Using StoryCorps to Improve Your Listening Skills

Oral Listening/ Discussion

Keywords:
Culture, Discussion, Intensive Reading, Listening, Project, Speaking, Vocabulary, Web Activities, Writing, Audio Presentation

The Fall 2020 semester is fully online.

授業の実施形態/Delivery
完全オンライン/Fully Online

The StoryCorps Archive comprises one of the largest born-digital collections of human voices, featuring conversations recorded across the United States and around the world. [from archive.storycorps.org/about/]

This class will delve into the vast StoryCorps archive of (two or three minute) audio tracks to deepen students' understanding of American culture while boosting their vocabulary and fine-tuning their listening skills. We will listen to the tracks together in class, complete exercises based on the stories, analyze the vocabulary, and have discussions related to the cultural aspects of the material. Students should be the driving force of these discussions. Enthusiastic class participation is expected.

Among various other facets of the US lifestyle, the stories we explore will relate to family, friendship, love, gender, race, work, success, and political issues. There will be weekly homework and a midterm test based on the in-class listening activities. The course will culminate in students creating and recording their own original audio tracks in the StoryCorps style.

Students will

1. improve their listening skills and boost their vocabulary,
2. gain insight into American culture,
3. learn to express their ideas and opinions openly,
4. come to understand the benefits of considering multiple viewpoints,
5. learn to construct a meaningful story and present it as an audio track.

Attendance and Participation: 30%
Homework: 40%
Midterm test: 15%
Audio track project: 15%
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1	Introduction, discuss syllabus
2	Listening activities, vocabulary analysis, discussion
3	Listening activities, vocabulary analysis, discussion
4	Listening activities, vocabulary analysis, discussion
5	Listening activities, vocabulary analysis, discussion
6	Listening activities, vocabulary analysis, discussion
7	Midterm test
8	Listening activities, vocabulary analysis, discussion
9	Listening activities, vocabulary analysis, discussion
10	Listening activities, vocabulary analysis, discussion
11	Presenting stories wk. 1
12	Presenting stories wk. 2
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14
15

Please view the website www.storycorps.org before deciding on this course. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with how the website functions. You may want to download the app and try it out.