Detailed Sample Task: EAL Literacy
CLB 3L - Listening
Comprehending Information
Employment:
At the Workplace
Real-World Task
Listen to feedback from a supervisor about things that are going well.
Planning Context
Helpful Knowledge:
- Present continuous
Context:
- In Canada, it is common for supervisors (and instructors) to give you feedback on what you’re doing well and on any areas where you need to improve.
Vocabulary and Grammar
Sample Vocabulary:
- supervisor
- employee
- workplace
- feedback
- responsibilities
- adjectives: punctual, hardworking, responsible, helpful, focused, reliable
Sample Grammar:
- Placement of adjectives with present simple, e.g. You are focused/He is a focused employee.
Knowledge and Strategies
Textual and Functional Knowledge:
- Supervisors will usually say your name and introduce the topic before giving you feedback.
Sociolinguistic Knowledge:
- Supervisors will often give you positive feedback both for encouragement and to show you what you are doing well. If supervisors have negative feedback or criticism, it is common to sandwich it between two positive comments.
- Positive feedback and performance reviews are often used to make decisions on promotions, moving to a different role, and pay raises.
Activities and Tasks
Sample Skill-Building Activities:
- Discuss as a class: What is feedback? What is the purpose of feedback? Who gives you feedback (elicit teacher/instructor and supervisor, and possibly other people such as parent, grandparent, elder, religious leader, etc.)? Who do you give feedback to (e.g. child, employee, younger family member)? Is feedback positive or negative? Discuss how it can be both. If you don’t give feedback to anyone, who do you give compliments to?
- In a small group, discuss whether it’s important to give/receive positive feedback. Work together to write simple examples of positive feedback. Discuss these examples as a class.
- Teach the workplace vocabulary: supervisor, employee, workplace, feedback, responsibilities. Practice these words using a variety of activities such as copying, matching, and fill in the blanks.
- Teach adjectives such as punctual, hardworking, responsible, helpful, focused, reliable. Have learners copy each word into a very simple sentence.
- Use vocabulary cards with words and clear pictures to practice vocabulary. Use TPR (Total Physical Response). After several rounds, have a learner call out the words. Play games such as Bingo, Matching, Go Fish, Memory, and Charades.
- Incorporate phonics activities based on vocabulary words and other vocabulary related to the topic.
- Write simple sentences with am/is/are and an adjective to describe a picture, e.g. This is Sasha. She is hardworking.
- Read a simple instructor-made story in which a supervisor gives feedback to an employee. Match vocabulary to the story. Retell the story to a partner and work together to answer comprehension questions. Read and practice the story multiple times over the course of lessons to practice pronunciation, intonation, and fluency.
- Listen to sample feedback sentences and answer a simple yes/no question for each sentence.
- Listen to a dialogue between a supervisor and an employee. Practice the dialogue as a class and then practice with a partner. Perform your dialogue for the class.
Sample Skill-Using Tasks:
- Role-play a scenario with a classmate in which you are the supervisor and they are the employee. Use a prompt card to give the employee a piece of positive feedback. Switch roles and repeat.
Sample Assessment Tasks:
- Listen to feedback from a supervisor about things that are going well. Show understanding by answering simple comprehension questions.
Teaching Considerations
Cultural Considerations:
- Some learners may not be used to the somewhat casual yet hierarchical structure of a Canadian workplace. On the one hand, it is common to call your supervisor by their first name, feedback is often positive and encouraging, and direct requests from a supervisor are often phrased as hidden requests, e.g., Would you mind getting that done? On the other hand, the expectations are still there that employees will do as their supervisors ask, take all feedback and work to improve performance, and get their tasks finished, even if they are phrased as a question. Help learners understand the expectations in a Canadian workplace.
Digital Literacy Strategies:
Successful completion of some tasks may require some baseline digital knowledge and skills.
Learners may need to:
- Have keyboarding and typing skills.
- Locate, navigate and use websites.
- Use familiar apps, social media platforms and web pages, such as employment payroll programs.
- Read information from a screen.
Instructors can:
- Dedicate time to improve digital literacy for learners.
- Make and/or adapt digital materials.
- Introduce websites and/or apps that are relevant to the task(s).
- Support learners in finding, navigating and using websites.
- Teach reading strategies such as skimming and scanning to find information on websites or apps.
- Introduce tools and apps that can aid learners in coping with communication barriers, such as translation, pronunciation, text to speech, speech to text tools and so on.
- Share knowledge and strategies to ensure online safety.
- Refer learners to programs to improve their digital skills.
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Indigenization Strategies:
- Use examples from a range of different types of jobs, including many entry-level jobs, “unskilled” jobs, or jobs that don’t require any previous training or experience.
- Use diverse representations of people in all your learning resources and images, including people who are 2SLGBTQ+, Indigenous, Francophone and of other cultures, and people who have disabilities or who are neurodivergent. Consider this diversity as you choose names for characters in stories you create as well.
Trauma-informed Strategies:
Possible Trauma triggers:
- Some learners who have experienced trauma can be triggered by people in positions of authority or by the experience of receiving feedback from someone in a position of authority.
- When teaching about Canada, you may teach about things that are triggering to learners who have experienced trauma. We can’t know what the triggers might be and what seems commonplace to us may have a triggering component for learners. Be aware of this and be prepared to support learners as needed.
Strategies:
- Watch for learners who are feeling triggered and give them a choice of a different topic, such as listening to feedback from an instructor or talking to a friend about their skills.
- Give learners advance warning of this topic and be aware that there may be learners who require support.
- Learners who have experienced trauma often benefit from having routine. Create a safe and supportive classroom environment by establishing familiar routines, repeated activities, and model friendly and non-evaluative interactions.
- Learners will benefit from positive relationships established in the classroom with the instructor and peers.
- Learners who have experienced trauma benefit from having choices.
- Allow learners choice:
- the choice to work on a different topic
- the choice to share or not share their own experiences
- the choice to work alone or to work with others
- the choice to take care of themselves
- the choice to step out of the learning environment
- Allow learners choice:
- When learners have shared personal distressing or traumatic experiences, make space for learners to feel safe and recover from the experience of sharing their experiences. Follow the activities which may make learners feel vulnerable with routine, predictable and comforting activities.
- Giving learners the knowledge, skills and language to access resources can be empowering.
Resources
Outings, Guest Speaker Suggestions, Extension Activities:
- Have learners work in small groups to create little skits or dialogues between a supervisor and an employee. Perform your skit for the class.
- As a class, look at common feedback from instructors to learners. Discuss the feedback together and identify what it means and what a learner could do to improve.
Realia:
- Examples of feedback from supervisors or instructors
Units and Modules:
- The Literacy Centre of Expertise at TIES: Using Email: CLB 2L/3L
Lessons and Activities:
- Tutela (OCDSB): Describing Future Employment Wants: CLB 3 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- Tutela: Norquest: Setting Employment Goals: CLB 3 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- LINC 3 Classroom Activities: Employment (p. 343-390) (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- Tutela: Norquest LINC Phonics Curriculum: CLB 3L
- A search of NLCG (nlcg.achev.ca) may provide additional tasks that can be adapted.
Multimedia:
Detailed Sample Task
This exemplar is aligned with the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) and is designed to guide and inform your lesson and module planning. Consult the Canadian Language Benchmarks English as a Second Language for Adults for detailed performance descriptors at this benchmark and skill.
The information in this document is not exhaustive and can be expanded on. As well, you can use more learner-friendly language in your materials and assessments.
This is NOT a lesson or module plan.
