The Lecture-Heavy Speaking Class
A high school ESL teacher has 26 students at Levels 2 and 3. In a 45-minute class, she lectures for about 35 minutes, writes notes on the board, and leads choral repetition of vocabulary words. Students complete worksheets quietly for the remaining time. When she gives a listening quiz using a recorded school announcement, most students miss items involving connected speech such as gonna, wanna, and a lotta, as well as contrastive stress in I didn't say that. Several students say the speaker talks too fast. The teacher concludes that the students need more pronunciation drills and decides to add ten minutes of choral repetition to each class. She also worries that pair work will be noisy and off task, so she avoids it.
1. Diagnose why students are failing the listening quiz. Why is adding more choral repetition unlikely to solve the problem?
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The students are being asked to process authentic connected speech without having been taught how it works. Their failure is not simply a pronunciation deficit.
- Input is not comprehensible enough: Thirty-five minutes of lecture exceeds what Level 2 and 3 students can process, especially without visual support or checking for understanding. More teacher talk does not create more listening development.
- Choral repetition targets production, not comprehension. Repeating words aloud does not teach students to segment gonna into going to, recognize weak forms, or notice contrastive stress. It may improve pronunciation slightly but will not fix listening breakdowns.
- The quiz tests connected speech and stress without prior noticing activities. Students need to hear models, compare written and spoken forms, and practice identifying meaning in context.
- There is little interaction. Pair and small-group tasks give students more chances to negotiate meaning, ask for clarification, and use listening for a purpose.
The teacher should replace some lecture time with supported listening and interaction, not add more drill.
2. Design a 15-minute interactive listening and speaking task that addresses connected speech and stress. Include before, during, and after listening steps.
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Topic: Understanding a school announcement about a schedule change.
Before listening (4 minutes): Pre-teach three phrases in connected speech: gonna, wanna, a lotta. Show the written forms and say both forms. Students predict what the announcement will be about using a picture of a school office and a schedule.
During listening (6 minutes): Students listen twice with a task. First listening: identify the main idea by choosing one of three pictures. Second listening: complete an information gap. Student A has the original schedule; Student B has the new schedule with missing times. They listen and then ask each other: What time does the assembly start? Is it in the gym or the cafeteria? The teacher pauses at key points and asks: Did you hear gonna or going to?
After listening (5 minutes): Pairs role-play asking for clarification: Sorry, did you say 9:15 or 9:50? Can you repeat that? The teacher models contrastive stress with I didn't say Tuesday; I said Thursday. Pairs practice and perform one exchange.
Scaffolds: Sentence frames, a word bank, repeated listening, and a clear purpose for each listen. The task is interactive but structured, which addresses the teacher's concern about noise.
3. How should the teacher assess listening and speaking formatively without overemphasizing pronunciation accuracy?
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The teacher should assess whether students can construct meaning and respond appropriately, not only whether they sound native-like.
Useful formative tools:
- Observation checklist: Does the student identify the main idea, the key detail, and the speaker's intent? Does the student ask for clarification when needed?
- Information-gap completion: Correctly transferred times and locations show listening comprehension.
- Short oral retell: Students explain the announcement in pairs; the teacher listens for key information, not every grammatical error.
- Self-assessment: Students rate how well they understood and name one strategy they used, such as listening for stressed words.
- Recorded pair task: The teacher reviews one or two recordings for interaction strategies, such as asking for repetition or confirming understanding.
A simple analytic rubric can separate comprehension, interaction, fluency, and pronunciation. Pronunciation should be one strand, not the whole score. The teacher should give feedback on meaning first and then select one high-impact pronunciation feature, such as stress in clarification questions, for focused practice.