Before All Is Said & Heard, Get What You (Might) Need for Blended Oral-Language- Skills Instruction & Improvement.
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Competency Puzzle “Listen & Speak with Understanding” Parts & Pieces E-04.01 to E-09.12 = WorkLife English Oral-Language-Skills SkillsBook 1+ Competency-Based Listening / Speaking Books 2-6.
The Parts & Pieces that target Oral Language Skills (Instruction & Improvement in Listening & Speaking abilities) are lettered & numbered E-00.01 to E-10.10. With InfoGraphics & the Home-Page Chart of Language-Relevant Competencies for Teaching / Learning, here are approximate Competencies listings that show how these segments or their equivalents might fit into a Comprehensive Program.
Competency Puzzle “Listen & Speak with Understanding” Parts & Pieces E-00.01 to E-03.12 = What Might Precede (or Follow) Competency Puzzle Pieces E-04.01 to E-09.12?
Here are the Oral-Language Skills blog posts that came before E-04.01 to E-09.12. Clicking on them will bring you to the full articles, which contain not only verbiage but also many relevant Inserts and Links:
The Listening & Speaking products that the above articles derive their excerpts from are Board & Card Games with Activity & Idea Books—such as The Meanings of Body Language; Vowel Sounds & Spellings; Phonics & Spelling Bingo, P & S Puzzles, & Workbooks; and Oral-Language-Skills Texts for Learners with Ancillaries: Beginners’ Before Speaking with Pronunciation Principles; Before Speaking + Pronunciation Practice; Accent Activities for Speaking.
Before All Is Said & Heard, Get What You (Might) Need for Blended Oral-Language- Skills Instruction & Improvement.
Competency Puzzle “Listen & Speak with Understanding” Pieces E-04.01 to E-09.12 = WorkLife English Oral-Language-Skills SkillsBook 1+ Competency-Based Listening / Speaking Books 2-6.
Instead of Board & Card Games with Activity & Idea Books plus Oral-Language-Skills Texts for Learners with Ancillaries, the Oral-Skills (Listening / Speaking) segments below derive their excerpts from the Integrated Series WorkLife English: 17 Competency-Based Grammars + L / S + R / W Books.These six Parts & Pieces differ from the Products listed & depicted above in that:
[a] the content of each book correlates with that of one or two corresponding texts—in Grammar, Vocabulary, & Subject Matter,
[b] within each Chapter Download, “sub-sets” of Oral-Language Skills material such as Listening Strategies, Notions & Functions, & Pronunciation Practice are combined in various configurations into four Chapter Parts, and
[c] there is (downloadable) Audio involved, all of which is “visible” in printed AudioScripts, available in the related, inbound Instructor’s Manual.
Here are images of their titled covers—to click on for full access to the books, if you wish:
From each of the above Worklife English: Competency-Based Listening / Speaking Books 1-6 (with their one Annotated + 5 InboundInstructor’s Manuals), here’s a typical (representative) Chapter. All six Parts & Pieces contain material for Oral-Language Skills Instruction & Improvement.
Even so, Downloads E-04.01, E-05.02, E-06.04, E-07.04, E-08.06, & E-09.10 differ from one another in [a] the Level of Language Proficiency their users are likely to have or are striving to achieve, [b] their Chapter Numbers / Subject-Matter Themes, and [c] the particular kinds of Pedagogy, Exercises, &/or Activities they offer. Here’s commentary—with Underlined Titles + images of Chapter Openers to click on.
At novice through (pre-)literacy levels, here are Strip Stories on Audio, Vocabulary Items forThings & Numbers, Conversations (about Things to Get) to understand & use as Models, and Sentence-Structure Templates that enable text users to insert Grammar in Conversation. Materials addressing Competencies help learners to Name & Describe Things, Make & Answer Requests, Express (Lack of) Understanding, & Use Polite Expressions.
Integrating Grammar, Vocabulary, & other abilities with Listening / Speaking Instruction, (Low to High) Beginning Oral-Language Learners use the Simple Present with Kinds of Nouns to achieve Competencies related to the Chapter 2 theme of Problems & Solutions.
After phrasing that describes situations, Part One / Better Listening provides Audio Explanations of Problems for listeners to comprehend and then match with feasible Resolutions. Part Two / Pronunciation combines contextualized practice in Vowel Sounds & Ordinal Numbers with Falling Intonation of Statements & Questions.
Part Three / Listening & Speaking Skills has participants work on Words in Fast Speech while Making Appointments (to Solve Problems). And Part Four fosters Communication as they get into Talking About Problems & Solutions.
Listening for Main Ideas & significant Supporting Details, (Low) Intermediate text users ascertain that they comprehend Explanations of Job Duties & other Employment facts—and that they can Ask for Clarification & Repetition when necessary as well as Request & Give relevant Information.
In Part One / Better Listening, language learners get what they need from four typical characters’ work-related Stories. They work with Sounds, Words, & Contractions in (fast) Fluent Speech, summarize what they’ve perceived— checking the text of corresponding AudioScript if it helps, and give their own accounts of employment experiences.
Part Two / Clear Speech pushes for practice in Comprehensible Articulation by contrasting Voiced Vs. Voiceless Consonant Sounds. In Conversations about Jobs, Part Three leads participants to Good Communication by suggesting phrasing designed to insure understanding of what they hear—and to check that their listeners get what they have said. And Part Four / Practical Listening offers Advice on How to Interview Successfully with practice doing so in (simulated and/or real) Employment Interviews.
(High) Intermediate text users hear three Part One / Cross-Cultural Conversations that contrast Eating & Drinking Customs in various cultures. With Future, Past, & Present forms, they use cues + their own Vocabulary to Summarize the Stories. Then they relate their own experiences & observations.
Part Two / Practical Listening provides Audio descriptions of (how to enjoy) typical dishes around the world. (Checking on their content with the corresponding AudioScript if needed,) Speakers sum up (one of) these before contributing their own, analogous account of an interesting kind of food.
Part Three / Speaking Activities provides (Sequencing & Cooking) Vocabulary to use (not not) in exchanging Recipes. And Part Four / Questions & Answers introduces a new Oral-Communication Format to use in Comparisons (among three or more Cultures)—in this case, of Food Customs.
Advancing & (Low) Advanced text users interested in Going Places might enjoy reacting orally to Humor—in Chapter 6, cartoons depicting commonly frustrating travel situations that may occur. Especially when using targeted Grammar (like Modal-Verb Phrasing), participants get to “warm up” to Listening & Speaking Instruction by relating their own experiences at the start.
Then in Part One / Learning to Listen, they get to benefit from Pre-Listening Vocabulary plus illustrations when attending to a longer, more involved account of a difficult trip (on Audio and in a corresponding Script). They demonstrate general comprehension by Getting the Main Ideas. Then more specifically, they reinforce what they’ve been hearing or thinking by completing sentences with Travel Advice based on (the opposites of) what happened in the Story. As usual, there’s opportunity to relate their own experiences & observations, sharing what they know or want to learn.
Part Two offers practice in Pronunciation Through Role-Play. Its ModelConversation at a Travel Agency airs dialogue that has plenty of typical Sound-Linking (Vowels to Vowels, Vowels to Consonants, & Consonants to Consonants). Once learners get the hang of it, they get to utilize their evolving fluency in their own exchanges (about Cruises, Air Travel, Train Travel, & Car Rental).
Part Three / Practical Listening has Listeners—who later become Talkers—Gathering & Using Travel Information, which they later exchange in Part Four / Language Activities. If they’d picked up what’s helpful about good listening & expressive speech in the Chapter, at its end they’ll do a good job at—and get a kick out of—Planning a Vacation.
Learners of Advanced-Level English may want to acquire refined Listening Strategies to use when interpreting / learning from the Media, especially when following the plots of movies or series with sequences of events. Part One promotes Good Listening by having them “absorb the opinions” of two (noted but pretend) Movie Reviewers, interpret “exaggerated language,” summarize film Story Lines, make expressive use of Idioms, and collect Reasoning for strongly articulated views.
Then in Part Two / Speaking Naturally, text users get to Use Vivid, Descriptive Language to make their points of view clearer and more convincing. Part Three invites them to make Inferences while completing Listening Tasks—in this case, choosing Summarizing Statements for simulated Movie Clips 1-8. They then record (part of) a (TV) movie or episode to watch together—inferring its genre, predicting and then following its plot, and finally “reviewing” it by expressing their opinions. Based on simulated yet commonplace kinds of Movie Advertising, Part Four / Conversation Activities offer more opportunity to reinforce or improve these Oral-Language abilities.
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About Work/Life English For over 35 years, Work/Life English has been dedicated to improving the lives of English language learners. We offer a comprehensive range of fun, effective English language improvement lessons and activities to help adult education ESL educators successfully engage their English language students and improve their English competencies, leading to a host of positive effects in students’ professional and personal lives. Better English, Better Life. For more information, visit www.worklifeenglish.com.
