Linguistics 577 - Lesson Plans: Speaking

Speaking Lesson Plan

Asking questions for clarification and
summarizing others' stories

Teacher: Susan Sheppard
Age level: Adult
Date: October 23, 1996
Lesson Plan: Oral Communication
Proficiency Level : intermediate
Time: 50 minutes

Objectives:

Terminal:

Students will be able to generate authentic language in meaningful situations.

Enabling:

Students will be able to ask questions
for clarification
Students will be able to summarize and explain
stories produced by other class members.

Materials:

Many pictures-each of the pictures represents a topic/theme.

Warm-up: (5-8mins)

Ask the students if:

their friends have told them any stories lately.
they remember stories their parents told them of their parents' childhood.

Ask the students:
Who would like to share this story with us? One of the students will share a story. If there are no responses to this request, the teacher will share a short story.

Introduction:(2 mins)

Ask the students: Who likes to listen to stories? (They respond by a show of hands)
Ask the students: Who likes to tell stories? (They respond by a show of hands)
The teacher explains to the students that this is what they will be doing today.

Explanation: (5 mins)

Today you will work in groups of two. The teacher will organize the students into pairs. Each group will choose a topic and a picture that matches their topic. The topics include:

School
Work
Childhood
Birth
Marriage
Travel
Family
Weekend plans
Sports

Teaching: (30-35 mins)

One of the group members will begin by sharing a story about the topic with the other group member. The student sharing the story will have about ten minutes to share it. The students will begin by telling how their story is similar or different to the picture. The listener will ask questions to check their understanding of the story. The types of questions to be used are wh-questions (they studied this in grammar class yesterday). The questions may be asked at the beginning of the practice or at the end. After the first person has finished sharing their story the listener will summarize and explain the story to the group next to them. This student has five minutes to summarize and explain their partnersí story. Then, they will switch and the member who listened and explained the story will share a story.

Evaluation:

Teacher will circulate among the groups monitoring their communication in an informal way, providing assistance when asked to.

Self Evaluation:

After discussing this lesson plan with class members I realized I needed to make minor adjustments to it. Instead of having a few pictures available for discussion purposes, I will have a wide variety of picures for the students to use. The students will choose the pictures, which provide a visual stimulus for the discussion. Additionally, the wh-questions will be asked by the students at the beginning or the end of the story. This enables the teacher and the students to check listening and comprehension skills. Depending on the proficiency level if the students, the teacher will give them time to make an outline of their story before sharing it. This will help them to feel more confident in the activity as well as organizing their thoughts before telling their story to other class members.

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