Curriculum Portfolio

Course Description

This course helps students improve their speaking fluency, learn and use new vocabulary, and increase listening capacity in order to function in basic interpersonal communication situations, such as speaking with professors and classmates at a university. 

Course Emphasis

• Listening  40%
• Vocabulary  10%
• Speaking  40%
• Pronunciation  10%

Course Books and Materials

• Prism Listening and Speaking 1 ISBN: 978-1009251211  (online access code required)
  
• Positive Psychology in the Classroom

Course Learning Outcomes

1. Understands level-appropriate* texts.
   1. Understands explicit main ideas.
   2. Understands explicit major details.
   3. Understands salient minor details.
   4. Identifies speaker's purpose.
   5. Identifies speaker's point of view.
2. Effectively implements appropriate listening strategies
   1. Connects content to background knowledge.
   2. Uses suprasegmental cues to guess meaning.
   3. Makes inferences.
   4. Listens for specific information.
   5. Predicts what information will follow.
3. Produces level-appropriate* speech.
   1. Narrates/describes in all major time frames about familiar and general topics.
   2. Actively participates in conversations through proper responses.
   3. Uses organizational patterns when speaking.
   4. Uses transitions to link related ideas.
   5. Uses correct syntax.
   6. Uses correct stress in words and sentences.
   7. Pauses when appropriate.
   8. Uses correct intonation.
   9. Adapts speech to specific audiences and contexts.
4. Effectively implements appropriate speaking strategies.
   1. Uses circumlocution to clarify meaning.
   2. Repeats or rephrases when appropriate.
5. Acquires new vocabulary.
   1. Recognizes high frequency general vocabulary.
   2. Understands high frequency general vocabulary.
   3. Uses high frequency general vocabulary.
   4. Uses context and background knowledge to infer meaning of unfamiliar words.
   5. Uses derivational and inflectional morphemes to guess the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary.

*Level-appropriate text type information is found on the Level Descriptors page.

Assessments and Learning Experiences

Listening

1. Extensive Listening. These learning experiences should build students' ability to listen to extended discourse without interruption. These activities allow students to focus on global understanding and self-directed application of strategies. The nature of extensive listening passages will be dependent on the skill level.


2. Intensive Listening. These learning experiences should build students' ability to recognize and understand the message of the passage by using linguistic information including morphemes, vocabulary words, phonemes, or suprasegmental features. 


3. Interactive Listening. These learning experiences should build students' ability to produce meaningful language (spoken or written) through active listening. Students should be instructed on how to be active listeners and have opportunities to practice listening in collaborative tasks. These tasks focus on students interacting with the interlocutor and/or reacting to the information in the listening passage. 


4. Selective Listening. These learning experiences should build students' ability to use one or more strategies in order to understand key information from the listening passage including main ideas, details, purpose, point of view, inferred meaning, organizational patterns, or suprasegmental features (depending on the outcomes for the level). 

Pronunciation

1. Pronunciation. As with fluency, some speaking activities should be focused on the accuracy of students' speech. The emphasis can be placed on common patterned errors, errors that are stigmatizing, and errors that change meaning. Speaking accuracy tasks may be best implemented when done in coordination with other skill area teachers. Click on the title above for further information.

Speaking

1. Interactive Speaking. These learning experiences build students' ability to use spoken language to interact with an interlocutor. This speech requires the students to combine their listening/reading comprehension with their ability to respond appropriately. 


2. Presentational Speaking. These learning experiences build students' ability to create with the language on their own. These tasks can be spontaneous or planned, depending on what the teacher wants to observe in the students' speech. 


3. Speaking Fluency. There are times when speaking practice should focus specifically on students' fluency. Most tasks can be adjusted to allow the focus to be on this feature of speech.

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