Colombo Practicum Journal

Listening 👂 It was quite challenging to include an activity with a recording—or anything similar—because it was the QUIZ session . However, the students exceeded my expectations and did their best throughout this section. In other sessions, I usually include all the essential listening tips. For example, listening for general information and listening for specific information are closely connected: one focuses on the main idea 🧠, while the other targets details 🔍. Both are important depending on what the task requires. Additionally, taking notes helps students stay attentive to the audio 📝, and predicting what will happen next sparks their curiosity and motivation. Most of the time, I use listening for specific details to highlight the use of certain structures or to guide them in answering the questions proposed in the book . My usual procedure is the following: Play the audio once to get the general idea 🎧💡. Write some guiding questions on the whiteboard to h...

PRONUNCIATION ☝ 🗣️ How did you approach pronunciation in today’s sessions? Today’s sessions were mainly focused on students’ project presentations , so working on pronunciation was a bit challenging . During presentations, students often feel nervous , and correcting them in the middle of their speech can make them even more anxious. For that reason, I decided to give gentle feedback after they finished presenting or when they directly asked for help. Interestingly, several students noticed pronunciation differences between their classmates’ presentations and their own, which led them to self-correct . For example, some words were repeated across different presentations, and after hearing others say them correctly, the next presenters adjusted their pronunciation naturally. It was nice to see how peer modeling helped them improve without direct interruption . 💡 Did you include any of the tips/strategies we worked on in our last session? If not, which ones did you include? In the f...