"aha!" moments - Speaking & Listening - units 3 & 4

"Aha!" moments unit 3 - Listening Instruction

Unit 3 made me see and understand that language is somewhat of a guessing game. We tend to guess the meaning of words or sentences and predict what people might be saying. I often have stories with my mom, she's L1 Spanish speaker, and although her English is rather good, there are times when she speaks that I have a hard time understanding, and need to predict what she's trying to convey as a whole. So, catching words I fully understand and interpreting them in my head to understand her. It also reminded me of some of the text messages she's sent me over the years, in which might be incomprehensible to some people ( they would have a hard time) to 'translate' and understand what she's trying to communicate. However, my sister and I have learned to 'decode' her messages by simply taking out the words we know in English and Spanish and making a final educated guess.😜

What I also found interesting from this unit was that people who are native speakers of English, but also speak another language at home, often slightly change their English to an accent close to that of the L2 English speaker. And their communication between each other becomes understandable.  -I thought this aspect in language was very cool to know.

"Aha!" moment Unit 4 - Assessment, Lesson Planning and Differentiation

My 'aha! moment' was when we had to watch the videos on the different types of Assessments for Speaking and Listening skills. I did take notes on the videos, since they were really helpful in understanding what I could do when I need to make formal and summative assessments in the class.
The video helped in providing the difference between Hearing and Listening, which I believe is beneficial to differentiate and to understand in order to assess listening. And depending on the activity, one needs to decide before hand whether we look at grammatical errors, such as spelling and punctuation if they need to write the answers down during a listening activity or not, and if they are going to be penalized for it, do you give partial credits for some answers? And to have a limit on open ended questions (so try to have close ended ones for test and quizzes). 
As for the speaking assessments, I think they are a bit easier, since they have a grading scale. So you and your students know exactly what your looking for to give them a good grade. 
Nevertheless, it was great to get the different kinds of tasks one can do in order to obtain the assessments on either skill on the students. I will certainly use them in the future.