English 071
Course Description: / ENGL 071
Beginning Listening and Speaking for Non-Native Speakers of English
3-0-3
The first in a three-part series of academic speaking/listening courses. Speaking and listening practice with basic vocabulary and sentence structure. The course parallels the study of grammar in English 081-and English 091, and provides the competence in basic listening and speaking in preparation for college work. Credit will not be applied toward graduation. Prerequisite: “Pass” grade in ICCS or placement.
Prerequisite: / Placement
Schedule: / 3-0-3
Course Writers: / Steve Jones, Linda Fellag, Patricia Kelly, Girija Nagaswami, Louise Perry, Ted Uhlman
Course Facilitator: / Barbara Spadaro
Date: / December 3, 2008 (approved by AAC)
A. Course Description
English 071 is a beginning level oral communication course for academically-oriented students of English as a second language. This course gives students an introduction to using English orally in everyday and academic settings, including college-level courses. The first course in a three-part series of academic speaking and listening courses, it provides practice in basic communication tasks. It parallels the study of grammar in English 081 and English 091, and provides the competence in basic listening and speaking necessary for college work. The course is designed for students who have placement scores indicating they are well below the level needed for success in college level courses.
B. Rationale (for the revision of the course)
English 071 requires revision in light of a refocusing of the priorities of the ESL program in a more clearly academic direction. Although preparing students to use the English language in academic settings has always been an important goal of this course, introducing students to the specific oral communication skills necessary in college classes has begun to take precedence over the teaching of skills in everyday oral communication. The purpose of this revision is to place English 071 on a par with the ESL reading and writing courses in terms of academic rigor.
This refocusing stems from changes in the teaching of oral communication, and in the typical profile of students entering our program. One of these changes is the growing emphasis on the role of vocabulary. Current research indicates that certain words have high impact in an academic setting. These words and phrases have been identified in corpus studies such as the Academic Word List (AWL).[1]
Increasingly, course documents, textbooks, other teaching materials, and the practice of ESL teachers take into account the role of the Academic Word List in preparation for college. Part of this accounting is that before students become familiar with academic vocabulary, it is assumed that they are already well familiar with the most frequently used basic vocabulary found in academic settings. Although academic vocabulary itself is not an appropriate focus of study for English 071, the course should provide the basis for later academic study.
A second change in the ESL program is the need to expand the ways in which current computer technology is used in this course. Technology is currently used in several ways in English 071. One is to provide material for oral communication that is basic to the course content. Examples include listening material recorded on CD or audiotape.
Another use of technology is to provide material that is supplementary to the core material of courses. This includes audio and video material that is used outside of class for practice or expansion of new skills and knowledge. Increasingly, this material is accessed through web sites that are designed as supplements to basic course materials. A revision of the course document provides an opportunity to review available technology resources, and match them appropriately with the objectives of the course.
In addition to the study of vocabulary and the use of computer technology, another important factor that English 071 must address is the development of skills for language learning and academic study. To support this development, the revised English 071 emphasizes oral communication skills that students must have to succeed as future participants in college-level courses, including competence in comprehension of the course content, in production of academic speech, language competence related to interpersonal interaction, and the meta-skills of negotiating comprehension in various settings. The course is also designed to help students function in speaking and listening situations beyond school, including those at work and in civic participation.
C. Course Structure.
English 071 provides students with practice in the components of speaking and listening, and provides an introduction to several areas of knowledge about English.
The course provides instruction and practice in the following areas related to speaking:
· communication of information on a variety of topics, including those related to daily life and academic life;
· production of short stretches of discourse;
· use of communicative strategies to negotiate and receive comprehensible input;
· capability to be understood by sympathetic native speakers on a narrow range of topics, with a sufficient level of competence in pronunciation and grammar that aids in comprehensibility.
The course provides instruction and practice in the following areas related to listening:
· sufficient comprehension to be able to participate in conversations with native speakers, while still relying on “foreigner talk” (that is, a slow rate of speech, repetition, paraphrase, and grammatical simplification);
· understanding language pertaining to concrete, everyday situations (see communicative situations below);
· understanding language related to “common knowledge”[2] connected to academic disciplines, such as science, geography, history, etc.; this understanding includes the ability to take notes on simple academically-oriented talks;
· comprehending and responding to directives and questions with appropriate answers and/or actions (see communicative situations above);
· understanding the implications of different intonation patterns.
Communicative settings
The content of the course includes preparation to participate (using both speaking and listening skills) in a range of communicative settings. These settings include:
"Small talk:"
Settings: classroom, party, store, post office, bus stop, etc.;
Non-academic transactional conversations
In-person or over the phone;
Settings: job interviews, talking with work supervisors, academic advisors, counselors, service providers;
Academic service encounters
Asking for and giving information about course schedules, fees, procedures, reaching a teacher or a counselor;
Classroom situations
Listening to class presentations by teachers
Addressing students/addressing the teacher
Asking the teacher for clarification
Explaining and giving examples
Explaining why one is late, has no homework or was absent; asking for permission to be absent, leave early, or submit an assignment late;
Negotiating appointments
Asking for and giving information regarding time and duration of appointments
Asking to see a doctor/dentist/teacher/tutor/adviser/etc.
Fitting an appointment into a schedule/canceling/changing;
Using the Telephone
Phone numbers, opening and closing a phone conversation, leaving and taking a message, wrong numbers, asking for information.
Other aspects of the content of the course include:
Meta-communication skills:
Getting people's attention/interrupting
Asking for repetition and clarification
Speech acts[3]:
Thanking people and accepting thanks
Giving compliments and replying to compliments
Apologizing
Agreeing and disagreeing
Giving invitations and accepting and refusing invitations
Special situations and their related vocabulary should be incorporated into the course as they arise during the semester, and as students have special needs.
Grammatical structures
The following structures, which are included in the 091 level in the writing curriculum, are reinforced in 071. Together these elements comprise what we mean by a “grammatical accuracy” in speaking.
Inflectional verb morphology:
simple present third person ending
past tense (regular and irregular)
Syntax:
structures within the verb phrase:
modal verbs
imperatives
negation
questions:
yes/no
wh-
structures within the noun phrase:
adjective – noun
pronouns
Other:
existential “there”
Sound system.
An adequate ability to use the English sound system includes the ability to comprehensibly produce all English sound segments in connected discourse, the ability to use and distinguish word stress, and the ability to use and distinguish meaning-changing intonation, such as for yes/no questions.
Specific features to be taught in English 071 include:
Sound segments:
vowel
consonant
semi-vowel/glide
“Suprasegmentals”
introduction to syllable stress in words: pitch, length, volume
introduction to word stress in phrases
Y/N question intonation
Syllable structure:
consonant clusters at the beginning and end of syllables
number of syllables
Discourse Features
An adequate use of discourse features comprises the ability to use and understand discourse markers that are used to:
distinguish between formal and informal situations, and polite and impolite utterances
distinguish appropriate levels of assertiveness.
convey appropriately status and “solidarity” relationships
Vocabulary. Lexical knowledge in the course includes a focus on the meanings and forms of vocabulary items which are members of the two thousand most commonly word families in academic speech. The membership of this group of word families is well defined in corpus studies such as the Academic Word List[4].
D. Classroom activities.
Teaching in the field of TESOL is heavily influenced by a “constructivist” framework, which holds that language learners are active participants in the creation of knowledge about language. A constructivist approach is the basis for many of the classroom activities in an academic ESL classroom; it underlies the emphasis we place on students’ activity, rather than passive observation, and on the role of the teacher as a facilitator rather than lecturer. In second language teaching, an important role for the teacher is to help students sift through the masses of information about language that are available in everyday and academic environments, and to help present that information in a way that can be used in language learning[5].
Methods, activities, and materials for the 071 course are based on two basic assumptions about learning spoken language: 1) that the bulk of the basic language competence of the learner is not learned consciously through knowledge of rules, but is acquired through the exposure to and the use of language in meaningful contexts, and 2) that students can consciously learn rules and other elements of language such as vocabulary through explicit instruction, and the knowledge used in this way can be used to improve accuracy in listening and speaking[6].
Classroom activities at this level promote both language “acquisition” and language “learning.” These two types of knowledge capture the distinction between the development of core knowledge of the language, which is accessed automatically without reference to specific rules or conscious learning (“acquisition”), as opposed to the conscious learning of rules, vocabulary, etc. through study.
The English 071 classroom makes use of a student-centered approach, encouraging students to be responsible for their own learning and to work together to solve problems. Collaboration is encouraged as students use conversational strategies to create meaning, with the instructor as facilitator. The setting for learning in English 071 may be outside the actual classroom itself, as the student completes interviews, seeks information about a specific topic, or gathers information in order to give oral presentations. Any authentic or realistic setting for which the student has adequate language competence, and which provides opportunities to meet the goals of the course is valued as a laboratory for the English 071 student. This could include attending public events. Although this course focuses primarily on speaking and listening, these activities are supported by reading and writing assignments.
Typical general types of classroom activities include:
· pronunciation practice for sound segments, stress, intonation;
· listening to excerpts from lectures, interviews, conversations, poetry, short stories, etc.;
· gathering information from classmates for simple oral presentations.
Listening Tasks:
As part of their work for the course, students:
· listen to short passages of speech for comprehension: simplified examples of academic speech, everyday speech (see “Communicative settings” above)
· listen to and take simple notes on simplified talks on topics related to various disciplines;
· write dictations focused on language elements in course content.
Speaking Tasks:
As part of their work for the course, students:
· work with other students and the teacher on tasks that require the use of spoken language;
· present in-class or recorded short talks (summaries of discussions, interviews, readings).
E. Sample Assignments
Speaking assignments.
One important type of speaking assignment in the course centers on use of language in a setting which is focused on communicating information. This “communicative” type of activity allows students to develop their ability produce language that is fluent and accurate.
In 071, it is important that speaking tasks be carefully crafted so that students are prepared, in terms of conceptual knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, etc. for the task, and that the task, no matter how sophisticated in intellectual terms, can be carried out with the linguistic resources available to the student. Preparation for speaking tasks can take the form of language instruction and study, presentation of class material that relates to the speaking task, etc.
Numerous examples of these tasks, and connected preparatory activities, are available in published teaching materials used in the course. What follows is an example of an “information gap” speaking task in which pairs of students are asked to work together to meet some kind of communication need, and in which each student has only part of the information needed to resolve the situation. In this kind of activity, a student takes the role of either person, has access to some written information, and then works with another student to compete the task.
Assignment example 1: Information gap situation: an appointment with an advisor.
Students see only one of the two sets of information for each person participating in the task:
Information available only to the first student:
Person A (A student)
o You want to meet with an advisor as soon as possible.
o You have a new job.
o You work until 12:00 p.m. every day.
o You want to change your class from 10:10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
o Your phone number is 215 634-6959.
Information available only to the second student:
Person B (A secretary):
o The advisors are all busy now.
o Students have to make an appointment to see an advisor.
o There are three appointments available tomorrow:
Mr. Lee is available at 10:00 a.m.
Mr. Jones is available at 11:30 a.m.