UEES – MAESTRIA EN ENSEÑANZA DE INGLES COMO LENGUA EXTRANJERA

TEACHING LISTENING AND SPEAKING – JANUARY 2022

TUTOR: TOM BOLTON, MA

STUUDENT: OSHIMEJE STANILAUS

FINAL ASSIGNMENT - LESSON PLAN (35 POINTS)

TASK

You will plan and then teach a LISTENING and/or SPEAKING class with a group of your current
students. If your lessons are very short, you could do a plan for two lessons – ideally, the plan
should cover approx. 1-1.5 hours of class time.

BEFORE YOU TEACH you will need to write a clear plan with clear objectives and a clear rationale
of why you are going to do what you are planning to do. You also need to provide background
information about the group of students, explain how this lesson relates to earlier / later lessons,
and explain / justify why you are adopting the approach you have chosen.

AFTER YOU TEACH you will write a reflection on the lesson. This will include what you were
happy with and what you felt was successful about the lesson. And you should also focus on the
learners and how they responded to the different tasks you asked them to carry out. And finally,
you’ll be able to discuss what you might do differently next time if you were to teach the class
again and/or what changes you might make if you were to use the same approach / methodology
again.

DEADLINE: THURSDAY 3rd FEBRUARY

SUBMISSION: you will need to submit three things:

• The detailed lesson plan (using the headings in the template below)
• A copy / scan of any materials you used in the class (including audio if appropriate)
• The post-lesson reflection (see template below)

NB IF FOR ANY REASON YOU ARE UNABLE TO TEACH THE CLASS ITSELF, THEN THE REFLECTION
STAGE WOULD NEED TO BE REPLACED BY A REFLECTION ON THE PROCESS OF PRODUCING THE
LESSON PLAN FOR A SPECIFIC GROUP.
BUT THIS SHOULD BE THE EXCEPTION – IT’S MUCH EASIER JUST TO TEACH THE LESSON
LESSON PLAN

MAIN AIM

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to identify specific information in travel
advertisements by English speakers from different dialects and will further hone their
listening for gist and specific detailed information skills in the context of travel
advertisements.

BACKGROUND

This lesson is intended for 10th graders at UNIDAD EDUCATIVA BENJAMIN FRANKLIN in Quevedo
City of Los Rios Province. This group is made up of 17 students distributed by gender as follows:
five boys and 12 girls. The mean age of the students in this group is 15, and they are highly
motivated students of good social backgrounds, so they have a sense of value for education.
Most of the students have travelled severally to English speaking countries and many of them
plan to study overseas, an average member of this group understands the importance of
learning a new language which makes things a lot easier for me as a teacher to be able to deliver
good quality lessons and as a group to achieve the learning objectives. I have been teaching this
group since 8th grade and I have watched them mature both physically and in knowledge for
almost three years now, Before the pandemic, we had two hours of classes from Monday to
Friday however since the pandemic started, we have 4 hours of synchronous learning classes a
week and about 3 hours of asynchronous learning. When I received them in 8th grade, they had
some level of English, but their level improved tremendously over this time, they are really doing
very well in four core language skills especially in listening, speaking, and reading with some
level of difficulties in writing, but we constantly working on those skills.

This is one of the best groups I have ever worked with since my teaching career in high school
education, they are very responsible, always eager to participate, not shy at all when it comes
to sharing their opinion in whole class session, they also work well in pair and group activities,
Because of this numerous quality, this group possess, I strongly believe that they are perfect a
group to try out new things.

JUSTIFICATION FOR LESSON (“LESSON FIT”) –

In this lesson plan, students will listen to audio taken from Macmillan insta English coursebook,
which is about some travel advertisements for different vacations made by English speakers
from different countries of the world. In the previous unit of the coursebook, we had studied
vocabulary about life-changing events like changing schools, going abroad, taking a gap year,
making new friends among others in addition, they studied CLIL content about a student who
moved from India to the United States for studies. The previous unit was interesting, and my
students expressed their desire to study abroad and as well to visit as many countries as
possible. Considering the topic treated in the previous unit, I strongly believe that this listening
activity is suitable to further raise my students' curiosity and engage them further to smoothen
their ride to learning how to describe a journey.

The topic of this present unit is INCREDIBLE JOURNEYS, and it is expected that by the end of this
unit students would be able to use vocabulary related to travel, understand and be able to use
the present perfect simple, past and quantifiers to describe their experiences and above all listen
to and understand utterances made with this structure and vocabulary about travel. So, the
importance of this listening exercise cannot be underestimated as it will certainly improve the
students understanding of the unit and ultimately enhance their listening skills. `

The tasks for this listening activity will be based on the Celta macro listening stages. This will
include two pre-listening tasks, two while-listening tasks and a post-listening task. The first pre-
listening activity would be a whole group activity, where I would tell the students what my
dream vacation would be and ask them to take turns to talk about their dream vacation. For the
second activity, students would be asked to look at a picture and, in a group, write down words
they think are related to the picture, they would also be asked to mention some countries the
Mediterranean countries. then students would be asked to match the pictures with the
following words, train journey, cruise, adventure vacation. The task selected for the pre-listening
stage is to help students activate their schemata and help them anticipate what to expect from
the listening activity. In the second stage, the students are asked to listen to the three
advertisements and identify which vacation is which. Then they would listen again and identify
if some statements are true or false about the audio. In both the pre-listening tasks and the first
while listening tasks students make use of the top-down processing to decipher the main gist of
the three advertisements. To further help students enhance their bottom-up processing skills
for listening acuity, Students are asked to listen to the advertisements for specific details. They
would read some questions and chose the most correct answers. For the post-listening, stage
students would be asked to work in pairs and talk about which journeys they are the most
interesting and tell why.

In conclusion, the listening activity, and the tasks in the different stages of this lesson have been
designed to strengthen students listening skills by carefully integrating both top-down
processing and bottom-up processing approach to aid comprehension of the travel
advertisements.

POSSIBLE ISSUES (and SOLUTIONS) – 200 words approx.

The problems they possibly surface during the execution of these lesson plans may include the
following, Due to the fact the class is going to be done online, internet connectivity remains a
major challenge in online classes here in Ecuador, so some students might likely have an internet
connection problem that could affect their ability to follow the pace of the activity, Another
problem could also be my internet connection that may likely fail or interrupted along the line.
To solve this problem, I would verify my internet connection 20 minutes before the class, test
run the zoom app to make sure everything is fine. On the other hand, I would let students listen
at their own pace within a given period so that poor connection from end to end may not affect
the acuity of listening.

Another possible issue that may come up could be that students may be unfamiliar with the
names of countries in the Mediterranean to combat this possible issue the vocabulary will be
pre-taught, and a picture matching task will be done before the actual listening to aid
understanding of possible strange words.

Finally, time management could be a problem, some of the activities may extend past the time
I have stipulated for them, if this happened, I would have to shorten some segments of the
lesson by reducing some of the pre-listening tasks.

MATERIALS –.

A Peer deck presentation app link with pre-listing task created by me but adapted to the listening
activity on page 29 of Macmillan coursebook InstaEnglish 3. Other materials would include
Macmillan students’ digital book where students would complete the rest of the tasks for this
listening lesson, The class would be conducted via Zoom and each student is expected to connect
with a laptop or tablet computer, not cellphones, this is to enable students to use the digital
book on those devices where it functions optimally to avoid technical issues.
 LESSON PLAN

TIMING STAGE AIM / PROCEDURE INTERACTION MATERIALS

OBJECTIVE + PATTERN / USED
RATIONALE CLASS
DYNAMIC

10 min To introduce the Students will be accepted into the class, after Verification of Lap-top
topic and get greeting and verification of students’ assistance a students’ computer,
students to mind pear-deck link assistance Pear deck
wander and https://app.peardeck.com/student/tduwpbmddwill and greetings presentation
activate their be sent to the students’, and they would have to for about 3 slides.
schemata on the write as many words as possible relating to the minutes T-SSS
listening activity. picture they see t. Students would predict the Students will
To have students vocabularies they might hear. Then I would talk work
predict the about my dream vacation and ask students to individually
possible participate randomly talking about their dream for 2 minutes,
vocabulary from vacations then there
the vacation would be a
advertisement. plenary
session of T-
SSS for five
minutes.
10 To pre-teach Students will work individually for 3 minutes on the The
minutes vocabulary and pear deck link to match the pictures with words interaction
clarify the and then to their definitions after they will work in here would be
meaning of pairs to compare their answers for 2 minutes. individually (s)
keywords from Then students will be asked to listen to the audio then (S-S) Pear deck
the listening to and find out how many words they had predicted then the third presentation
aid listening are in the listening. Then they will be placed in a activity would slides link
comprehension group to compare their answers 3 this activity will be A group Students
take 5 minutes. activity (SSS) Insta English
digital book

20 To listen for the Students will be asked to listen to the Individual Students
minutes general idea. advertisements and number the journeys as A listening (S) Insta English
To listen for family adventure, The trans-Mongolian Express or digital book
specific details A Mediterranean cruise.
 Students will listen at their own pace and repeat
the audio as many times as they wish within the
stipulated time. They will be asked to complete
exercises 2, 3 and 4 on page 29 of the students’
book these tasks have been designed to help
students make use of both top-down and bottom
processing to achieve comprehension.
5 min To check Students would be asked to work in pairs to Students will Lap-top
comprehension compare their answers this time with the scripts work in pairs compute,
and encourage from the listening (SS) Students
speaking practice. Insta English
digital book

30 MIN To activate the Students will be asked to work in pairs and talk In this stage, Students
vocabulary the together to decide which journey is the most there would Insta English
students have interesting for the whole class to embark on at the be both whole digital book
listened to in the end of the year. They must give at least 5 reasons class activity Lap-top
audio and get for their choice after 5 minutes they will be asked T-SSS, and computer
them to use it in to work in groups of 4 to compare their choices and group
their speaking. decide on one choice then after 10 minutes activities SSS I
students will be asked to return to the main section interaction
then a member from each group will talk about
their choice and their reason and the whole class
will have to vote for the most interesting journey
to embark on.
15 min To give feedback In this stage, students will have the opportunity to In this stage, ZOOM
on the listening ask questions about unclear vocabulary or there would whiteboard,
activity and do expressions, I will mention some errors that I have be both T-SSS, Students
error corrections. noted down during the activity and correct the and SSS I Insta English
errors by asking students to participate. interaction digital book
I would also show students all the correct answers
to the tasks in this stage.
REFLECTION

Think about and answer fully the following questions:

• What do you feel went well during the lesson?

The lesson went very well with some internet connection hinges at some point in the middle of
the lesson but nothing out of ordinary, the lesson started on time, all 17 students were in
attendance, and they were in their best energetic mood with an ever-flowing contagious
participative positive mentality. From the onset, the images from the pear deck presentation
got them engaged. They are super curious students and are very interested in travelling around
the world. No of them has ever travelled to the countries mentioned in the listening this made
the students very interested and eager to learn more about the topic. At the of the lesson,
almost all 15 of the 17 students had questions to ask me and contributions to make about the
places mentioned in the listening. The idea of activating the students’ schemata using pictures
went well because it got my students talking.

• To what extent do you feel that you achieved your stated main aim? How do you
know?

The main aim of the lesson was to have students listen to three travel advertisements by
English speakers from different dialects identify specific information about the vacation
destinations and further hone their listening for gist and specific detailed information skills in
the context of travel advertisements. This aim was achieved, and I was able to verify it at the
last stage of the class where I had the students talk about the journeys, most of the students
spoke coherently using the words learned from or practice in the listening activity

• How did the students seem to respond to the lesson?

The students responded positively to the lesson and the activities, and I believe this was so
because it was a topic of their interest. At each stage of the lesson, the students participated
actively and completed all the given tasks. The students were eager to talk about their dream
vacation As said earlier most of the students in the group are interested in travelling so it was
quite a smooth and interesting class. The most interesting part was at the post-listening when
they had to decide on the trip that the whole should take at the end of the school year. They all
spoke very well and backed their points with valid arguments, and it was super interesting to
see my students speak, share opinions and prove their points in English.

• Was there anything you would change if you taught this lesson again? What? Why?

If I were to teach the lesson again, I would probably reduce the pre-listening activities and
post-listening activities to optimize other segments of the lesson to allocate more time for
the students to listen to the audio, I would also consider.

• How do you feel about the experience of planning and teaching this lesson?

I must confess that planning a lesson has always been the most challenging part of teaching
to me since my teaching career began, but the importance of planning a lesson cannot be
overrated as a well-planned lesson with clear objectives is the key to a successful lesson. So
the planning was quite tedious and a bit stressful but the teaching experience was
exhilarating as I knew what was going to do at every stage of the lesson and it was quite
interesting and fulfilling to see my students achieving what I had envisioned in the plan.

• Relating to the techniques/methodologies used in this lesson, what do you think

your next steps are? How can you continue to improve in these areas?

I will continue to put all the techniques I have learned from this course into practice to
improve each time. In the subsequent weeks, I will try producing authentic listening
materials and apply the same Celta macro stages listening techniques to help enhance my
students’ listening skills. I will also take further steps to implement the alternative listening
approach proposed by Thornbury in my lessons. This is to carefully integrate both top-down
and bottom processing strategies in my lessons.