Profile information
This is my learning plan for the course LCE2010-2 for semester 1 in 2013-2014.
- First name: Chun Wang
- Last name: LAM
- Student ID: 4001466
- Display name: Alfred
- Email address: chunwanglam@ln.edu.hk
My Learning Plan
1. What is your long term goal which involves language?
My long term goal which involves language is to master more than 3 languages. The first three languages I am going to strengthen are Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese and English, as they are the most commonly used languages in Hong Kong. As language and culture are intimately related, learning more languages is equipping us to be able to learn more and dig deeper into other cultures. There are several countries which attracted me the most and they are Russia, Korea and Japan, because of their history and culture. I would like to learn Russian, Korean and Japanese in the near future.
2. What short term goals do you need to reach to reach your long term goal?
The short-term goals I need to reach are to improve my speaking and listening skills of both Mandarin Chinese and English. As there are LCC courses for improving my Mandarin Chinese, therefore I will be mainly concentrating in speaking and listening skills of English in my individual learning this year.
3.Your Learning Goal for this plan – What do you want to improve?
My learning goal for this plan is to improve my listening skills. To be more specific, I would like to learn to be an attentive listener, and enabling myself to gather and understand information effectively from different kind of listening material.
4.Why do you want to improve this aspect of English?
The reasons of improving this aspect of English are that I have always missed the important point in lectures and examinations. It also became an obstacle for me to communicate with foreign people. My poor listening skills would become barriers of my study and socialising with foreign friends, so I am going to improve my listening skills this semester.
5.Your Learning Activities – What things will you do to develop these skills?
For this learning plan, I have decided three activities to improve my listening skills.
The first activity is to write down the lyrics when listening to some English songs. The genres of these songs will be ballad, acoustic and folk because there is less musical instruments so that I can hear clearly, and they are mostly educational than other genres.
The second activity is to jot down the dialogue from some scenes when watching a movie. In this activity I may able to learn some slang and jargon. Therefore, I could listen to my foreign friends effectively and be able to listen to some informal listening materials and gather information from them.
The third activity is to watch a TED video from TED’s Youtube channel. As I stated that I am not good at gathering information in the lecture, it will be a good way to improve my listening skills in lecture and enabling myself to understand what my lecturers have said. TED videos are also educational and I could learn different aspects of thing like new vocabulary and news about science.
5. How long will you spend on your activities?
In this semester, I am going to spend 3 hours per week for the 3 activities that I have decided to do in the previous section of my individual learning plan. And also less than an hour for submitting my individual learning record(LAR) to the Mahara, in order to evaluate the progress of learning listening skills in English.
Learning Activity Record - LAR 1
What materials/ resources did you use?
As my learning plan stated, the first activity will be listening to a song and then try to write down the lyrics of the song. So I chose a on the YouTube and then write down their lyrics by listening to those songs.
I choose this song because it is related to history of USSR and is educational.
Complete History of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody of Tetris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8
What did you do with them?
I have written down the lyrics while listening to the song. As the song is keep going faster and faster, and with different difficult words so I spent an hour to listen again and again to get what the lyrics are.
How much time did you spent for the activity?
I spent 1.5 hours for this song, as the speed of the song is keep increasing, the lyrics is with many difficult words and name of former Russian leaders. I have to search for the correct spelling on the internet and write it back again.
How well did the activities work? Did you learn anything? Were they interesting? Why were they successful? Is there anything you want to do differently with these activities in the future?
I have learnt some vocabularies related to history from this activity, for example “bourgeoisie”. And this song is really interesting because it is related to Russian history. I believe it was successful and have improved my listening skills a lot. In next activity, I will be jotting down the dialogue from some scenes when watching a movie.
Learning Activity Record - LAR 2
What materials/ resources did you use?
As my learning plan stated, the second activity is to jot down the dialogue from some scenes when watching a movie. In this activity I have chosen a scene from The Avengers which is “headcount”. This is a scene which Tony Stark, the “Iron Man” having confrontation with Loki, a demi-god.
Marvel's Avengers Assemble - Headcount https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2TYA7t3MmY
What did you do with them?
I have jotted down the dialogue from the scene when watching the movie Avenger. I watched for this clip for several times before jotting down the dialogues on the paper.
How much time did you spent for the activity?
I spent 1 hour for this activity, as the speed which the character speaking is too fast so I have to watch it again and again, to get what they have said in the clip.
How well did the activities work? Did you learn anything? Were they interesting? Why were they successful? Is there anything you want to do differently with these activities in the future?
In this activity, I have learned the how to transcript a film clip quickly by listening to the main vocabulary of their dialogue and recover the whole sentence by my knowledge in grammar skills.
Learning Activity Record - LAR3
What materials/ resources did you use?
This activity is to jot down the ideas from a TED talk. In this activity I have chosen a video from YouTube TED Channel, which is “How to make stress your friend?” and presented by a Stanford University psychologist, Kelly McGonigal.
TED “Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU
What did you do with them?
In this activity, I have watched the video for several times and tried to take notes of a study of stress which was presented by the psychologist, Kelly McGonigal.
How much time did you spent for the activity?
I have spent 2 hours for the activity, included watching videos and take notes for it.
How well did the activities work? Did you learn anything? Were they interesting? Why were they successful? Is there anything you want to do differently with these activities in the future?
This activity is interesting and I have learned a lot about stress in this video. In the fourth activity I will be also watching a TED video for my learning activity.
Learning Activity Recond - LAR4
What materials/ resources did you use?
The fourth activity is to write down the ideas which presented by the presenter in TED video when watching a video from a TED talk. In this activity I have chosen a video from YouTube TED Channel, which is “Why do we sleep?” and presented by a circadian neuroscientist, Russell Foster.
TED “Russell Foster: Why do we sleep?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWULB9Aoopc
What did you do with them?
In this activity, I have watched the video for several times and tried to write down the main point which presented by the neuroscientist, Russell Foster, about his study on sleep cycles of the brain.
How much time did you spent for the activity?
I have spent 2 hour for this activity. Firstly, I watched the whole video for 20 minutes, and try to write down the idea which presented by Russell Foster. As the talk contained a lot of scientific evidence which I am not quite familiarized with, so I have to watch it over and over again in order to get all the ideas from the video. At last, I spent 30 minutes to write my notes in more clear structure.
How well did the activities work? Did you learn anything? Were they interesting? Why were they successful? Is there anything you want to do differently with these activities in the future?
In this activity, I have learned how to get the ideas from lecturer/presenter effectively. Apart from listening skills, I have also learned about some facts about sleeping and know why should we sleep and how sleeping habits could affect our lives. This activity is extremely fun and educational and I would do more learning activities like this one in the future if I have chance.
LAR1 Evidence
LAR2 Evidence
LAR3 - Evidence
LAR4 Evidence
Half-way Self Assessment Record
What progress have you made on your Learning Goal?
I had improved my listening skills though the two learning activities in past few weeks. I believe this learning plan is working quite well and with a good progress. Now I am able to get the meaning from lyrics and movies scenes easily.
Were there any difficulties you experienced while carrying out your Learning Plan? If so, describe them and write about why you may have had those difficulties.
There is no major difficulty for carrying out my learning plan. Still, as this semester I am taking 6 courses, it is quite hard to manage my time for this learning activities and I have to do it quick. Otherwise I will need to delay assignments from other courses to carry out this learning plan. Generally, this learning plan is still an effective one to improve my listening skills.
What plans do you have concerning the rest of your LP? Is there anything you will do differently in the rest of your plan as a result of reflecting on what you have done so far? What other learning activities do you plan to do?
For the rest of my LP, I will be watching a TED video from TED’s Youtube channel and then jot some notes of it. As my previous learning activities were just listen and transcribe them. For the next learning plan I will be trying to write down the ideas and the important points stated by the speakers, instead of just transcribe them, which is quite different and more difficult than the previous two activities. And also, I will be training my listening skills though IELTS listening exercises as I am going to take the IELTs examination.
Final Self Assessment
What progress have you made on your Learning Goal?
I believe that I had improved my listening skills though all the learning activities implemented in this semester. I am now more likely to be an attentive listener, and enabled to gather and understand information effectively from different kind of listening material. For example, I am now able to get what the characters said in the movies and to understand the main ideas which presented by lecturers in lectures.
Were there any difficulties you experienced while carrying out your Learning Plan? If so, describe them and write about why you may have had those difficulties.
There is no major difficulty for carrying out my learning plan. The only difficulty is that I am not good at time management. As a year 2 students, the workload is much heavier than year one, so I delayed some other assignments for this learning plan. For next time I believe I need to manage my time better.
What plans do you have concerning your future learning? Is there anything you will do differently as a result of this Independent Learning experience? What other learning activities do you plan to do?
For my future learning, I would like to improve my speaking and vocabulary skills. It is because speaking is really important when communicating to others and doing presentation. For vocabularies, I cannot always think of the word which could suitable and appropriate to describe things so I am always stopped when chatting with others and stopped in presentations. I would improve these two skills in the future critically in order to improve my overall skills in delivering presentations. I would be setting a good schedule for myself to implement my learning plan next time as I am not quite good at time management and made myself always delay other assignments for the learning plan.