Detailed Sample Task: EAL Literacy
CLB 4L - Writing
Getting Things Done
Health and Wellness
Real-World Task
Write a short email to your dentist’s office requesting information about payment plans for treatment.
Planning Context
Helpful Knowledge:
- basic knowledge of email structure
- present simple
- basic punctuation
- question formation
Context:
- Costs for dental treatment can be expensive so some dental offices will offer payment plans.
- Payment plans allow you to pay for things over time, a little amount per month.
Vocabulary and Grammar
Sample Vocabulary:
- dentist
- treatment such as extraction, braces or crown
- cost
- expensive
- payment plan
- insurance
- credit
- terms such as amount, time, interest rate and so on.
- installment
- information
- email structure such as openings, closing, subject field, greeting and so on
Sample Grammar:
- Simple present
- Question words such as “do”, “can” and “how much”
Knowledge and Strategies
Textual and Functional Knowledge:
- Basic email writing conventions (such as subject lines, greetings and opening / closing conventions).
- Simple emails have short sentences all on the same topic, including request for information
- Casual vs. professional language
Sociolinguistic Knowledge:
- It is very common to use payment plans for things that are expensive or out of your budget.
- You must pay your installments on time or you risk the whole amount being due.
- Polite and formal language is needed to communicate with businesses, using a respectful tone.
Activities and Tasks
Sample Skill-Building Activities:
- Discuss as a class: What do you buy in your household? Elicit a list of common purchases such as food, clothing, furniture, cars and so on. Are these things expensive or not so expensive? Do they pay with cash, debit, or credit?
- Discuss as a class: Have you ever bought anything with a payment plan? Explain that credit cards, loans and mortgages are like payment plans- you need to pay some money every month until the full amount has been paid.
- Discuss as a class: Have you been to the dentist? What did you have done there? Elicit responses such as cleaning, check up, filling, crown, extraction, braces and so on. Write the words on the board. Use images to support your discussion. Was this expensive or not so expensive? Did you have insurance? How did you pay? Does your dentist have a payment plan? Explain that some do and we should always ask businesses if they have a payment plan if something is expensive or out of our budget.
- Match vocabulary list words to images. Now co-create definitions of each term. Learners record the words and definitions in a vocabulary notebook or digital document.
- In small groups learners take 3-4 of the vocabulary words and make sentences using the words.
- Practice reading the sentences to practice pronunciation, intonation and fluency.
- Listen to an instructor-made audio of a person talking about a treatment at the dentists office and how they can pay. Answer a set of true / false questions about the audio.
- Read the transcript of the audio above. Circle all of the vocabulary words and highlight all of the capitalization and punctuation.
- Review the rules for punctuation, including some more complex punctuation such as apostrophes and semi-colons. Practice adding punctuation to a set of sentences about payment plans, loans and credit.
- In pairs, correct the spelling, punctuation and capitalization errors in a paragraph about going to the dentist. Copy the corrected paragraph into a notebook or digital document.
- Discuss as a class how we can find information about dentist clinics and methods of payment on the internet, such as using key words as search terms. Talk about ways to find reliable information online. Learners work in pairs to search for useful and reliable websites with information about local dentists. Have a show and tell for learners to describe one dental clinic they found and 2 or 3 details such as treatments available, opening hours and payment options.
- Read a sample email of a friend asking a local business about paying for a new sofa. Highlight key parts of the email, including the greeting, main ideas, and closing of the email. Answer basic 5-W questions about the text. Why is the friend writing, what are they asking, and so on. Identify if the email is polite or not.
- From the previous email, identify the polite language. As a class, discuss other ways the polite language could be expressed if it wasn’t polite.
- In pairs, correct and email written very casually with polite language.
- Reorder a scrambled email with the subject line, greeting, information, request and closing.
- Review simple coordinating conjunctions to connect simple sentences, such as and, but, so.
- Look at an instructor-created paragraph about a payment plan, which is made up of all simple sentences. Rewrite the sentences in a digital document with some of the sentences combined using coordinating conjunctions.
- Complete an email template to write an email to a dentist’s office asking about payment plans for treatment.
Sample Skill-Using Tasks:
- Using information on a website, copy up to a paragraph about a payment plan.
Sample Assessment Tasks:
- Write a short email to your dentist’s office requesting information about payment plans for treatment.
Teaching Considerations
Cultural Considerations:
- Learners may not have much knowledge about or experience with payment plans in Canada. Help learners to understand the importance of improving their credit and paying their bills on time.
- Learners may not feel comfortable describing their financial history and credit information but it is helpful to know that this is common and mandatory to enter into payment plans, loans and other financial agreements.
- Recognize that issues related to economic disadvantage are often stigmatized. Instructors can work to reduce the stigma.
- Some learners may experience changes to gender roles when they come to Canada. For some, this may be a welcome change, but for others it may be challenging. A bank may only communicate directly with an account holder rather than allowing family members to complete transactions on their behalf.
- Instructors can: Encourage discussion about gender roles with finances, but address concerns with sensitivity but teach that Canada is equitable and inclusive to people of all genders.
Digital Literacy Strategies:
Successful completion of some tasks may require some baseline knowledge and digital skills.
Learners may need to:
- Have keyboarding and typing skills.
- Locate, navigate and use websites.
- Use familiar apps, social media platforms and web pages.
- Read information from a screen.
- Navigate camera and microphone.
- Adjust volume on device.
Instructors can:
- Dedicate time to improve digital literacy for learners.
- Make and/ or adapt digital materials.
- Introduce websites 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.
- 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 diverse representations of people in all your learning resources and images, including people who are 2SLGBTQIA+, 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.
- Recognize that people who identify as women may not have had independent access to financial services. Make sure these learners are aware of their rights in Canada and the resources that are available to them.
Trauma-informed Strategies:
Possible Trauma Triggers:
- Learners who have lived or are living in poverty and learners who have lost their homes and possessions may find discussions of banking, money, or finance triggering.
- 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.
- Learners who have experienced trauma can be triggered by people in positions of authority, and may be concerned about raising issues around name spelling which could be seen as challenging that person in authority.
Strategies:
- 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:
- Visit a business that has payment plans and identify the terms.
- Invite a financial literacy to the class to talk about credit, loans, payment plans and budgeting.
- Look at businesses on the Internet to compare interest rates and terms.
Realia:
- Sample email
- Payment plan brochure, which may need to be simplified
Units and Modules:
- Tutela: CCLB Going to the Dentist CLB 3L/4L
- Tutela: Going to the Dentist CLB 1-4
(Not literacy but can be adapted) - Tutela: English for Financial Literacy CLB 1-8
(Not literacy but can be adapted) - The Literacy Centre of Expertise at TIES: Using Email: CLB 2L/3L (Not the right level but can be adapted)
- Tutela (CCLB): Reporting a Lost/Stolen Bank/Credit Card: CLB 3/4 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
Lessons and Activities:
- Tutela: Dental Hygiene Module H5P CLB 3/4 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- Tutela: How to Write an Email: CLB 3 (Not literacy or the right level but can be adapted)
- Tutela: Basic Banking: Module Plan and Assessment Tasks: CLB 4 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- Tutela: Banking and Money: CLB 3/4 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- Tutela (OCDSB): Collecting Information About Banks: CLB 4 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- Tutela: Norquest LINC Phonics Curriculum: CLB 4L
- 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.
