Listening Response Guidelines
Below are some ideas for writing your responses to the outside listening assignments.

Each response should focus on one of the strategies listed below.  Put the number of your response strategy in the subject line of your e-mail along with your title.  During the session, you cannot use the same response strategy twice, so try to use the more difficult strategies first and save the easier ones for later.

For grading, I will use a scale of -, + or ++.  My main criteria for content is that it be intelligent.  With respect to writing, I’m looking for lots of specific detail and for each paragraph to have one main idea.  Do not worry about grammar; focus on content and paragraph ideas.

 
1. Agreement:  Summarize some of the ideas in the story and  explain why you like the ideas or not.  Also, feel free to express your own personal ideas on the topic and how your ideas agree with or contrast to those of the people in the report.

2. Persuasion:  Tell us what information in this report that you found convincing and which information you are suspicious of.  If there are different opinions in the story, tell us who you agree with and why you agree with them.  If you disagree with some opinion, explain which opinions you disagree with and why you disagree.

3. Surprise:  Summarize the information in the story that surprises you, and explain why it surprises you.  Feel free to talk in some depth about what you used to think before you heard this report.

 4. Affect:  Explain the emotional effect of the story on you.  Tell us why you responded in that way, using a lot of detail and background to do so. 

5.  Association (experience):  Tell us about something in the story that is similar to something you have experienced.  You can use experiences either here or in your own country.  If you want, also feel free to compare the situation in the report with a situation that someone you know has experienced.

 6. Association (information): Relate the information in this story to information you have heard in other reports or read elsewhere.  (this is one of my favorites)

 7. Critical Analysis (what’s missing):  Describe information that you think is missing from this report.  Explain what other details you think the story could or should have contained, and justify why you think that information should have been in the story.  (another favorite)

 8. Critical Analysis (bias):  Describe any bias, prejudice or stereotype you see behind the story. Focus especially the story’s content or presentation.  Also, speculate on why this story was made and on any underlying motivation for making the story.  (another good, critical question)