MODULE 7:

PLANNING A SKILL-BASED LESSON

MODULE OUTCOMES
By the end of this module, students will be able to
 Differentiate the receptive and productive skills
 Sequence a listening/ reading lesson appropriately following 3-stage approach
 Apply the framework in designing a speaking/writing lesson.

CONTENTS:
 Planning a reading/listening lesson
 Planning a speaking/writing lesson

REFERENCES
Knapp, P. (1997). Virtual grammar: Writing as affect/effect (Unpublished PhD thesis). University
of Technology: Sydney.
Lesson plan, Retrieved from https://thichtienganh.com/giao-an-tieng-anh-lop-10-co-ban-thi-diem-
day-du-unit-ban-word/
Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). (2018). Tiếng Anh 10. Nhà xuất bản giáo dục Việt
Nam.
Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). (2018). Tiếng Anh 11. Nhà xuất bản giáo dục Việt
Nam.
Mohammed, R (2019). Teaching receptive and productive skills, Retrieved from
https://www.myenglishpages.com
Richards, J. C., & Schmidt, R. (2010). Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied
linguistics (4th ed.). London: Longman (Pearson Education)

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In the previous module, you have learnt how to select and sequence activities in a language
component lesson to achieve its outcomes. In this module, you are going to learn how to plan an
effective skill lesson.

What is meant by skill?

A skill is commonly defined as an ability to do something well or with expertise. In education, skill
refers to an ability acquired through planned, deliberate, and systematic effort. Students reach
automaticity and become skilled after extensive practice. Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 532) define
a skill as: “An acquired ability to perform an activity well, usually one that is made of a number of
coordinated processes”. In language teaching, language skills are categorized into two categories:
receptive and productive skills.

Receptive and productive skills

Receptive skills
The receptive skills are those skills where meaning is extracted from the spoken or written discourse.
These skills are listening and reading, respectively.
Productive skills
The productive skills, on the other hand, refer to the skills where the students are invited to produce
language in written or spoken forms, that is in (i.e. speaking and writing.)
Teaching language skills
Teaching language skills differs considerably from the approaches adopted in teaching the other
language components, such as grammar, vocabulary, and functions. Grammar, vocabulary, and
functions are usually taught using PPP (i.e. Present, Practice, produce), TBL (i.e. Task-Based-
Learning), or OHE (i.e. Observe, Hypothesize, Experiment) approaches. Teaching language skills
follows quite different procedures.
In the following sections, we will deal with the procedures followed in teaching both receptive and
productive skills.

I. TEACHING RECEPTIVE SKILLS

Three important things should be taken into account when teaching receptive skills:
1. The aim of teaching receptive skills is to help the learners develop the necessary skills to
understand and interpret spoken or written materials. Consequently, the teacher has to avoid
focusing only on testing the learners’ performance in getting the meaning of the texts and
aim, instead, at training them to use the reading and listening strategies that enable them to
deal with any type of text.
2. People read or listen for a purpose. This can be to get specific information or to get a general
idea of the text. Sometimes, listening and reading are done just for pleasure as when we read
poetry or listen to a podcast.
3. The receptive skills are not passive. Listeners and readers make use of important cognitive
processing while listening or reading. Two of the most important activities that occur in the 2
 mind while processing a text are top-down and bottom-up.

1. Top-down processing
Top-down activities refer to the activities where the learners are asked to get a general view of the
passage. Here are some examples of top-down processing activities:
 Using pictures to predict what the topic will be about.
 Providing three or four titles and asking the students to listen to or read the passage to decide
about the most appropriate title for the passage.
 Putting a series of pictures or a sequence of events in the right order.
 Listening to conversations and identifying where they take place and the people involved.
 Asking the students to infer the type of relationships between the people involved.
 Providing headings and asking the students to match them with the different sections of the
passage.
 Providing different pictures to be matched with the different sections.
 Providing students with a set of information to be studied. They then have to listen to or read
the main passage and decide whether or not the same points are mentioned.

2. Bottom-up processing
Bottom-up activities are concerned with things such as individual words, phrases, and sentences.
These activities guide the students to construct a better text meaning. For example, these activities
help the learners to retain information while it is being processed, identify word and clause
boundaries, recognize key transitions, locate referents, understand grammatical relationships
between syntactic elements in an utterance or sentence, and identify sentence functions. Examples
of such activities include:
 What do some underlined words refer to? Or who/what does a pronoun refer to?
 Recognize linking words or sequence speech markers.
 Recognize the parts of speech of a set of words.
 Identify the order of a set of words in the discourse.
 Identify the tense of verbs.
 Identify synonyms or antonyms of a set of words in the text.

3. The receptive skills lesson plan

The comprehension tasks involved in the receptive skills should normally follow a sequence of
activities from getting a general view of the text (i.e. top-down processing) to studying the more
specific and smaller bits/elements that constitute these texts (i.e. bottom-up processing).
The receptive skills lesson plan starts with preparing the students through warm-up and lead-in
activities. Then, the teacher focusses on the strategies (e.g. predicting, inferring meaning from the
context, locating referents, etc.) needed to understand the spoken or the written text. This is followed
by comprehension tasks that aim at, first general, then, detailed comprehension of the content of the
text. The lesson ends with a follow-up activity that summarizes the text, connects it to the leaners’
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daily life experiences, or pushes them to react to it.
Figure 1 shows the procedure adopted to sequence the reading and listening activities:

Figure 1. The receptive skills procedure

The procedure commonly adopted to teach receptive skills can be summarized in the table below.
The steps in this sequence are referred to as pre, while and post stages:

Stages Procedures

Any activity that will put the students in the mood of learning (e.g.
Warm-up riddle, chanting, tongue twister, etc.). It shouldn’t take a lot of time.
Five minutes maximum.

Preparing the students to the topic through:

- The activation of the schematic knowledge about the topic
(e.g. using related pictures or graphs, discussion of related
quotes, etc.)
Lead-in
- Vocabulary pre-teaching (i.e. pre-teaching a limited set of
key vocabulary.)
- Grammar pre-teaching (e.g. the plural forms, time
expressions, form of certain verbs, etc.)

Explicitly teaching the learners about how to use a reading or

Strategy
listening strategy (e.g. using prior knowledge, skimming, scanning,
teaching
Pre-stage locating referents, etc.)

Strategy The learners apply the strategy. They do the task first individually,
While-stage practice then they compare answers in pairs or groups.

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 E.g., True/false exercise
Comprehension Matching
tasks Wh-questions
Sentence completion

E.g., Locating referents.

Matching words with their definitions.
Finding in the text synonyms or antonyms of given words.
Text work
Inferring the meaning of words from the text.
Identifying verb tenses.
Identifying linking words.

E.g., Recalling information from the text.

Re-telling the story.
Reviewing
Summarizing the text.
Completing a chart with the main ideas discussed in the text.

Connecting the text with other texts.

Connecting Connecting the texts with the learners’ lives.
Post-stage Connecting the text with the world.

Using the text as a springboard for teaching other components such

Using the text
Follow-up as writing, speaking, or grammar.

4. Comprehension
Teaching reading or listening comprehension is not testing comprehension. A receptive skill lesson
aims at training the learners to use the necessary tools to understand any type of text. In other words,
the teacher should initiate learners to make use of different strategies to get meaning from written
or spoken text. These strategies are related to either top-down or bottom-up cognitive processing.
Ideally, the teacher should start with a general understanding of the text (i.e. top-down processing)
and end up with a more detailed understanding (i.e. bottom-up processing).

5. Strategies
As readers or listeners, we never start reading or listening completely from a “zero starting-
point.” Prior knowledge is often used to predict what the text will be about or to make sense of what
is said or written. In addition to that, we always look for contextual clues to help us in our quest for
making sense of the text. We also often recall and connect the information in the text to other texts,
to ourselves and the world.
Learners should be trained to make use of strategies such as those described below so that they can
become better readers and listeners. Here are short descriptions of some of these strategies:
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* Predicting
Using information or elements from a passage (e.g. title, headings, pictures, diagrams, words in bold
type, etc.) and personal knowledge to anticipate what the text is about.
* Skimming
Reading a text quickly to get its general idea (i.e. to get the gist) of the content.
* Scanning
Reading a text quickly to locate a specific fact or piece of information. This may be a date, a name
or a figure… This strategy is also referred to as reading for specific details.
* Previewing
Previewing or surveying consists of having an idea about the content and goals of a reading text
before starting to read. To do so, readers look at the title, sub-titles, a picture or read the first sentence
of each paragraph, …
* Questioning
Generating questions about the text and the writer’s intentions. This helps learners get engaged
actively with a text instead of reading it passively.
* Making connections
Readers relate the content of the passage to self, to other texts or to the world. Good readers take
advantage of the connections they make between the current passage with:
 Their personal experiences (text-to-self),
 The content from other texts (text-to-text),
 Their knowledge about the world (text-to-world).
Making connections enhance deeper insight and understanding.
* Inferring
Making meaning of the text by reading between the lines and using personal knowledge. The aim is
to construct meaning beyond what is literally expressed. By inferring, readers are adding information
that is not explicitly stated.
* Summarizing
Summarizing consists of giving a brief statement of a text (using one’s own words) by identifying
the most important points. This strategy helps learners integrate the main ideas in a meaningful way.
* Using background knowledge
Using what is already known to better understand something new. By activating prior knowledge,
readers try to make sense out of what they read by seeing how it fits with what they already know.
* Locating referents
Identifying the antecedents of some words in a text.
* Recalling
Relying on memory to retrieve a specific piece of information or a general idea from a text/ retelling
the content of a text without going back to it
* Evaluating
Critically reflecting on and judging the author’s purpose, attitude, opinion, etc.

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6.General to specific tasks
Teaching receptive skills follows a sequence that starts from general to more specific understanding.
The following table provides examples of tasks that can be assigned in each stage in this sequence
Overall understanding More detailed understanding Language focus

How many people are speaking? What are the words that
What are they talking about? describe Jane’s health
Why are they in the hospital?
Where are the speakers? problem?
What happened to Jane?
Choose an appropriate title. Underline the words/
What was the doctor’s
Match the headings with the expressions that describe her
prognostic?
different sections parents’ feelings.
What tenses are used?

Table 1. General to a specific understanding of texts

7. Authentic texts
Some teachers prefer to use authentic texts. Their rationale is that the students have to be confronted
with real language although they might miss some words. This can be challenging. It is true that
learners sometimes work harder when they are challenged with real language, but this can be
counter-productive and might demotivate them. One way to overcome the problems that may arise
when using authentic texts is to provide some scaffolding (i.e. fine-tuned help when needed) while
they are doing the task. Another way is to redesign authentic materials to fit the learners’ level
without affecting the naturalness of the language. Simplifying the texts does not mean that we should
sacrifice the elements that give a natural pigment to the text.

8. Dealing with potential difficulties

Sometimes, the students find difficulty understanding the spoken or written text. This generally
happens because of the presence of some difficult words or complex grammatical structures. In this
case, it is advisable to pre-teach these language elements through brief presentation and explanation
before starting the comprehension questions. However, teachers should be cautious not to explain
every difficult word or structure when we want our students to make an effort to get the general
meaning of the text. When it is the case, we have to warn our students that they have to get the
general meaning in spite of the presence of difficult language that they might not know.
(Mohammed,2019)

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PRACTICE 1:
This is an extract from Unit 2, English 10. Examine the given lesson plan for Reading lesson
and give comments on the lesson objectives, procedure and sequencing, choice of activities,
and others in the light of what you have learnt in this lesson.

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 I. OBJECTIVES OF THE LESSON
- To promote Ss to develop their reading skills
- Skim the text to get the general idea
- Scan the text to get some specific details

II. PROCEDURE
1. Class organization: (1 minute)
2. Check up: (5 minutes) Ask some Ss to distinguish the use of will and be going to
3. New lesson: (35 minutes)
TEACHER'S ACTIVITIES STUDENTS' ACTIVITIES
Lead in
Inform Ss of the lesson objectives: Read and understand the text about acupuncture

PRE READING Work in groups, do the task

1. Look at the picture and title, do you Acupuncture is a traditional medical treatment which is
know anything about acupuncture widely used in Asian countries such as China and
Vietnam.

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 Let Ss work in groups, do the task
WHILE READING
2. Read the text below. In pairs or groups, - Work in groups, do as appointed
choose the three most interesting things you + one of the oldest medical treatment in the world
learnt about acupuncture. + can ease pain and treat from simple to complicated
Let Ss read the text and do the task ailments.
+ There are more than 2000 acu-points where hair- thin
needles are placed
+ is considered to be very safe
Ask Ss to report their result to class + is used as a reliable alternative to modern medicine
by a lot of people
+ an estimated 8.2 million American adults have tried
acupuncture
3. Read the text quickly and find words which 1. diseases = ailment 2. stop = ease
are closest in meaning to the following 3. pressure point = acupoint 4. care = precaution
Let Ss read the text again, work in pairs and do 5. choice = alternative 6. cure = treatment
the task 7. proof = evidence 8. enhance = promote

4. Read the text again and answer the questions

Ask Ss to work in pairs, read the text again and answer the questions
1. It's promoting harmony between humans and the world around them and a balance between jin and jang
2. It is believed to promote the body's natural healing capacities and enhances its functions
3. There are more than 2000 nowadays
4. They are soreness, slight bleeding or discomfort
5. Those who have electrical or electronic medical devices inside them
6. Acupuncture is considered as a reliable alternative to modern medicine

POST READING Yoga consists of light or medium physical exercise

5. Do you know any other alternative which helps to enhance your strength and healing
therapies like yoga, acupressure, head capacities.
massage or aromatherapy Like acupuncture, Acupressure affects your acupoints.
Put Ss in groups, ask them give information they However, It's considered to be safer. It helps to
know about other alternative therapies release/ease pressure, stress and tiredness
Head massage helps to release pressure, stress and
Ask Ss to report tiredness, helps blood to circulate better.
The aromatherapy use fragrance to make us feel
comfortable, it helps us to reduce stress.

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II. TEACHING PRODUCTIVE SKILLS
Productive skills refer to the skills that enable the learners to produce language in written or spoken
forms (i.e. speaking and writing). Productive language skills, speaking and writing, are important
because they are the observable evidence of language acquisition. The more the speaker or the writer
produces appropriate and coherent language the more we have proof of the progress in the learner’s
language system. Teaching productive skills is also important because written and spoken
communication are basic life skills. In real life, people generally may need to inform, convince or share
ideas. They are also sometimes required to take notes, fill in forms, and write emails, letters, reports or
stories.

1. The productive skills lesson plan

Unlike the receptive skills lesson plan, in addition to understanding and interpreting the discourse, a
productive skills lesson aims at helping learners produce appropriate and coherent messages either in
spoken or written forms. It is true that making sense of, and being able to process, the input is important,
but what is essentially involved in the productive skills is mainly the ability to convey information,
convince or share ideas and feelings.
The productive skills lesson plan should take into consideration the following points:
1. The lesson aims at helping the learners communicate.
2. It is unhelpful to provide a topic and ask the learners to speak or write.
3. Some preparation is needed before setting the task.
4. Generally, we cannot talk or write about something we know nothing about.
5. The choice of the topic is important. The learners should be familiar with it.
6. Before asking the learners to produce language, we have to equip them with techniques and
strategies to facilitate their efforts to speak or write effectively.
7. Communication breakdowns may happen.
8. When difficulties arise, learners have to be able to use specific communication strategies.

Since the aim of teaching receptive skills is to produce language that makes sense to the listener or
reader, the lesson should be designed systematically to include stages that prepare the learners for the
main activity (i.e. speaking or writing), activities that help them to actually produce appropriate
messages and finally some sort of feedback that is either peer or teacher regulated.

Ideally, teaching a productive skill procedure involves the following steps (see Figure 2):
 Providing a model text
Comprehension and model analysis (e.g. studying the genre distinctive features)
 Practice
Working on the language needed to perform the task
 Task setting

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 Understanding the topic/situation (what is the desired outcome)
 Planning
Structuring the output
 Production
- Preparing for the spoken task.
- Going through the process of drafting, revising, and editing
 Feedback
Self or peer-regulated feedback using a checklist or teacher regulated.

Figure 2. Productive skills procedure

2. Procedure to teach productive skills

Teaching productive skills involve the following steps:
1. Provide a model of the target genre we want our students to produce.
2. Work on the model; focus on the meaning and form. The teacher should guide the learners to
analyze the text so that they can discover by themselves its linguistic and formal features.
3. After isolating the different linguistic and formal features of the model text, the learners have
to work on accuracy activities. The objective at this stage is to practice the form and use of the
language that will help them produce accurate messages in terms of pronunciation, spelling,
verb tense, sentence structure, and text layout, etc…
4. After we feel that the learners can use the target language satisfactorily, they are introduced to
a similar task where they have to personalize the language and produce effective messages.
5. Some planning or preparation is needed before production.
- In the case of the writing skill, the learners have to go through a specific process that involves
them to collect ideas, plan, write the first draft, revise it, and edit it.
- In the case of the speaking skill, the learners have to structure their discourse, individually, in

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 pairs, or groups before actual production.
6. Feedback can be given by the learners themselves or by the teacher.
7. To give much more value to the learners’ productions, it is advisable to post the video recording
of their conversations or their writing on social media such as YouTube, Facebook, or on the
class blog if there is any.

3. What elements should be considered in teaching productive skills?

When teaching productive skills, the teacher should also take into consideration other essential
communicative aspects. These can be categorized as follows:
a. The task:
It should be to the point and should include a purpose, the target audience, and information about the
genre. Here is an example of inappropriate productive tasks:
What are the advantages and drawbacks of using smart mobile phones?
The above task can be assigned more appropriately as follows:
You have noticed that your school mates are addict to their mobile phones. Write an essay about
the advantages and drawbacks of using smart mobile phones to be published in the school magazine.
The above task includes information about who is writing what to whom and why?
 Who? – You.
 What? – An essay about the advantages and drawbacks of mobile phones.
 To whom? – Your school mates.
 Why? – Because they are addicted to their mobile phones.

b. The audience
An important aspect of communicative competence is to be able to adjust our language according to
the status, sex, and age of the audience. The way we communicate with a child is different from the
way we communicate with adults. Responding to a formal letter is different from the way we respond
to a personal letter. Moreover, we adapt our interaction according to the social status of the participants.
Addressing a person with higher status – such as a judge during a trial – differs from addressing a
friend. Language output may also be adjusted according to whether we are interacting with a male or a
female participant. Consequently, in any type of communication, the elements that constitute the
audience should be taken into account. Otherwise, the communication might not be appropriate and
may even be flawed.

c. Genre
If the audience refers to the external variables (e.g. age, sex, social status) that contribute to the meaning
of the discourse, the notion of genre is text-based. It focuses on the internal formal and linguistic
elements that are socially agreed upon.
Genre theory has gained so much attention recently in the teaching of productive skills. It is grounded

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on the ‘view that texts can be classifiable and have understandable and predictable forms, structures
and purposes’ (Knapp, 1997, p 113). Different texts have different features and different purposes. An
application letter, for example, has certain distinctive features both at the level of the language used
and at the level of its form.

d. Purpose
What is more, different genres have different purposes. An application letter aims at applying for a job.
However, a personal letter may have other purposes such as informing, inviting, asking for help, etc.
Knowing the conventions for producing different types of texts is important for effective production.

Genres Purposes

Fiction Narrating…

Application letter Applying for a job…

Lecture Explaining, informing…

Essay Arguing, explaining …

Casual conversation Telling a joke/ an anecdote – recounting…

Hiring the most suitable candidate for the job –

Job interview
getting an advertised job…

Debate Arguing, convincing…

e. Cohesion and coherence

Cohesion is achieved through the links between sentences. These links hold a text together and give it
meaning. There are two types of cohesion: lexical and grammatical.
 Grammatical cohesion occurs when the link between sentences is achieved through
grammatical features such as conjunctions, reference, ellipsis, substitution.
 Lexical cohesion, however, differs from grammatical cohesion it is concerned with the semantic
relations between the words of the text. That is, the link is achieved through meaning and not
through grammatical features.

f. Giving feedback
After the task is done, a stage where feedback is delivered is designed. This feedback can be self, peer,
or group-regulated. The teacher might intervene at some point to help and guide the students in the
accomplishment of the task.

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Summary
The procedure can be summarized in the table below:

Stage Procedure

 Lead-in to set the scene for the main task:

 Preparation (e.g. discussing quotes, pre-teaching vocabulary,
 Reading/listening to a model text.
 Meaning focused activities (comprehension tasks)
Opening  Form focused activities. Formal and linguistic text analysis.

 Introducing the topic

The task  Understanding the topic: Who is writing what to whom and why?

 Activities that provide guidance and help learners perform the task:
 Vocabulary needed (e.g. collocation, useful phrases/expressions…)
 Cohesion activities: (e.g. linking words)
 Formal activities: (e.g. lay out of a letter/email, formal characteristics
of an essay, narrative, structure of small talks, conversations,
Practice interviews…)

Doing the task individually, in pairs or in groups.

 In the case of written tasks, learners have to:
 Plan, write the first draft, revise, edit and write the final draft.
 In the case of spoken tasks, learners have to:
 Plan for the task first in written form, in groups or in pairs. They might
Performing want first to think individually, share in pairs, in groups or with the
the task whole class.

 Individually, in pairs or with the whole class.

 The teacher might also note the areas where more remedial work is needed.
Feedback  The teacher might assign a similar task.

Table 2. Procedure of a productive skills lesson

(Mohammed,2019)
PRACTICE 2: This is an extract from English 11, Unit 1. Work in groups to make a draft lesson
plan for the Writing section.

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