Lesson Plan
Wei-Lun Lu (Michael)
Settings and contextual factors:
This lesson plan would be designed for secondary students of 20 to 30 students, who are
in advanced levels, and I would mainly focus on developing their listening skill with two
additional skills, which are speaking and pronunciation skills.
Materials:
A laptop and a projector to play YouTube clip
Copies of pronunciation worksheets
Copies of new word activity sheets for pre-listening
Copies of T/F worksheets for pre-content
Copies of question worksheets for post-listening
Root dictionaries for four small group to use in post-listening phase
YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HSqE1U_m_0
Standards:
•
ESL Standards for Pre-K-12 Students: (Goal 2 Standard 2)
To use English to achieve academically in all content areas: Students will use English
to obtain, process, construct, and provide subject matter information in spoken and
written form
•
TESOL Standards (Domain 2 The Language)
The learner will use English effectively in a variety of settings and for a variety of
purposes
Content Objectives:
• Through predicting, listening, and discussion activities, students will accumulate and
show their understanding of what is obesity
Language Objectives:
• Distinguish, and effectively use the sounds of ten and teen such as 15 and 50 in English
• Understanding and producing technical vocabulary and text features according to
content area
Learning Strategies:
• Use contextual clues to figure out meanings of new words
• Use top-down processing and take notes when a teacher presents information or during
a YouTube clip in order to summarize key concepts
• gather and organize the appropriate materials needed to complete
word root sheets
• use bottom-up processing to locate specific detail information about obesity from a
YouTube clip to answer T/F questions
Learning processes:
Pronunciation Activity: (Language Objective) (20 min)
distinguish numbers of ten and teen such as 15 and 50

The teacher give each student a pronunciation sheet copied from a textbook, WELL
SAID

The teacher explains how to pronounce numbers of ten and teen

The teacher follows the exercises from the worksheets to let students getting familiar
with numbers of ten and teen

The teacher asks students to pay attention to questions relative to numbers when
listening to the YouTube clip to answer T/F questions in during-listening phase
Pre-listening activity: (Language Strategy) (10 min)
Learning new words

The teacher gives each student a worksheet including several multiple-choice
questions.

Students’ job is to find out the correct meanings of new words from multiple-choice
questions by looking at contextual clues in the worksheet

Students compare and discuss their answers with someone sitting next to them

The teacher read the correct answers to students, and then students correct their
answer by using a different color pen

The teacher collect their worksheet for further assessment
Pre-content activity: (Content Objective and Language Stratage) (20 min)
True/False questions

The teacher gives each student a T/F question worksheet

In groups, students answer the T/F questions based on their background knowledge

In groups, students predict the big idea of the following listening clip by reading and
discussing the T/F questions

The teacher asks for volunteers to share their prediction to the whole class
Ten minutes between two 50 minute sections
During-listening: (Content Objective and Language Strategy) (15 min)
Listen to the YouTube clip

First time listening: listen to the content in groups of four
Second time listening: listen to the details, revise their answers and discuss their
answers in their small group of four

Third time listening: listen to the details, especially those details they didn’t catch on
the second time listening, and those details didn’t meet the agreement among students
in their small groups of four

The teacher read the correct answer to students and collect their T/F worksheets for
further assessments
After-listening:
Discussion activity: (Content objective) (10 min)
Discuss questions relevant to the topic –obesity

The teacher gives each group a discussion worksheet including questions relative to
the topic

In groups, students discuss those questions from the discussion worksheet
One minute speech: (Language objective) (15 min)

Students are given 10 minutes to prepare their one minute presentation by using
numbers of ten and teen such as 14 and 40, and new words learned from the listening
clip

They would be asked to use questions from previous discussion activity to prepare
their one min presentations

Each student would give his/her presentation to three different students and would
listen to three different students’ presentations

The last time they change their partners, they go back to their original partners, and
then the teacher give each student a rubric as a assessor to assess his/her original
presenter
Discovering word root activity: (Language objective) (10 min)

In groups, each student is given a new word sheet of new words learned from the
listening clip

Students’ job is to explore how to memorize these new words by using various
resources the teacher give

The teacher gives all the resources needed to students

Each group assigns a volunteer to share what they find of how to memorize these new
words
Assessment:
Pronunciation activity:
•
Each student will be assessed by his/her listener through one minute presentations.
Students would be required to use numbers of either ten or teen such as 15 or 50 at
leases one times in their presentation to show they can to pronounce numbers of ten
and teen correctly and can be understand by their listeners. After the one min
presentation activity, the teacher collect their rubric and their scripts of one min
presentation to see whether they use new words and numbers required in their
presentation.
Pre-listening assessment:

In this phase, I would collect and look at students’ new word worksheets to assess
their ability of whether they are able to use the strategy of using contextual clues to
figure out meanings of new words, their new word worksheets would help me to
monitor my students and give personal assistant to students, who might not perform
well in this language strategy.
Pre-content assessment:

Here I would not assess my students. They share their prediction of what they are
going to listen to in their small groups and with the teacher.
During-listening assessment:

Students in this phase would listen to the YouTube several times to negotiate their
content and detail answers with other students in their small groups. The teacher’s
role would act as a helper and assistant walking around to assist group negotiation, to
assess students’ speaking productive skill, and to observe their engagement of group
discussion, then collecting their T/F worksheets to assess the way how they revise
their T/F question sheets.
After-Listening assessment:
Discussion activity assessment:
In this phase, I would simply walk around each group to see whether they are welling to
use English to share their opinions. Here, their speaking would not be assessed.
One minute speech activity assessment:
In addition to ask students to use numbers like ten and teen in their presentations, I would
ask students to use at lease 5 new words learned from the clip in their presentations. Like
mentioned in pronunciation assessment, each presenter would be assess by his/her
listener from a given rubric. After students give their presentations to their listeners, the
teacher would collect their rubrics and scripts for further assessment.
Rationale:
According to Chamot (1995), humans can process new information from short-term
memory to long-term memory if the new information is able to be survived and stored
long enough in human’s brain by activating them several times (p. 16). Therefore, in this
lesson I mainly follow the principle learned from Chamot’s article on designing
activities, which help students store new information in long-term memory. Activities
including pre-listening, pre-content, listening to a clip, discussion, one minute
presentation, and word root activities are all serve the principle of cognitive learning
theories.
Pronunciation activity:
The reason why I would spend 20 minute to teach students pronunciation in my lesson
plan is because students need to have correct pronunciation to produce comprehensible
speech (Goodwin 2021; Wang 1987), otherwise others might misunderstand when
communicating each other. In this lesson plan Through the connection between the
pronunciation book called Well Said and the YouTube clip of obesity, students would be
able to distinguish, practice, and use numbers of ten and teen such as 50 and 15 both from
the clip and the book in the end of this lesson.
Pre-Listening and Pre-Content activities:
The reason why I have pre-listening and pre-content activities in my lesson plan is
because “ listening tasks in the classroom, just like reading tasks, are far more demanding
if children have no previous knowledge on which to draw” (Rost 2002 p.104). Thus,
these warm-up activities would give students little background knowledge before they get
start to listen to a clip I choose. According to Helgesen and Brown (2007), “ in many
warm-up activities, learners do tasks to activate their schemata – essentially reminding
themselves of cpntent related to what they will here as well as vocabulary and, at times,
forms that will carry the content” (p.10).
During-Listening activity:
In during-listening, I would adopt the use of top-down and bottom-up processing in class
because they are basic but crucial for learners to process new information. Richard (1990)
stated “ bottom-up processing refers to the use of incoming data as a source of
information about the meaning of a message.” However, “top-down processing, on the
other hand, refers to the use of background knowledge to understanding the meaning of a
message” Richard (1990). They are different skills and should be equally taught in class.
In Taiwan we are too much focus on bottom-up processing no matter from reading or
listening; and the results has turned out that even a high English proficiency student has
difficulty to come up with main idea or gist from a talk or speech. Thus, this is why I
would have both processing in my lesson plan.
Post-Listening activities:
In post-listening, there would be three activities used: discussion, one minute
presentation, and word root activities. The role of discussion serves to practice students’
active and productive skills (Helgesen and Brown 2007). It provides students an
opportunity to use the target language in class, where most Taiwanese EFL English
teachers don’t do. Needless to say, it also gives students a chance to cultivate and show
their critical thinking skill. The role of one minute presentation and word rood activities
is to reinforce their memory of new words learned from the YouTupe clip. Students
through the preparation of one minute presentation, the performance of it, and the
exploration of word roods may activate their brains to move new words from their shortterm memories to long-term memories. I have spent times on collecting useful resources
to make this lesson plan practical. I hope the notions and the activities I adopted from
readings, textbooks, and experienced ESL teachers can really help English learners make
progress in my future class.
References:
Chamot, A. (1995) Learning strategies and listening comprehension. In Mendelsohn,
D. J., & Rubin, J. (Eds.) A guide for the teaching of second language listening
(pp. 13-30). San Francisco: Dominie Press.
Gibbons (2002) Listening – An active and thinking process. In Scaffolding language,
scaffolding learning (Chapter 6). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Goodwin, J. (2001). Teaching pronunciation. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching
English as a second or foreign language (pp. 117-133). Boston, MA: Heinle &
Heinle.
Helgesen, M. & Brown S. (2007). Practical English Language Teaching: Listening.
New York, NY: McGraw-HillESL/ELT.
Lazaraton, A. (2001). Teaching oral skills. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.) Teaching English
as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.) (pp. 103–115). Boston, MA: Heinle &
Heinle.
Richards, J. (1990). Designing instructional materials for teaching listening
comprehension. In, The Language Teaching Matrix (pp. 50-66). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Wong R. (1987) Teaching Pronunciation: Focus on English Rhythm and Intonation.
New Jersey Prentice-Hall, Inc.