Teacher Book

Acadsoc Spoken English for Beginners

© Acadsoc Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

 Contents
1. Introduction 3. Lesson breakdown
a) New features a) Sound
b) Scope & Sequence b) Dialogue
c) Trial lessons c) Practice 2

2. Types of lessons d) Review

a) Normal lesson △ Teaching tips
b) Review lesson 4. Detailed curriculum
c) Speaking practice lesson

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1 Introduction

Acadsoc Spoken English for Beginners provides adult learners with a practical spoken English
class. It fills the gap in the current Acadsoc adult spoken English courses as an entry-level one, 3

linking up with Learn and Talk 0 as well as New Classic English, and contributing to a complete
and comprehensive Acadsoc adults spoken English learning path. This course is primarily
aimed at students who have little or no prior spoken English learning experience. We hope it
can help adult students raise English learning interest, build their confidence, and improve
their English speaking skills.

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1 New features 1
• The knowledge of each lesson has a strong correlation. This course aims at helping students learn
American phonetic symbols. The regular lesson either includes the learning of American phonetic symbol
or a comparison of two similar American phonetic symbols, followed by a short sentence, 4 words and a
short dialogue which contains the phonetic symbol(s).
• The course has strong practicality. Topics selected in this course are close to the real life of adult students,
and there are two different scenarios provided in the dialogue for students to apply phrases into real
conversations.

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New features 2

• This course focuses on the improvement of students‘ spoken language. The recognition and
understanding of words, sentences and dialogues are more important than the accuracy of
spelling and dictation of words, sentences and dialogues. Therefore, spelling exercises are not
emphasized in each lesson.

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New features 3
• Each lesson is equipped with audio recordings corresponding to phonetic symbols, sentences,
vocabulary, and short dialogues. A large number of high-definition pictures are inserted in each slide and
PDF files to facilitate students’ learning. Instructions are available in both Chinese and English.

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1 New features 4
• Each lesson provides complete preview and after-class exercises. The preview presents a phonetic symbol, a
short sentence and four key words with audio and illustration, getting students prepared for the forthcoming
activities.
• Each session is equipped with an after-class exercise to help students review all the key knowledge points
learned in the class and allow students to have more opportunities to practice. Teachers are supposed to
remind students to complete preview before class, review the knowledge points after class, and complete the
after-class exercises.

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Scope & Sequence

Item Content

Phonetic symbols 40 standard American phonetic symbols.

Sentences 430 simple sentences about name, age, hobbies, food and etc. 8

Vocabulary 250 words about number, time, date, color, weather and etc.

Dialogues 71 dialogues about greeting, work, holidays, shopping and etc.

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1
Trial lessons

Course Trial Lesson Topic

• Acadsoc Spoken English for Beginners
Trial Lesson 1 How are you? has three trial lessons.
• The materials of the trial lessons don’t
Acadsoc 9
differ much from those of the VIP
Spoken English Trial Lesson 2 How’s it going? lessons, yet with a smaller volume.
for Beginners You may spend more time on
knowing the student and interacting
Trial Lesson 3 See you later. with him/her.
• Good luck! ☺

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2 Types of lessons
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There are 3 types of lessons in Acadsoc Spoken English for Beginners:
Regular lessons, Review lessons, and Speaking practice lessons.

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Regular lesson

• A typical regular lesson consists of four parts: Sound, Dialogue, Practice, and Review.
• We’ll talk about the teaching methods you may use of each part in 3. Class Content.

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2 Review lesson

• This type of lesson comes at the end of each unit. It helps students to review
what they’ve learned in the previous lessons.

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2
Speaking Practice lesson

• Speaking practice class will be conducted in the form of three situational practices relating
to the previous three units.
• In this lesson, students will be given some hints to complete the dialogues. They will need
to use the words, phrases and expressions learned in the previous lessons to perform tasks.

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3 Lesson breakdown
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Each regular lesson consists of four parts: Sound, Dialogue, Practice, and
Review.

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3 Part 1 Sound
• In this part, phonetic symbols are presented with related words, Chinese
translation and illustration.

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3 Teaching Instruction 1
• According to Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis, negative emotional
responses like anxiety and boredom prevent efficient processing of the
language input. Therefore, you can start the lesson with small talk about
students’ daily life or questions about the topic of the current lesson to build
a relaxing and positive learning environment. Please do not spend too much
time on warm-up. The suggested time are given on the top right corner of
each page. 16

• When you teach the phonetic symbols, please enunciate them and show the
motions of your mouth/ tongue/ breath for students to imitate. You can also
zoom in the window of your webcam and use gestures to show your students
the techniques in pronouncing the phonetic symbols and words. Besides,
you can remind them to memorize the letter combinations for a specific
sound to help them build phonetic awareness.

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3 Part 2 Dialogue

• Language points and expressions are presented in dialogues with audio recordings. Then
key sentences will be explained word by word with Chinese translation.
• At the end of each lesson there is a knowledge expansion, including alternative expressions
related to the topic.

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3 Teaching Instruction 2
• According to the theory of Communicative Approach, learning language
successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning. For adult students,
learning a foreign language is for self-improvement and practical use. Therefore, the
main focus of this course is to develop their English communication skills through a
large amount of speaking practice. In view of this, authentic materials are provided
to simulate the situations students may encounter in their daily life to increase their
language input. 18

• In this part, you can first play the audio to let students imitate and ask them to find the
words that contain the phonetic symbols they just learned. Then you can lead students
to read the dialogue, and make explanations when necessary. After this, you can do a
role-play with your students based on the given situations to correct their
pronunciation and intonation. After making sure they have fully understood the text,
you can remind them of the key sentence structures and alternative expressions, and
then encourage your students to make sentences with them.
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3 Part 3 Practice
• Various learning activities are designed to develop students’ speaking skills and consolidate
the phonetic symbols.

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3 Teaching Instruction 3
• To help students consolidate the knowledge points, interactive exercises are
provided to reinforce students’ mastery in three aspects: the pronunciation of the
phonetic symbols, the comprehension of the dialogues, and the application of
language structures.

• Since the bilingual instructions are specified for each tasks, please do not spend
too much time on explaining the instructions. You can instruct the student to use 20
the paint brush in the tool bar to give their answers, and lead them to read the
text after revealing the correct answers.

• It is preferable not to interrupt students’ speaking for error correction, since this
course is designed to build students’ confidence in speaking English, fluency
should be the primary learning focus. Therefore, your role is to facilitate students
in giving utterance. You can use questions to induce them to talk more and
remind them of the minor mistakes in an indirect way to encourage self-correction.
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3 Part 4 Review
• Students are encouraged to recap the sound, words, sentences and the dialogue at the end
of each class.

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Teaching Instruction 4

• A brief summary is very important for students to recap what they have
learned before finishing the lesson, so please lead them to read the language
points and kindly remind them to read the knowledge expansion and review
after class.
• If you are handling lessons for both children and adult students, please adjust 22

your teaching methods for different age groups. Compared to students under
18, adult students are more definite about their language level and learning
goal. Therefore, it is necessary for you to talk to them about their doubts and
expectations for the course in order to give them useful advice on improving
their language proficiency. Besides, please carefully listen to their feedback
and remind them to leave five-star reviews if they are satisfied with the lesson.

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• Bloom’s Taxonomy provides

common language about
learning goals and objectives.
More importantly, it provides a
basis for us to examine our
teaching approaches. 23

• When you teach students of

different levels, please use
appropriate follow-up
questions to help students
improve their language and
thinking skills.

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3 Appropriate Times for L1(Chinese) Use
Some teachers believe it is important to use only English in the classroom. However, it can
be useful to use your students’ L1 in certain situations. The chart shows examples of times
when the L1 can be useful.

L1 is useful when … Reason Examples

giving directions for a new or ⚫ You want to make sure students a jigsaw reading activity
complicated activity. understand how to complete each
step of an activity.
⚫ Knowing how to do the activity is 24
more important than hearing the
instructions in English.

a quick translation or explanation ⚫You want to help students understand Students are reading about teen
would help students. a new word. It is not a focus word, fashion. The phrase ‘trend spotters’
and it would take too much class time appears in the text.
to explain it in English. Students are having trouble
⚫Grammatical rules and structures are understanding the unreal conditional (If
difficult and not similar to the L1. I had a $1,000,000,…)

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3 Giving Feedback
Constructive feedback

Knowing the learning aim of an activity and its link to learning outcome can guide your feedback. For
example, if the learning outcome is to use free time activity verbs, you can focus your feedback on that.
You can give positive feedback to students who use a variety of these verbs. Giving specific suggestions for
improvement is one way to make feedback constructive. For example, if a student says I do many mistakes
on my homework, you might correct by rephrasing: Why do you make those mistakes? Another strategy is
to write mistakes on the board and explain how to correct them.

When to give feedback 25

• Observe student work Knowing when to give feedback is as important

During • Individual feedback on errors as knowing how to give it. One time to give
feedback is during an activity. If you notice
errors that might stop students from achieving
• Whole class feedback the learning outcome, you can give feedback
After • Focus on common errors to the students making those errors. You can
practice with the student, and provide more
feedback until the student shows improvement.

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3 Descriptors of supportive teacher-student talk

1. Extend teacher-student exchanges by asking follow-up questions that can lead to active
student participation and negotiation of meaning.

2. Give student time to think and hold back from immediately providing the desired wording.

3. Use the student’s wording as a basis for modeling and reformulating new language to
make his/ her language more complete and explicit. 26

4. Have student explain orally how he/ she solved a problem to check on the reasoning
process and recast what the student has said.

5. Listen to what the student is saying (not only for the “prescribed” answers you have in your
head) and respond accordingly.

6. Keep a good balance between “open” and “display” question.

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4 Detailed Curriculum
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The course consists of 100 classes divided into 21 units. There are 71 regular
lessons, followed by 21 review lessons and 8 speaking practice lessons.

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