FOR LISTENING AND VIEWING

MotherTongue instruction, especially in the Philippines, is relatively young. One of the major challenges in the implementation of MTB-MLE in the country is the scarcity of on-grade and culturally relevant instructional materials using the language of the mother tongue. Hence, being a teacher of MotherTongue as a learning area, you are also expected to develop your own instructional materials (IM) using the mother tongue of your class by creating your own IM and translating and adapting written materials into the language of the mother tongue.

Our focus in this module is for you to develop instructional materials for new readers of Mother Tongue. But how do you develop these materials? You will begin by analyzing a sample material.

Bring out the short story written in the mother tongue that was asked from you by your teacher as an assignment. With a partner, answer the following questions: 1. Who will read this story? What topics do you think would interest them?

2. Why do you think this story was written? What was the goal of the writer for the readers?

3. Who and what is the story about? Where and when did the story take place?

In creating your own stories that you will use in teaching Mother Tongue as a language, it is vital that you first identify clearly your audience, the purpose of your story, and the overall plot of your story. Malone (2013) provides you with the basic guidelines that you need to remember when writing your own stories. a) Make sure to keep your stories short and easy-to-read; b) Use natural, familiar language of your readers when composing your story; c) Write about people, places, activities, and experiences that are familiar and relatable to your readers;

d) Create stories that can be pictured or illustrated to help your new readers understand the text better; and e) Write for a specific person who you think represents the people who will read your story.

III. ABSTRACT and APPLY__________________________________________ ________

The next set of activities in this lesson were modified from SIL's Trainers' Guide: Literature Development Workshop (Malone, 2013, p. 13). The tasks will require you to develop your own Level 1 story. Edit and translate it into another mother tongue language. Then, illustrate your own story.

A. W rite Your Own Level 1 Story With a partner, think of a story that you would want to write about.

It should be an original story or story that has been orally told in your community. Before you start brainstorming on your story, please note of the characteristics of a Level 1 story— a story for children who are learning to read in their L1 or in a new language.These characteristics were enumerated in the previous activity. A Discuss with your partner the story that you want to write. Complete the story arc below.

3Describe the climax. This is the most exciting

moment of the story. It's when

the probiem is at its worst.

Describe how the problem

gets worse. ^ Describe how the problem =starts to get solved.

n Describe wlhatthe I character wants and what

problem is getting in the way. P " Describe how the problem is finally solved and how

the character has changed.

Now that you are done with your story arc, your next task is to transform your story into a Level 1 story. It is suggested that a Level 1 story should not be longer than eight sentences and must be "picturable." Rewrite your story into eight sentences. Make sure that each sentence can be illustrated. Write your sentences on the blanks below and after each sentence, provide key words that would show how you intend to illustrate that sentence. Sentence 1: ;_____________________ 1 ______________________________ Illustration 1:

Sentence 2: Illustration 2:

Sentence 3: Illustration 3:

Sentence 4: Illustration 4:

Sentence 5:

Illustration 5:

Sentence 6: Illustration 6:

Sentence 7: Illustration 7:

Sentence 8: Illustration 8:

B. Editing Your Own/Other Group's Level 1 Story Congratulations! You just completed your first Level 1 story. But you are not yet done. We have to make sure that your story's content is sound, interesting and well-organized, your language use is correct and understandable to new readers, and your w riting mechanics (spelling and punctuation) is flawless.

CRITERIA Yes No

Content

Will the intended audience be interested in this story?

Will they understand the story? Do the parts of the story fit together well? Does the ending fit with the rest of the story? Language and Mechanics

Is the language clear? Does the intended audience understand and use this kind of language in their daily lives?

Is there anything you can take obit? Are there any words, phrases, or sentences that are not necessary to make the writing clear and interesting?

Are there any mistakes in the way the sentences are written (grammar)?

Are there better or more interesting words that you can use? If the book is for new readers, are there easier words that you can use?

Are there foreign words that can be replaced with words from the local language?

Adapted from Malone (2013)

Additional Comments:

Discuss briefly your group's feedback to the story writers. Once you have received the feedback, edit your story.

C. Translating Your Level 1 Story . Another important task that you will be required to do as a teacher of

Mother Tongue is to translate stories into your class' mother tongue. As an exercise, translate your own story into another language. In translating, you always need to remember that a good translation is all about translating meaning, not words. The translation must be (1) clear that allows readers to understand the translation, (2) accurate in which the translation communicate the same ideas of the original author, and (3) natural because it is written using a language that is familiar to the intended readers (Malone, 2013).

Write your translation inside the box:

Ask yourself: 1. Is the meaning in the translated text as the same as in the original text? 2. Are all the sub-points from the original text included? 3. Is the language clear and natural?

D. Putting the Story into a Book Form For the last task for this lesson, you will now have to put your story into a book form. You need to have A4 sheets of paper that is enough for your 6-8 page story. Fold your A4 sheets into halves, one inside the other, to make the pages of a book.

Each sentence in the story will take one page of the story book, to be accompanied by an illustration that was identified earlier. Malone (2013) provides simple guidelines on how you should create your illustrations. a) Illustrations should show only what is happening in the text; b) Illustrations should be about people, places, and objects that are familiar to the readers; c) People and objects should usually be complete figures. For example, if the picture is of a person, it should include all parts of the body: head, body, arms and hands, legs, and feet; and d) Illustrations should fill most of the space that is provided. The lines should be simple (no unnecessary shading or details).

When you are done with the inside pages, create your story title page with illustration.

Prepare to present your work to the class.

’ the Story Book Story Quality 20 pts.

Clarity and Appropriateness of Language 15 pts.

Creativity/ Illustration 15 pts.

Adherence to Instructions 5 pt:s.

TOTAL 55 pts.

Lesson Synthesis:

In creating your own story book, what is it that you enjoyed most? What was the most challenging? What else can be done to better prepare you to develop, translate, and edit locally produced materials?

Lesson 5 is subdivided into four sub-lessons where each lesson highlights the macro skills of communication: listening and viewing, reading, speaking, and writing. Each sub-lesson touches the different language domains related to the macro skills, the specific language competencies in the curriculum guide for Mother Tongue, and the teaching and learning strategies that you can use in teaching the macro skill.

Lesson 5.1 LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR LISTENING AND VIEW IN G

Lesson O bjectives: At the end of the lesson, students are expected to: • acquire strategies for teaching listening and viewing; • distinguish between bottom-up and top-down models of listening; • categorize listening skills and activities as involving bottom-up or top-down approaches; design activities for selected listening skills; and • design activities that target the development of viewing skills. Instructional M aterials Needed: copy of-the MotherTongue Curriculum Guide

I. ACTIVATE

Learning Activities:

The majority of texts that students nowadays are encountering and creating are multimodal, one where the meaning is communicated by more than one mode (e.g. written text, audio, still pictures, moving pictures, gesture, use of space, etc.) This has huge implications for our educational system, in fact, some countries (e.g. Singapore, Canada, and Australia) have added the skills of viewing and visually representing in the traditional four macro skills of reading, listening, speaking, and writing.

Listening and viewing are essential in comprehending and appreciating multimodal texts. Viewing is defined by the Canadian Common Curriculum Framework as an active process of "attending and comprehending visual media,

such as television, advertising images, films, diagrams, symbols, photographs, videos, drama, drawings, sculpture, and paintings." Viewing helps students develop the knowledge and skills to analyze and evaluate visual and multimodal texts. Listening is one of the major skills in language acquisition. Learning to listen to the target language improves language ability. The sound, rhythm, intonation, and stress of the language can only be perfectly adapted through listening (Renukadevi, 2014).

Are you quick or slow to listen? Let us try out your listening skills!

Listen to Julian Treasure's TED talk entitled "5 ways to listen better."

Name his five practical steps to improve our listening skills. 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

Explain also why he said that individuals in the contemporary times lose their listening skills.

II. ANALYZE:

An early view of listening saw it as the mastery of discrete skills or micro skills (e.g. Richards, 1983). A skills approach on the other hand focused on the development of such things as (Rost, 1990): discriminating sounds in words, especially phonemic contrasts, deducing the meaning of unfamiliar words, predicting content, noting contradictions, inadequate information, ambiguities, and differentiating between fact and opinion. Applied linguists theorized bottom-up and top-down models of processing to explain the nature of listening. We can see here the importance of prior knowledge in comprehension.

Bottom-up processing helps students recognize lexical and pronunciation features to understand the text. Because of their direct focus on language forms at the word and sentence levels, bottom-up exercises are particularly beneficial for lower level students who need to expand their language repertoire. As they become more aware of linguistic features of the input, the speed and accuracy of perceiving and processing aural input will increase.

Top-down processing relies on prior knowledge and experience to build the meaning of a listening text using the information provided by sounds and words.To arrive at a meaning ofa text, the listener draws on personal knowledge of the context, topic, speakers, situation, and the world, matching it to the aural input. The table below lists some skills for each approach.

Bottom-up Listening Skills Top-down Listening Skills • distinguish individual sounds, word boundaries, and stressed syllables • identify thought groups • listen for intonation patterns in utterances • identify grammatical forms and functions • recognize contractions and connected speech • recognize linking words • listening for gist, main ideas, topic, and setting of the text • listening for specific information • sequencing the information • prediction • guessing • inferencing ■ f ( .

Understanding the viewing process is as important as understanding the listening and reading process. Effective and active viewers ask these questions: • What is the text representing? • What is the purpose of the text? • To whom is the text directed? How is the text constructed? • What assumptions, interests, beliefs, biases, and values are portrayed by the text? • What is my reaction to the text? What causes this reaction? They also engage in the following procedure: 1. Pre-viewing. Students prepare to view by activating their schema (the prior knowledge they bring to the study of a topic or theme), anticipating a message, predicting, speculating, asking questions, and setting a purpose for viewing. 2. During view ing. Students view the visual text to understand the message by seeking and checking understanding, making connections, making and confirming predictions and inferences, interpreting and summarizing, pausing and reviewing, and analyzing and evaluating. 3. After viewing/responding. Students respond personally, critically, and creatively to visual texts by reflecting, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.