LISTEN & SILENT

HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT LISTEN & SILENT HAVE THE SAME LETTERS?

Once you have decided to have fun with letters and words, they come to you in mysterious revealing ways. There is so much beauty to be discovered that one cannot hurry in pursuing that knowledge. Its simply a maturing, intuitive process that happens against your will that requires its time, its moments of full attention and full distraction- whatever you conceive those moments to be.

In my case, I would describe this process as being in and out of focus or... as the silence & listening that happens when it snows, when this white form of water rests on the ground and shapes itself into a hard edged flat surface, where one can, at last!, firmly rest and stand at the same time.

So, in this time of the year before spring comes, I am going to reveal (or unveil) one of the units from my Syllabus Design presented in the last civil exam call in June/July 2023 for English in Secondary Education here in Madrid.

Here you have the list of the 15 units, organized following the classic seasons: AUTUMN, WINTER & SPRING.

The one I am sharing today is from the Winter season called LISTEN & SILENT HAVE THE SAME LETTERS. And I did it for a group of 1st of ESO. See the picture bellow:

15th Didactic Units Syllabus Design analanguagecoach

This UNIT 7 requires 7 hours. 6 hours of English and 1 hour with the Music teacher.

During these two weeks students are going to focus their attention on the phonetic chart of the consonants (as they have already seen the vowels in the first term) and they will be exposed to 4 different English accents, which are: British, Irish, Scottish and American (listen to the audios below). The purpose is to know how to differentiate them and how we can soften our Spanish accent in the process to sound close to what is called "received pronunciation" or educated, standard English.

There will be also work on the morphology of the words: lexemes, prefixes, suffixes and its rules; the composition of words: derivative and hyphen/compound words.

They will practice spelling, derivation and permutation of letters in words in an intuitive way. As I believe working with "lettering" can bring so much beauty and insights in their acquisition of any language, in this case, English.

As I told you, in this unit, it will be good to have the collaboration of the Music teacher, especially on the 2nd day.

1st day

Activities in class: Motivation to spelling, derivation and permutation of letters using the phonetic chart and English lettering.

Material: Chart with the consonants (Appendix XII, see below)

Homework: Give a list of words to derive and permutate -in an intuitive way-, a list of prefixes and suffixes. (see PDFs given below)

2nd day (with the Music teacher)

Activities in class: Phonetics in collaboration with the Music teacher.

Material: Chart with the consonants. Writing a short song together after practicing some tongue twisters; e.g:

1) "Tomorrow is the third Thursday of this month."

2) "While we were walking, we were watching window washers wash Washington's windows with warm washing water."

3) "She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So, if she sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure she sells seashore shells."

4) "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck

if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,

and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would

if a woodchuck could chuck wood."

Homework: Write that song again at home in your English notebook using lettering style and sing to memorise it. Keep practicing spelling and derivation.

3rd day

Activities in class: Learning about Phonetics (received pronunciation). Lists of Common Mistakes in Phonetics: pronunciation & intonation from Spanish speakers. Singing together the song written the day before.

Material: Chart with the consonants (Appendix XII, see below); the short song written before and a list of Common Mistakes by Spanish speakers in phonetic; a chart with homophone (same sound, different spelling; e.g: "no/know"), homonym (same sound, same spelling; e.g: "can / can") and homograph (same spelling, different sound; e.g:"bass/bass").

Homework: Make a video of maximum 3 minutes using ASMR effect saying the words you have learned. Continue practicing spelling and derivation.

4th & 5th day

Activities in class: Spelling in Teams: wait in silence till a word comes to you, then write it down. Share it with the group to practice derivation and composition. Spelling Tournament in class.

Material: Rubric assessment with self-evaluation, co-evaluation and hetero-evaluation. (Appendix XIII, see below)

Homework: Write the words in your notebook and spell them. Play with all their possibilities: use permutation and derivation. Be aware of the beauty of certain words and the ideas that are pointing out, such as, for example in: "together", "he & she", "whole & hole", "word & sword", or "listen & silent". Have you discovered any special word, composition or permutation?

6th day

Activities in class: Listening American Accent and British Accent. Show other varieties, such as Irish or Scottish.

Material: 2 Listening exercises. Give scripts at the end.

Homework: Practice intonation with phonetic transcriptions and pronunciation with the different accents at home.

7th day

Activities in class: Listening Test (40 minutes)

Material: Listening test (Appendix XIV, see below)

After doing the test they will receive the score and the feedback. They must make a list with their common mistakes.

Appendixes: