Listen Up Academic Ears

A comprehensive 60-minute lesson for 10th-grade students focused on active listening, note-taking strategies, and identifying key information in academic settings.

MCMakaela Carias

Listen Up Academic Ears

A comprehensive 60-minute lesson for 10th-grade students focused on active listening, note-taking strategies, and identifying key information in academic settings.

MCMakaela Carias

The Speech Lab

This sequence targets the mechanical difficulties of understanding natural, fast-paced English. Students explore phonological rules like linking, elision, and assimilation to decode authentic, fluid speech patterns found in campus social life.

Lenny

Shadowing Natural Speech

Students engage in a 'shadowing' technique, repeating audio immediately after hearing it to internalize the rhythm and flow of connected speech. This active processing reinforces their ability to predict and process sound streams.

Lenny

Podcast Analysis Organizer

A detailed student evidence log for the final podcast project, providing sections for analyzing intent, vocal forensics, and bias check.

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Pragmatic Power

This sequence guides intermediate ESL students through the nuances of pragmatic meaning in English. Students will learn to decode indirect speech, sarcasm, hedging language, and emotional undertones in academic and social contexts to improve their listening comprehension and communicative competence.

Lenny

Grammatical Reductions

Focusing on function words, this lesson tackles common reductions like 'gonna,' 'wanna,' and weak forms of auxiliary verbs. Students analyze unscripted interviews to catch these reductions in context.

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Media Critic Project Guide

A guide for the final project where students select a podcast episode, analyze its intent and bias, and present their findings, including a checklist and a performance rubric.

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Lecture Logic

This sequence equips intermediate ESL students with the linguistic and cognitive tools needed to navigate university lectures. It covers discourse markers, hierarchy of information, identifying tangents, note-taking systems, and synthesizing long-form academic speech.

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Assimilation and Sound Changes

Students learn how sounds influence their neighbors (e.g., 'hand bag' becoming 'hambag'). The lesson uses minimal pair discrimination and dictation exercises to train ears to recognize words despite phonological changes.

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Media Critic Launch Slides

Slides for the final project launch, introducing the media critic mission, criteria for analyzing podcasts, and methods for citing audio evidence.

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Sound Studio English

A comprehensive 5-lesson sequence for 10th-grade intermediate ESL students focused on decoding natural spoken English, including connected speech, reductions, idioms, and prosody. Students move from 'textbook' understanding to recognizing the fluid rhythms and figurative language of native speakers.

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The Lecture Hall

Students participate in a university-style mini-lecture simulation. They apply all learned strategies—signpost identification, Cornell note-taking, and synthesis—to capture information and complete a formal assessment.

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The Sound Sleuths

A 10th-grade ESL sequence focused on advanced listening skills. Students learn to detect bias, analyze tone, identify rhetorical devices, and infer speaker relationships through various audio sources like news, speeches, and podcasts.

Lenny

Listen Up Academic Ears

Academic Ears Lesson Plan

Art of Listening Slides

Audio Clips Activity

Note-Taking Templates Worksheet

Listening Scripts Teacher Guide

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The Speech Lab

Shadowing Natural Speech

Podcast Analysis Organizer

Pragmatic Power

Grammatical Reductions

Media Critic Project Guide

Lecture Logic

Assimilation and Sound Changes

Media Critic Launch Slides

Sound Studio English

The Lecture Hall

The Sound Sleuths