TESL 0120 - Speaking and Listening - Unit 4 Reflection

Unit 4: Assessment, Lesson Planning and Differentiation

 

As we come to the end of the course and I come to the end of the TESL 
certificate program I can’t help but marvel at the beauty and complexity that 
is human communication. Language is far more intricate, diverse, personal 
and collaborative than I ever realized before I started this program. Language
learners bring their own cultures, life experiences, educational background, 
personal motivations and worldview to the classroom. Teachers in turn bring
their professional training, cultural background, worldview and the demands 
of the program or organization they work for. All of these factors merge together
in the classroom and create a unique micro-community. How can we as teachers 
navigate the sometimes overwhelming complexity and varying demands of our 
classrooms? Principle driven lesson planning, thoughtful assessment and strategic 
differentiation are all ways to stay calm and in control in the face of ever shifting 
classroom demands.  

Clear Objectives? Check. Warm-up? Check. Activating schema? Check. Skill building? 
Check. Skill using? Check. Assessment...check!  I recently watched a YouTube video by 
Matt D’Avella on the power of checklists entitled, “This Productivity System Will Save Your Life”
(D’Avella, 2020). In the video he explains that when faced with overwhelmingly complex tasks 
the simple checklist has succeeded in making them more manageable. Brain surgeons, 
astronauts and pilots all use checklists, perhaps the humble English teacher might benefit as 
well. 

When developing a listening lesson plan here some some elements to include in your 
checklist: Pre-listening (activate background knowledge with activities such as brainstorming,
predicting and the use of visuals/realia), While-listening (help students to notice what’s 
important and focus on certain skills/strategies, activities such as listening for the gist, listening
for detail, inferring, note-taking, dictation and TPR) and Post-Listening (help students 
process the listening task using top-down and bottom up strategies, use activities such as 
checking answers, summarizing main ideas, discussion, comparing information, and 
deconstructing or reconstructing the text). 

When developing a speaking lesson plan here are some of the elements to include in your 
checklist: Activating (grab student’s attention and activate schema, use activities like 
discussion, visuals/realia and question prompts), Acquiring (controlled/structured exposure 
to new vocab/topics, activities like drilling, chanting, milling, surveys,  structured dialogue, 
info gaps, etc), Applying (apply learning in a communicative way: activities include role-plays,
debates, speeches and presentations, and discussions)

Of course in the real-life classroom listening and speaking are often taught within an  
integrated lesson using all 4 language skills however many of the same ideas/checklists 
can be utilized. 

This post has focused on lesson planning however wrapped up in lesson planning is 
assessment and differentiation. A well thought out lesson will be preparing students for an 
assessment, may it be formative or summative. As a LINC instructor I often “work backwards” 
when planning, choosing my real-world-task assessment first and then designing my lessons 
to support and scaffold the skills my students will need to succeed at the assessment. 
Differentiation is also considered while lesson planning. The teacher can prepare different 
group activities or varying degrees of difficulty within the same assignment.  

And with that folks...I finish my last TESL blog post! Cheers to that! Cheers to my classmates
who I’ve learnt from along the way and cheers to continued learning! 

Assignment #4: Speaking and Listening Final Lesson Plan Submission
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14FmGkTa7Kkb7U9T_5xnp6qoNTCIUB-kSbt6FknMHHlY/edit?usp=sharing

References: 

Bark, N. [Illustration of teacher planning] (2020). Retrieved from https://www.noebark.com/esl-plus

D’Avella, M. (2020, February 4). This Productivity System Will Save Your Life [Video]. YouTube. 
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n2vL2I__WY&t=3s 

[Illustration of diverse people] (2019). Retrieved from 
https://www.uscourts.gov/news/2019/05/09/courts-seek-increase-jury-diversity 

[Illustration of people with puzzle pieces] (2020). Retrieved from 
https://www.jing.fm/iclip/u2q8y3o0t4e6y3r5_enterprise-architecture-services-is-a-strategic-planning-team/ 

University of Manitoba. (n.d.). Unit 4: Assessment, Lesson Planning and Differentiation. 
 In TESL 0120 - Teaching in Practice: Speaking and Listening [Class unit content]. 
Retrieved from: https://universityofmanitoba.desire2learn.com/d2l/le/content/347124/viewContent/1736799/View 

TESL 0120 - Speaking and Listening - Unit 3 Reflection

Unit 3: Approaches to Listening Instruction

Can you tell that the above painting is made up entirely of tiny dots of paint?

Pointillism is a painting technique developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in 1886.
Seurat and Signac were Neo-Impressionists branching out from the Impressionists. Their new
technique gathered much attention and garnered much criticism at the time. Now it is a well
known, recognized and appreciated technique in the world of art. Pointillism is a technique of 
painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. A 
pointillist painting may be made up of hundreds of small dots of paint, each with varying 
shades of tone and colour. Upon stepping back from the painting, the viewer can see the 
grander image revealed.  Just how the smaller points of the painting come together to reveal 
an image, the significant key words of speech come together to reveal the meaning of the 
utterance. The listener does not have to listen to and understand every word in order to make 
sense of what the speaker is saying.

English students often fret about not being able to understand every last word in a 
listening sample. They can become overwhelmed, frustrated and bogged down in trying to 
latch on to every word and decode it. It may however be quite freeing and encouraging for 
them to realise that they can learn how to pick out the key words and hone their discernment 
of what’s important information. Automaticity is the ability to recognise which words are 
significant and which can be ignored. Many words such as auxiliary verbs, articles and 
prepositions like the, of, a are the glue which hold a sentence together rather than being the 
content words like nouns and main verbs.  Even though nouns and main verbs may carry the 
weight of meaning, the auxiliaries, articles and prepositions can greatly alter the meaning of a
sentence if misunderstood.  Until students have reached a certain level of competence they 
struggle to discern which are the key words for understanding. My question as a TESL student
is: how can we teach automaticity strategies and scaffold this skill for our students? How do we
help our students automaticity and the ability to recognize which words are significant and 
which ones they can ignore? This is an area I would like to research more. 

A few other interesting points from the unit: 

1. Listening is a skill that can be taught. 

2. Listening is an active skill. Listeners are quiet however their minds are very active 
guessing, predicting, inferring, criticizing and interpreting. Along with all the activity of the mind,
our physical senses are also contributing to the interpretation - watching the body language of 
the speaker, taking in the surrounding smells, sensing the environment around us. All this extra
data helps give us clues as to what the speaker is saying. Our brain is processing a lot!

3. It’s not necessarily easier for students to understand native speakers of English than
foreign speakers of English.  Eg. Monolingual vs. Multilingual classrooms

4. It’s largely true that the skills involved in listening to a foreign language are the same 
as those that we use for listening to our native language. However, there are some 
differences in how we apply those skills. L2 listeners use more “compensation strategies” 
to fill in the gaps. 

5. It’s okay to let students read the script of recordings but perhaps only once they have 
listened to a couple times without the support. Real life doesn’t have transcripts and some say
using a script can produce “divided attention” and a reliance on reading. 

6. It's not that predicting is something that can necessarily be taught but rather something
that can be acquired with practice, repetition, exposure and modelling. As teachers we 
can "teach" predicting by developing lessons that foster the skill of active listening and match 
that with lots of practice and modelling.  

7. 5 main listening skills and strategies: predicting content, listening for the gist, detecting 
signposts, listening for details, and inferring meaning. (Ahmed, 2015)

Unit 3: 15-minute listening activity for blog
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FMJChwonCm7I0Vo-lN60KFxMfzHOOYwZKY-8xzxJNpw/edit?usp=sharing

References

Ahmed, R. (2015, June 18). Five essential listening skills for English learners. Retrieved from 
https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/five-essential-listening-skills-english-learners

Cross. H. (1906). A Pine Groove [Oil on canvas]. Galerie Daniel Malingue, Paris, France. Mural Art 
Library (May 29, 2019). Retrieved from https://my.meural.netgear.com/editorial/184 

Harris, G. (2015). Ear Study. [Oil on board]. Greg Harris Bristol Artist. Retrieved from:  
http://www.greg-artist.com/gallery.html#pic67

Signac, P. (1916). Antibes, the Pink Cloud. [Oil on canvas]. Portland Museum of Art, Maine, U.S.A. 
GoodFon.com (August 10, 2017). Retrieved from 
https://www.goodfon.com/wallpaper/pol-siniak-rozovoe-oblako-antib-kartina-puantilizm-peizazh-m.html 

Wikipedia contributors. (2020, January 10). Pointillism. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 
Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pointillism&oldid=935131570

Wilson, J. J. (2008). How to teach listening. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Ltd.

TESL 0120: Speaking and Listening - Unit 2 Reflection

Unit 2: Pronunciation

Pronunciation brings clarity to spoken language. Pronunciation is the precise articulation 
of sounds, the lilting rhythms of intonation and the unique signature of geographical locations 
and the people that inhabit them. Without clear pronunciation, a well meaning speaker of 
English will be sorely misunderstood. They may very well have the correct word usage, the 
correct sentence structure and correct moment to interject their thought but if they cannot 
clearly and correctly pronounce the phrase then their message will not be successfully received.
Here we find the importance and application of pronunciation - understandable spoken language. 
Now the student doesn’t have to have perfect pronunciation in order to communicate however 
they do need to be intelligible. 

During this unit we discussed many different aspects of pronunciation and their effects on 
spoken language, here are some of my take-a-ways from the unit:

Segmentals and Suprasegmentals: Segmentals are also called "phonemes." These are units
of sound that can be analyzed. The individual sounds of the consonants and vowels are 
segmentals. Segmentals can be thought of as “segments of sounds”. Examples of segmentals 
would be the sound the letter /l/ makes or the letter /r/. Suprasegmentals are speech techniques
 that apply to multiple segments. Suprasegmentals are how you say what you say. Examples 
of Suprasegmentals are stress, pitch, intonation, length, tone and tempo. Segmentals and 
Suprasegementalas work together to produce a nuanced and dynamic unit of communication.

L1 Interference: A student’s first language influences how they learn English. Differences in 
alphabet, grammer, verb tenses, punctuation, vocabulary, phonology, etc all contribute to the 
difficulties an English student might experience. For instance an Japanese student may have 
trouble hearing the difference between an /l/ and /r/ sounds simply because those sounds 
don’t exist in Japanese. English has about three times as many vowel sounds as Arabic. It will 
be difficult for Arabic speakers to hear and say words such as ship/sheep or bad/bed. Each 
language group has some trademark difficulties that are common between students. See this 
website to learn about language differences: http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/

My biggest takeaways for this unit were: 

-”The key to successful pronunciation teaching is not necessarily to have them produce all the
 correct sounds but rather to have them listen and notice how English is spoken...the more 
aware they are, the greater chance their own intelligibility levels will rise. “ (Harmer, 2001)

-I asked one of the higher level students what the most helpful thing was in terms of English 
pronunciation learning. She said that learning how to actually move your mouth, lips and 
tongue to make the different sounds and words was the most helpful for her. 

- I asked my Twitter PLN the following question: @Julie_TESL “EAL Teachers: What are your 
experiences with teaching pronunciation in the EAL classroom? Any go-to strategies/activities?”.
 These were some of my takeaways from the responses: listening exercises to increase 
pronunciation awareness, peer feedback, importance of suprasegmentals, high-variability 
phonetic training, practicing stress patterns using authentic sources

References: 

ESL. (2017). The differences between English and Arabic. Retrieved from
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/arabic.htm

Francisco, A. [Illustration of 2 girls speaking] (2018). Retrieved from: 
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-pronunciation/ 

Harmer, J. (2001). Chapter 13: Teaching Pronunciation. In Harmer, J. (Ed.). The practice of English 
language teaching (pp. 34-51). 

Hsu, G. [Illustration of people and the phonetic alphabet] ( 2018). Retreived from 
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-to-improve-your-accent-with-these-5-simple-tricks

Ko, K. [Illustration of people in front of map] (2019). Retrieved from  
https://thebolditalic.com/who-changed-the-pronunciation-of-california-cities-505d1ef369b0

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Assignment #3: Pronunciation Analysis and Activities

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xxz2S1efLXz133vflZn2gurWf_GCf_ihzDxFIP2RwXM/edit?usp=sharing

Unit 2: Pronunciation Activity Design for Forums

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PwXjqT-1VLYbdU7vN9seezFvo-3snkNKZ27t-IrO8Eg/edit?usp=sharing

Unit 2: L1 Interference - Arabic to English - for Forums

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1puXMsyrdJneekpvdcvr6PomFwmzFaOnoG2FVmhc7z9A/edit?usp=sharing