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Isaac Stough
Dr. Seaman
Speaking/Listening
Speaking and Listening Teaching Unit
Rational for Teaching Unit:
I learned Spanish two years ago in college. When I was learning another language, I did
not learn reading, writing, speaking and listening at the same rate. Reading and writing came
first. This was because I was literate in my own language and my classes payed the most amount
of attention to these skills. Listening came next. Then, ever so slowly, speaking came last. I have
two theories for why this happened. First, speaking and listening came last because I was never
explicitly taught to speak and listen. I was never forced to make my mouth form words, phrases
and sentences, so I stuttered when I spoke or I froze. I could read anything someone put in front
of me, but I would stare blankly when someone asked me to form an opinion or tell a story.
Second, I learned speaking and listening last because I was shy and did not want to make
mistakes or appear as if I did not understand.
My Approach:
Because of my language learning experience, I decided to develop a teaching unit that
focused on highly exposing my students to speaking and listening. This meant that, as I
developed my lessons, I tried to do less lecturing and more activities. Folse has a similar idea
that he puts into an analogy of practicing tennis:
As you plan your speaking class, think about tennis balls.
Your number one goal in a speaking class is get your
students to hit as many tennis balls as possible that is, to
get each of them to talk as much as possible (Folse 31).
I believe that this style of teaching works well not just in theory, but also for the context
that I will be teaching. It is a rare commodity in Spain to find a native English speaker who has
been professionally trained to teach speaking and listening. Most of the teachers in Spain might
have learned English to a very high proficiency; however, they have never reached native

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fluency. This is why English classes in Spain hardly ever focus on speaking. I think that my
teaching unit will be well received because of this reason.
Another principle that guided the development of my teaching unit was Folses idea of
two languages. Folse says that,
in doing any speaking task, the teacher must be aware that
there are two languages required. One language is the
language in the actual task. The second language is the
language that students need to complete the task (Folse
23).
What this means is that speaking (and listening) activities can be too difficult for students not
because the activity itself is too difficult, but because the language students have to use to
complete it is too advanced. This is why during my teaching unit I took great effort to make the
language of the task and to complete the task attainable.
The third guiding principle I used to create this teaching unit was taken from Richards
and Burns. After reading through their book, I was challenged to rethink what makes a good
activity. A teacher cannot simply play a YouTube clip and expect listeners to gain something
from it. The activity might be fun, but it might not serve the overall purpose of the lesson. A
good activity is meaningful and broken down into pre-, during and post- listening sections. I try
to do this for each of my listening activities. Even though in some of my lessons I do not include
this formate, know that when the activities are fully fleshed out in class, they run in this format.
A Lesson Plan:
A typical lesson plan has five parts: (1) the warm-up/review, (2) the presentation of the
topic, (3) some practice, (4) production and (5) follow-up/closure. In this section, I will explain
these five parts.
1.

Warm-up: The warm-up prepares an ELL for a successful learning experience. I include a
warm-up because I admit that learning can be rather like jumping into a cold pool. There is
always that slight hesitation before jumping in. However, if the temperatures are just right

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outside of the pool, jumping in is not that big of a deal. In fact, it can be thrilling. The warmup section more or less warms up the environment surrounding the lesson of the day. It
gives the learner a taste of what is to come. It evokes interest. It makes the learner want to
jump in. Practically, there are lots of ways to do this, and a variety of which are
demonstrated in my teaching unit. However, the general principle is at the end of the warmup, the learner should be more prepared to learn (mentally, physically, emotionally) than
when they entered the classroom.
2. Presentation: Then comes the presentation of the topic. The presentation covers a host of
things. One of which is the question, why? That is, why is this particular lesson important
to my learning experience? Another question that is answered at this point is the question,
how? This means that the teacher gives enough examples of how to complete a particular
learning task in order that the students feel confident enough to try an activity.
3. Practice: After this is practice. I tried to scaffold my activities to move from teaching
involvement (T-S) to low or no teacher involvement (S-S). Typically, the type of activity I
choose for practice gets the student using what they have just learned in the presentation of
the topic in a class environment. There are two important aspects of the activity: (1) it
should help the student gain confidence in doing the task of the day, (2) it should expose any
questions that have not been answered yet. These questions are answered before the next
activity begins.
4. Produce: The fourth part is production. Normally, there is an activity that intentionally
challenges the student to use what they have learned in a large group environment or a oneon-one environment. This could be a group activity. This could be a whole class activity.
This could also be a class presentation. The point of this activity is to increase freedom with
the reading task of the day in order to get the student producing language in front of others:
something the student will eventually have to do in a real life situation.
5. Follow-up/Closure: The last section is a time for follow-up or closure. The follow-up time is
for students to ask additional questions, the teacher to gage how well the students have

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learned the reading task and possibly ask a student to demonstrate. Lastly, this time is for
slowly transitioning the student out of the learning environment.
Context:
My context is a speaking/listening class for a group of 10-12, middle school Spanish kids
(ages 11-12) in Barcelona, Spain. The class is taught at the Youth For Christ Center in downtown
Barcelona. It is two weeks long but it a part of a summer long English course. It meets for 1 hour
every day. For this teaching unit, I developed 8 hrs of teaching time (8 lessons). The last two
lessons are for review and an assessment. The students have a high beginning low
intermediate speaking/listening level. Many students are already taking English in school so
they are familiar with the basics and technical terminology (e.g. noun, adjective, subordinate
clause, etc.). All of them have lived in Spain their entire lives and are very interested in
American culture, especially, American media.
Teaching Unit Goals:
At the end of this teaching unit:
1. Students should grow in their overall proficiency in English. Specifically in their speaking and
listening skills. There is no particular emphasis on either skill, but through this task-based
teaching unit, students should be more comfortable and confident in speaking and listening.
2. Students should be able to hold a light conversation in English by being able to tell a short
story of a time that they rode the train.
3. Students should grow in specific Discourse Features
a. Channel Open Signals
b. Channel Closing Signals and Pre-Closing
c. Backchannel Signals
d. Turnover Signals
4. Students should grow in their pronunciation skills
5. Students will grow in specific speaking and listening strategies

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S/L Teaching Unit: Lesson Outline

Total: 10 hrs
Total hrs developed: 8 hrs
Lesson #1 Introductions
Lesson #2 Describing an Experience: A Train Ride (Part 1)
-Setting (Past Tense)
-Common Nouns
-Common Adverbs
-Common Adjectives
Lesson #3 Describing an Experience: A Train Ride (Part 2)
-Who
-When
-Where
-Why
Lesson #4 Describing an Experience: A Train Ride (Part 3)
-Flow of story (sequencing)
Lesson #5 Describing an Experience: A Train Ride (Part 4)
-Conflict/Complication
Lesson #6 Describing an Experience: A Train Ride (Part 5)
-Conflict/Complication Cont.
-Concluding comments (personal opinion)
Lesson #7 Describing an Experience: A Train Ride (Part 6)
-Follow-up questions
Lesson #8 Describing an Experience: A Train Ride (Part 7)
-Putting it all together
-SWBAT conclude a conversation
Pre-closing signals
Closing signals
Lesson #9 Describing an Experience: A Train Ride (Part 8)
-Review
-Extra help
Lesson #10 Assessment