downloadable mp3 file.
This is an authentic listening activity from a radio programme on the subject of ants. It is a sample lesson from our new book Authentic Listening Resource Pack (Delta Publishing).
Authentic Listening Resource Pack (Delta Publishing, Jan 2015) provides an invaluable bank of selected audio and video material offering authentic listening practice, essential in developing students’ listening skills in preparation for being exposed to “real” English.
Think you heard it all? Think again! Expert listeners don't hear it all. They hear what's needed and disregard the 'noise'. But L2 listeners have to learn what counts as 'noise' in the target language. It’s not the ‘difficult’ words that present the biggest problem; it’s the ‘easy’ ones that are pronounced in unexpected ways.
