Title of digital resource:
Medicīnas iestāžu apmeklējums
https://valoda.lv/games/dziva-valoda/
Activity: Individual or group assignment on the topic of health care
Aim: to consolidate students’ survival communicative strategies through the vocabulary of health care. It can be used as an auxiliary source in onsite/online the lessons on the topic.
Target language: Latvian
Type of validation: onsite, online. It was both tested in class and given as a homework assignment.
Step 1: Go to
https://valoda.lv/games/dziva-valoda/.
Step 2: Find the column heading ‘Cilvēks’ in the contents and select the ‘Medicīnas iestāžu apmeklējums’ subtopic.
Step 3: Scroll down to the bottom of the page by clicking on the ‘play’ arrow. Listen to the recording to get a general idea of the conversation (who is speaking, where, why?) without looking at the text.
Step 4: Listen to the dialogue once again, but this time follow the text of the recording. Note down all the words you don’t understand in the text.
Step 5: Vocabulary acquisition
• If in class, discuss all the words you have noted. Ask your colleagues whether they understood them.
• If alone, use a dictionary to look up unknown words and find out what they mean. For the translation, use this resource:
https://www.letonika.lv/groups/default.aspx?g=2. For more examples, use the online monolingual dictionary:
https://tezaurs.lv/ .
: Pay attention to the words in bold in the dialogue; they are the features of spoken language.
• If in class, discuss them with the teacher.
• If alone, read the comment that appears when you click on the words in bold.
Step 7: Choose 2-5 new or difficult words or phrases from the dialogue. Practise using them in a context; for instance, make a few sentences in which you have at least one new word or expression.
These steps can be applied to any topic and subtopic of the resource and can be used in lower levels as A1 or A2, e.g., the dialogues on the topic of greetings and small talk.
Methodology used: task-based learning.
Students profile: seven philology students, aged 20-22, studying Latvian language (B1 level)
Teaching purpose: stimulating students to identify the features of the spoken language on the topic though listening to real/authentic dialogues between native speakers. This helps to fill in the existing gap between the standard language provided in textbooks and everyday spoken phrases.
Students’ reactions were positive, they enjoyed hearing authentic conversations while improving their vocabulary on the topic and acquiring listening competencies.
Notes to the teachers: the resource is user-friendly and was easily used by students of higher language levels. It should be used when students are already familiar with the key vocabulary of health care and the differences between standard and spoken language.
You can download all the texts and give printouts to the students. This makes the material easy to reuse, e.g., you can delete a few words in the text so that students can write them in while listening, etc. The download button is a little printer icon at the top right corner of the main page, which opens a downloadable PDF:
https://valoda.lv/games/dziva-valoda/Dzīvā%20valoda.pdf
Difficulties encountered: authentic conversations are an example of spoken language, therefore there were some difficulties to understand several expressions because of omissions.
Limitations/shortcomings of the resource: language (the website is monolingual)
