A final reflection on listening skills

1.  Write a list of listening skills that you learned about from each of the units that we studied.  Find them on - page 9, page 35, page 58, page 82, page 107.

1)Identifying main ideas: when I hear those phrases like Today I'm going to talk about.... So, that means...., I can catch the main ideas following the phrase.
2)Making inferences: If I am not sure whether I catch the point, I can use those phrases to double check.
3)Listening for examples: In an interview or a lecture, sometimes I find it hard to catch the main idea only based on one sentence, so by listening for examples provided by speakers, I can understand main concepts better.
4)Recognizing appositives that explain: By recognizing appositives, I can understand the meaning of words.
5)Organizing notes with a T-chart: It's a form to take notes. Because the lecture sometimes go too fast, I can put the same things in the same categories and reorganize the note later.

2.  Which listening skill (mentioned above) did you find the most valuable?  Why?

I think listening for examples is the most valuable listening skill. In an interview, a lecture or a phone interview, sometimes I find it hard to catch the main idea or the concepts that speakers want to express because they go too fast or they are not clear enough. Speakers may provide some examples with different and simple explanations so that listeners can realize the idea. Therefore, I always count on this listening skill to quickly get back to the core idea and understand key points better. 

3.  What are some ways in which your listening in English has improved this semester?

    First of all, I think the best part of improvement which is worth mentioning is that I become more aware of English. When I happen to hear English lectures, talk shows or songs, I would try to look into the details of contents instead of just going in one ear and out the other. Besides, I would also try to make the summary to see if I really understand the whole thing. 
    On the other hand, I think the greatest improvement is that I can usually take the efficient notes. I know what are important key points I have to pick and find out the best form for myself to take the notes.   
     
4.  What are some challenges that you still face in your English listening?  How do you plan to overcome these challenges?

    Obviously, I think I am not steady enough to take notes each time perfectly. What I mean is that how great my notes are depends mainly on my state. Somehow I just hardly listen to lectures and radio in interviews or I can only take the great notes in broad American English accent which speaks very clearly and not so fast. Besides, I can't switch with ease in different accents and even can't get the main idea. For example, although we have listened to the audio book of Slum dog millionaire for almost the semester, I still find it hard to get used to the Indian accent. Finally, I think I still easy to be distracted from the lecture if it lasts longer than 10 minutes. 
    I think the best way to learn and improve English is by keeping practicing. There is no short cut for learning English. I know that I still have to listen to different kinds of English things outside the class and try to listen to different topics of lectures so that I can enhance the familiarity with vocabularies in various fields.

5.  Based on your experience with listening to many different types of activities in English this semester (listening to radio reports, radio interviews, TED talks, the audio book, a song, etc.), what is the most efficient way that you can train yourself to improve your English listening on your own?  Explain your answer.

    For me, I always like to train myself by listening to a song. In this way, I can remember vocabularies and the way of using words easily. However, I think this way is limited and can't count on it too much. If I want to improve English listening skill, I think I still have to listen to more formal learning materials. Among those English learning resources, I think the audio book will be my best choice. The length of it is appropriate for me and the story seems more interesting and entertaining, but sometimes I would like to listen to TED talks, for it is more like the way the English speakers speak in their daily lives and it trained a lot for listening skill.  

Music Video - Let Her Go

Why are you sharing this song?
I happened to find this song a couple of days before and as I played the song, I was obsessed with it right away. The repeating rhythms keep haunting me. Most importantly, the lyrics is straightforward but shows the deeper meaning.

What is the meaning of the lyrics?
The idea of this song is simple, it implies that people know what is valuable until they lose it and love is the thing that really matters when it comes to the romantic relationship. It seems that the man never treasures the relationship, because the song says "Maybe one day you'll understand why" and "Everything you touch surely dies." "Well you only need a light when it's burning low" and "Only miss the sun when it starts to snow," which mean that after the man lets his girlfriend go, he suddenly realizes that he lets go of the love. Also, just as he sings,"Only know you love her when you let her go" but it's too late "Cause love comes slow and it goes fast." Everything's gone. For the rest of the song, it goes like "Only know you've been high when you're feeling low"  "Only hate the road when you're missing home" and "Only know you love her when you let her go." The song simply reminds us that we never let go of our beloved and cherish what we have.

TV commercial in English - Doritos

What is happening in the commercial?
A man is eating a bag of Doritos. His colleague asks him, "Are you gonna finish those?" The guy thinks he is done but the colleague tells him that he left the best part. As the guy is about to reply, "No...I'm pretty sure...," his colleague grabs his hand and sucks the finger where the biscuit crumbs are left. The guy is so stunned by what he has done, but the colleague seems so satisfied and says, "Cheese, hello Doritos." Then it jumps to another part of commercial. A guy is also eating Doritos in the office and he wipes the biscuit crumbs on his pants. Then that colleague tears off  his pants, wrapped them around his face and smells it.  His expression shows satisfaction again, saying "Doritos."

What is the product or service?
The product is Doritos.

Who is the target audience?
This commercial seems to target all ranges of people. It seems that snack food is always belong to kids, but it's not like that at all when it comes Doritos. Adults like it! For the children, they can receive the message that Doritos is so great that the man even does a behavior as they all do in their daily life; that is, to lick the finger after eating something so delicious.  

What emotions does it use to persuade the reader to buy the product or service? (fear, guilt, excitement, humor, etc.)
Definitely, it's a very funny commercial. The man is just so obsessed with Doritos that he won't even let go of any biscuit crumbs! So, he exaggeratedly sucks the finger and tears off the pants where those crumbs stick. Then he is just so satisfied when he gets them!

Does it do a good job in persuading the watcher to buy the product? Why or why not?
I think the commercial really does a good job in persuading people to buy the product. In my opinion, the best commercial is that the watcher can easily and clearly get the point of the idea in a very short time. Besides this, the commercial should serve as the function to build pleasant feeling in customers and stimulate customers to buy the product. And that is the way Doritos TV commercial does.  

Animal Documentary

Why am I sharing this documentary?

Actually, I like domestic animals that can be kept as a pet. They are tamed and sometimes can become a family member. I don't like wildlife animals so much because they are untamed and fierce. In my opinion, the lion, in particular, is one of the most fiercest animals in the wildlife. When lions happen to come across a prey, they take immediate action to grab it and rib the body apart. However, to my surprise, this documentary seems to totally break down my bias against lions. It is a completely unheard of situation of a predator that adopt the prey. This is a miracle to see the lioness and the baby oryx antelope, one of the oddest animal bonds ever seen, walk together, lie down under the trees and can't lose each other. Definitely, it's remarkably moving to watch.
   
Summary of the documentary:

In the year 2001, the unthinkable happened. The lioness adopted antelope cub and was regarding it as its own. This fact gave Saba Douglas-Hamilton, a wildlife conservationist for the saving elephants' trust, a big shock. "I can't believe my ears when I'm first told about this adoption. That's absolutely nonsense. Give it a few hours and the lion will definitely eat the cub," she said with stun.

However, what seems like a touching story was actually a deadlock, because the solitary lioness was kept from haunting, so the baby was left starving without milk. In addition, every oryx, by nature, potentially sensed to its mother, its food and its life, so the baby oryx tried consistently to rejoin other oryxes. However, the cub wondered, looking for its herd while the lioness followed. The lioness obviously wouldn't allow the baby go certain distance away. Every time the lioness just took it back again.

What would drive a predator to defy her instincts and then danger her life? Saba was quite confused, so she wrote to many lion experts to get some balanced views about what was happening. One of the lion expert was Craig Packer. What they think would happen was that the lioness actually went through quite traumatic loss which was meant she had once lost her baby. This experience sparked her obsessive-compulsive behavior. Thus, when she happened to come across the baby antelope, instead of seeing food, she saw a baby.

Although the lioness was willing to have this kind of experience, she no longer had a companionship and had to kick out of the pride. These could cause a problem. The problem was that the solitary lioness was all by itself and the world was surrounded by groups of lions. The lioness had to figure out how she was going to get from one place to another without being spotted, how she is going to feed herself without being discovered, and the vulnerable situation by her neighbors. The lioness lived a life full of terror.

One day they came to river to get some water but of course the river was the most dangerous place where predators hid behind bushes to wait for preys. Even having the lion as a protector, there is no guarantee for its safe. Just a few seconds, a huge male lion jumped out off the bushes and grabbed it at that instant. The lioness was clearly terrified by the male lion but she acted exactly as if she was a mother losing her cub. She even couldn't leave the scene. We could all feel the anguish in her, desperately trying to save cub but unable to take on the battle with the male lion. The next day, she went out immediately to kill an ampala and fed herself. So, it could infer that the lioness was totally functional in terms of being a predator. It just didn't acquaint food with the baby oryx.

The loss of baby oryx didn't end up here. Within a month, the lioness actually adopted five and more cubs. In Craig Packer's opinion, the relationship with the cub was not quite that of the friend or even the parent. The lioness was more like a jailer, in that she just wanted to control the harmless animal and keep it close by. But still Saba believed the part in mother's instinct in every animal. Her concern for the baby was greater than her hunger for food. No matter what drives the lioness to behave like this, through the bond between the lioness and the antelope, it tells the animal's ability to feel complex in emotions.

Long TED Talk - Joshua Foer : Feats of memory anyone can do

summary
Joshua Foer is a science writer. He starts to get himself involved in the memory research and to realize how memory works  when he has to cover the news of U.S. Memory Championship. Today, the psychologists refer to the concept of techniques of memory as elaborative encoding. However, from the historical record, the techniques aren't new, which can date back to 2500 years to Ancient Greece. They all come from the idea called the memory palace. To remember information, the way is to transform it into something meaningful to us and create the images in our mind. The more bizarre the images are, it's more likely to help memorize. In fact, the mechanism it's not a shortcut but it's a sort of depth of processing. When we want to create images or make connection between two things, it actually force us to think and thus we're deeply engaged. The techniques are learned and everyone can be trained to have a good memory. In the end, Joshua Foer wants to remind us that our lives are made up of chunks of our memories, so if we want to live a memorable life, we have to remember to remember.

What can learners learn from this talk?
Since the technique can be learned, we can train to improve our memory. We can apply the techniques to our lives, and I think it helps to improve our speech skill, which make sure we won't forget what we're going to talk about in the speech. However, the techniques work because they force us to work, so it also implies us to pay much more attention to our lives. Pay attention to the people we have met with, and engaged to the things in the real world.













  

Short TED Talk-Did you hear the one about the Iranian-American?

Summary
The speaker of this talk show is Maz Jobrani who is an Iranian-American comedian. He is also a founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. Seeing Comedy Tour as a kind of platform, Maz Jobrani tries to tour around and break down the stereotype toward Middle Eastern people in a hilarious way. He has mentioned a common stereotype for characters in movies that people always hold. Most of people may think that whenever Middle Eastern people show up in the movie, they always come with bombs, they belong to the evil side or they fight for islamic jihad on behalf of God. However, it's not always truth. In fact, Maz Jobrani has met many people in Middle East and people are just so great everywhere and there are many great things there that you can learn from these countries, such as Dubai Mall. Maz Jobrani hopes people can present Middle East in a more positive way for the coming years.

What can listeners learn from this talk
After listening to Maz Jobrani's talk, listeners can rethink over their perspectives toward Middle East. I think most of people today more or less still hold a certain stereotype to Middle Eastern people because of their religion, history and maybe their mystery. However, before totally understanding one culture, we should not have any bias against it, or we might have lost many opportunities to see the greatest things of the world. So, for those who have bias on Middle East, it may help break down the block in mind and will be willing to embrace the world with open arms.

Movie Clip - Megamind

Which movie does this clip come from?
This clip is from the movie Megamind.

What is this movie about?
Megamind and Metro Man represented two extremely different guys - wicked devil and brave hero relatively. However, Megamind wasn't made from wickedness. He turned into a bad guy after Metro Man kept bullying him, and it seemed that Metro Man was not a so-called hero anyway. Metro Man, in fact, got sick and tired of being a hero to save the world and "playing" with Megamind. Therefore, Metro Man pretended to be killed and let the whole world under Megamind's control. However, it seemed to be boring and meaningless when Megamind could destroy the world with ease and own everything to his heart's content without any collision. As a result, Megamind tried to made a new hero to go against him. Contrary to his expectation, Megamind created a wicked guy, Tighten, who was even much cruel than himself, instead. Tighten smashed the world and arrested a woman whom Megamind was in love with. In the end, Megamind defeated Tighten, saved the world and even saved the woman's heart. Megamind became a new hero to the world.    

What is happening in this clip?
In this clip, it was the last fight between Megamind and Tighten.Tighten was going to kill the woman by whom he seemed to have been ripped down his heart, but at that moment, Megamind appeared. The woman was so surprise to see his back and to save her, for she just had a fight and ran away from him after she found out that Megamind had once disguised himself as other guy in order to go on a date with her. This showed that Megamind was by nature a good guy, and he wanted to protect the world from Tighten's destruction.