University TESOL 22 Module: Evaluating ESL Material and Lesson Plan

This report presents a critical evaluation of ESL teaching materials designed to enhance spoken and vocabulary skills for advanced learners, specifically focusing on a unit from the "Compelling Conversations" textbook. The evaluation examines the material's theoretical underpinnings, particularly the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, and assesses its efficacy and contextual appropriateness. The analysis considers the material's strengths in promoting communicative competence and critical thinking, while also acknowledging limitations in addressing learner diversity. The second part of the report involves designing a lesson plan incorporating adaptations based on Kumaravadivelu's postmethod macrostrategies to address identified limitations and enhance the learning experience. The lesson plan covers pre-activities, activities, and follow-up tasks designed to facilitate spoken skills development for advanced ESL learners.

Running head: TESOL
TESOL
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1TESOL
PART A – Critical Evaluation
Introduction
In English as Second Language, English as Foreign Language as well as in English
Language Teaching, the teaching material is one of the most crucial elements that come into
play (Tomlinson, 2012). In that aspect, we need to remember that the design of a teaching
material is not random but rather holds a multitude of theoretical underpinnings that make it
functional (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2011). When it comes to ESL or EFL materials, the
design is usually based on and targeted towards providing one of the following skill
development trainings – Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing (Gomathi, 2014), Vocabulary
and Grammar (Baecher, Farnsworth & Ediger, 2014). Furthermore, the purpose of a material
is not to identify and assume the role of a teacher completely but rather to aid the teacher in
the effective delivery of a particular teaching concept (McGreal et al., 2013). In that regard
the material serves the purpose of an aide, or a guide that can help the students even when the
teacher is absent. In the following section, we will be looking at an extract from a material
designed for teaching spoken and vocabulary skills to ESL learners and attempting to break
down and analyse the material from its underlying theoretical perspective.
Discussion
It has been pointed out that the teaching materials that is used in classroom usually
justifies it's presented in the classroom by promoting the linguistic, cultural and general
education aims for the target language programme. It should also facilitate the integration of
the various aspects of language teaching with those of cross curriculum and cross cultural
programmes. It has also been pointed our that in order to be termed a fruitful lesson material,
it should fulfil the primary criteria for the teachers which are

2TESOL
1. They should act as support to the teacher by providing the linguistic input that they
can use.
2. They supply the teacher with a variety of exercises and skill development games that
they can use in the classroom to help the students learn the language.
3. Each material is designed to meet a certain set criteria in terms of syllabus or
curriculum requirement as prescribed for the level.
At the same time, these material must also fulfil some treatments for the students/learner’s as
1. These materials act as concrete tools for the learner's to be able to get exposed to the
target language.
2. They provided enough scaffolding to the learner's to be able to follow a set course for
the study by paid and using the language to learn it well.
The textbook that we are reviewing here is titled “Compelling Conversations”, an
advanced level ESL textbook for development of spoken and vocabulary skills (Roth &
Aberson, 2010, pp. 7-9). We are reviewing the 3rd unit of the book which is dedicated towards
developing home based conversational skills. The unit will be reviewed through the
viewpoint of teacher’s facilitation for teaching, learner's Easter and efficacy of learning and
the cultural significance of the unit. At the same time, three review will also be backed by
theoretical underpinnings that concern the aspect of lesson planning.
The first thing that we need to remember is that the book is designed for advanced
level learners. This automatically entails that the lesson plans would be much more complex
and instead of grammatical requirements, would be much more focussed on discourse
elements.
The first section of the third unit in the book is titled “Sharing Experiences”
(Appendix 1). This section is focussed upon sharing home experiences with a conversation

3TESOL
partner. This section has a series of questions that are directed towards understanding and
explaining the personal feelings and connections that one feels with their home. According to
the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), the advanced (C1 and C2) levels
are defined as those where the learners are able to (North, 2014):
1. Understand everything that is heard or read with ease.
2. Can express him/herself spontaneously, fluently and precisely without much
searching for expressions.
3. Can use the target language efficiently for social, academic and professional purposes.
Going by those standards, the first activity is a well-structured inclusion as it not only
enables the learner to cognitively engage with the subject but also allows the learner to
actively use learned vocabulary, syntax and discourse markers for engaging in the
conversation (Barraja-Rohan, 2011).
The second section is dedicated towards vocabulary. In this section, the learner is
asked about which of the vocabularies is already known and then in collaboration with a
partner, use each of the vocabulary words to formulate a meaningful sentence. This section is
important as it enables the learner’s critical thinking (Shirkhani and Fahim, 2011),
communicative and collaborative capabilities. Moreover, it also targets a niche category of
words, especially those concerned with household and relative everyday terminology like
mortgage, checklist, neighbourhood, suburb, appliances etc. indicating that the objective here
is to improve the learner’s abilities to target and modify the language for specific context
based purposes. The following section is one on sayings where a few proverbs and sayings
are listed. The learner is asked to identify the meanings of those proverbs, discuss them with
a partner and highlight their favourite. This section therefore targets the ability to understand
metaphorical and symbolic thought processes as well as enables the learner to understand the
target language culture in depth (Kathparia & Carmel, 2011).

4TESOL
The following section is a continuation of the conversation in the first section. The
rationale for including a continuation section here is to engage the students in relating back to
the beginning of the lesson plan. Furthermore, it also allows for the learner to as well as the
teacher to evaluate specific developments that are noticed in the learner between the first part
of the section and the continuation part, given that there have been sections in between that
have targeted specific developmental areas like vocabulary, communication, critical thinking
and proverbial analysis. Furthermore, an in depth analysis of the questions presented in the
first section and the continuation section gives us a few clarifications regarding the partial
inclusion of the section. Awe can see that in the first part of the section provided at the
beginning, the questions that are asked are more direct and experiential. For instance:
4. Did you have a checklist when looking for a home? What was on it?
5. What legal documents did you have to sign before moving in? Lease? Mortgage? Other?
Did you have to pay any fees?
6. What do you like about it? How long did it take you make a decision?
7. What do you dislike about it? What, if anything, annoys you?
In contrast, the second part of the section targets the more subjective and analytical
part of the learner by asking questions that require an emotionally engaging level of thought
and connection. For instance:
5. Which was your favorite room? Why?
6. Which room was the heart of your childhood home?
7. Have you ever felt homesick? What did you miss the most?
8. What is your favorite childhood memory at home?
From a structural point of view, this inclusion can be justified by explaining that the
continuation section comes after the learner has effectively engaged with proverbs which
entails that the learner has acquired the ability to critically analyse the hidden meanings in a

5TESOL
discourse. Therefore asking questions that enable the learner to engage with the emotionally
significant part of his/her life and turn that into a learning material is a fruitful method.
The final section in the unit is based on quotations and engages the learner in a group
based activity where the learner discusses famous quotes, their meanings and significance
and which quote is the learner’s favourite. This section is a more advanced adaptation of the
section involving proverbs. Likewise, it also allows the learner to engage in a group activity
focusing on communication skill development but also rigorously engages the learner’s
critical thinking and reasoning skills where the learner must be able to decode the meanings
of the quotes and elaborate on them.
Theories and approaches
Most of the activities in the unit are group based activities while others are based on
communication through which the learner is able to build upon the skillset that s/he already
possesses. This is indicative of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or the
communicative approach (Canale, 2014). It emphasises the aspect of interaction as the means
and objective of language teaching and learning. The theoretical underpinning behind the
approach is the Communicative Competence theory proposed by Dell Hymes (Savignon,
2018). The theory refers to a user’s grammatical knowledge of linguistic elements like
phonology, morphology and syntax and the social knowledge and competence which allows
the individual to use a particular language to his communicative benefit. The unit described
above can be identified to be based upon the CLT approach because primarily, it engages the
learner in a predominantly communicative environment where the aspect of interpersonal
interaction is highlighted as the primary exploratory element.
According to Canale (2014), ESL learners must, in addition to acquiring vocabulary,
phonological and syntactic rules, must also learn the sociolinguistic patterns of the language
they are learning in order to develop full competence. From a methodological viewpoint,

6TESOL
Woods and Cakir (2011) have highlighted that the aspect of knowledge and belief regarding
communicativeness in language teaching has been underexplored whereas CLT forms one of
the crucial elements in ESL. From that perspective, they have developed that the foundation
of Communicative Language Learning as well as teaching can be based upon a personal –
interpersonal dimension and a theoretical – practical dimension (Woods & Cakir, 2011)
where both these dimensions interact to form an effective teaching learning solution. This
notion strongly supports the practicality of the unit/material that has been critically reviewed
above, establishing that from a communicative perspective, the material is suitable enough to
develop the linguistic and sociolinguistic skills as well as improve the learner’s
communicative competence.
Limitations of the material
One crucial limitation of the material that has been used here is that it does not allow
much opportunities for learner diversities to be included. As Farrell (2015) indicates, one
crucial requirement in a lesson plan is the active involvement of all the learners in the
classroom based on their specific styles of learning (Wong & Nunan, 2011). Under such an
assumption, the learner involvement would entail opportunities for engagement based on the
different learning styles; whether the learners are more comfortable in a speaking session or a
reading session or a purely kinaesthetic activity based lesson. This unit and the material in
particular addresses the communicative style of language learning entailing that the learners
with a predominance of reading and listening skills and styles based on those skills would
have an advantage over those learners whose primary styles are more physically engaging. In
such a case, the teacher must make specific arrangements in the lesson plan, particularly
pertaining to the macrostrategy and microstrategy approach as highlighted by
Kumaravadivelu (1994). One such modification can be the inclusion of a group based role-
play activity where select learners can get involved using the same material and method but

7TESOL
with a modified version of select activities. Such an adaptation is therefore based on the
Community Language Learning method as developed by Charles A. Curran (Byram & Hu,
2013).

8TESOL
PART B – Lesson plan
Topic/Sub-topic Being Home
Learners'profile ESL – Advanced
Lesson objectives Spoken Skills
Lesson duration 60 minutes
Lesson
Phases
Activities/Questions Materials/Resources
Pre-activities
(5-10
Minutes)
Bring the learners’ attention to the previously discussed
materials on speaking. Ask reflective and content specific
questions to interpret current level of understanding:
e.g.
What did we discuss about proverbs in the last class? How
do we differentiate between literal speech and proverbial
speech?
How would you use metaphors in your speech to describe
what you are feeling?
Introduce the topic to the learners and provide a copy of the
unit to each of them.
Form primary groups according to first task (team of two or
group of four etc.)
Copy of unit 3 from
textbook
Main
activities
(10 minutes)
(10 -15
minute
Sharing experiences activity (Appendix 1) –
Put the learners in groups of two and spread them across the
classroom. Ask them to go over the first unit activity for two
minutes.
Pick a volunteer group and ask them to present the
conversation to the whole class.
There is no need for every group to finish all the questions,
they can select which questions to answer.
Ensure that their way of questioning is meaningful and the
responses correlate properly with the topic.
Vocabulary activity (Appendix 1) –
Ask a learner group to select a few words that might belong

9TESOL
(10-20
minutes)
in a same category for an action (for instance, Checklist,
Fees, Repairs, Hardware and Appliances can belong in a
same category if the selected action is some kind of repair
work in home)
Give the learner group 2-3 minutes to build a scenario
among themselves (for instance the scenario can be a family
discussion on home renovation and repair). Ensure that the
scenario is in correlation with the topic.
Engage the group in a small skit to be presented in the class.
The learners must ensure that the words from the vocabulary
list that they selected are efficiently used in the skit within
conversations.
Quotations activity (Appendix 1) -
Perform this activity in the form of a classroom presentation
that can be done either individually, in a team of two or in a
group.
Ask the learner groups to take up one of the quotations from
the list that they would want to work on.
Ask the groups to work on their individual quotations
among themselves where they must try to identify the
central theme of the quotation and two examples pertaining
to their home settings which can be used to describe that
quotation (preparation should not take more than five
minutes).
Afterwards, ask a volunteer group to give a small five
minute discussion based presentation on the quotation they
have selected. Their presentation should include an
explanation of what they understood about the quotation
followed by two examples from their household scenario
that they have selected to explain the quotation.
After each activity, provide feedback to the learners on their
phonological, morphological and syntactic usage. Also
provide feedback regarding their sociolinguistic
understanding.
Post-activities Reflection and recap
Start by asking which of the activities were the most liked

10TESOL
5 minutes by the learners and why.
After a brief Q/A session, ask a few learners to present their
views on how, if they were teachers of English to a class of
ESL learners, they could use the activities to their benefit
themselves.
Present three different categories of ESL learners – Grade 5
foreign language students in school, a class of adult
immigrants who travelled to a new country for work and a
small group of foreign diplomats and government officials.

11TESOL
Lesson Plan 2
This lesson plan is based upon the ESL language training activities as described in Klipper’s
book titled “Keep talking – communicative fluency activities for language teaching
activities”.
Topic/Sub-topic Spoken social skills
Learners'profile Intermediate level
Lesson objectives Spoken skills
Lesson duration 40 minutes
Lesson
Phases
Activities/Questions Materials/Resources
Pre-
activities
10 minutes
Identity card game
Form the learner in pairs.
Provide a blank identity card ask the learners to
interview their partners. Based on their response
each learner should introduce their partners to the
class.
Check Appendix 2 for appropriate additional data.
Identity cards
template (Appendix
2, image 4)
Main
activity
(30
minutes)
Opinion poll based group interview
Form a learner group of more than four.
Distribute an opinion template on a particular topic
(for instance what one takes for breakfast,
Appendix 2, image 5). Ensure that each group has a
different topic and the same number of participants
are in each group.
Members of the group should fill up the template
taking turns.
Once done, the groups are mixed and remade such
that in each group, there is one learner from each
different topic.
Make one learner the interviewee while the others
are interviewers that ask him/her random questions
Opinion poll template
(Appendix 2, image
5)