Listening Diary Summary, Questions and Reflection

Summary The fourth, MaryEllen, stalled a webpage, offering on-line group class and individual training, especially for her training and American pronunciation students. She hopes students can improve their pronunciation and they can work together. She is good at Spanish. MaryEllen Welton’s introduction is focus on her proficiency and the purpose of her webpage. She did not talk about her hobbies and education, just only talking about her specialized field and the advantage of this webpage. From this way, we can different self-introduction styles. We can change different introductions, not just share your hobbies and education, so I think the third and the four are better to learn.

This topic talks about an old town’s history. And it introduces the feature of this old town, like traditional names and small streets. This old town is important because there was a document signed here. On the other hand, it mentions a faithful dog. The dog kept watch a farmer’s grave for fourteen years. Local people were so impressed by this loyalty dog.

On listening items “ I feel that some self-instruction is difficult is because of those place names I don ’ t know. ” “ I feel that this self-introduction is too formal, just like a biography, writing, which is not necessary when making an introduction. ” For the first chapter, I think it is easy to understand. Through Small Talk on the Bus this listening part, I think it is not necessity to start talking with introducing your name or where you’re from. Having different situations, we start our conversation differently.

On listening process [On Art’s Self-Intro]: The speaker’s speed is ok, but sometime the connection between words would still confuse me. Some word and phrase like draftsman and stain glass projects make me confused. Some of them sound like two words but actually it is one word. [On small talk on bus]: In my opinions, it was fast between their conversation, and they seem skipped some consonants in sentences so that I can’t hear clearly. They also connected words by juncture that it was more difficult to understand what they said.

I try really hard to understand all the words in the conversation, but I failed. I was stuck when Bob speaks very fast, and I can’t focus on the following sentences because I keep thinking about the words I didn’t know. Maybe the next time I should try to concentrate myself on every words that is on playing and forget the words I don’t get.

Reflection Before I listen to this passage, I just think Randall will mention his family and his good friends. I think the most important thing in this passage is the time. And I admire Randall, who can stay at many countries and places. Because he changes his ideal and mind by changing of places.

The BBC one on Edinburgh and the loyalty of John Gray ’ s dog reminds me a loyal dog in a Taiwanese legend about 十八王宮廟, about how a dog save its mater ’ s life. It ’ s interesting to find such similarity between two culture which are so different. I guess despite the cultural difference, there are still something we share in common.