Listening I Unit I: Building a Foundation

Unit: Listening English Skill Development
Subject: Listening I
Level: Propedéutico I — developing toward CEFR A2
Duration: 20 hours

🎯 Stage 1 — Desired Results

A. Established Goals

Students will identify and apply before-, during-, and after-listening strategies to understand the general meaning and locate specific information in short A2-level conversations, presentations, descriptions, and announcements.
Students will develop listening comprehension through the contexts of introductions and personal background, daily routines, and campus/university life.
Students will use contextual information, prior knowledge, prediction, selective attention, note-taking, verification, and reflection to support their comprehension.
With teacher authorization, students will use GenAI transparently for pre-listening preparation and parallel practice, while maintaining responsibility for listening to and interpreting the original audio independently.

B. Transfer Goals

Students will independently use their learning to:

Approach unfamiliar spoken English strategically by preparing before listening, listening with a clear purpose, and verifying understanding afterward.
Construct meaning from spoken English without needing to understand every word.
Distinguish between listening for general meaning and listening selectively for relevant details such as names, numbers, dates, times, and places.
Use evidence from an audio text to confirm, revise, or reject an initial interpretation.
Select accessible tools and representations that support their learning without replacing the listening process itself.
Use GenAI responsibly as a preparatory learning support rather than as a substitute for listening comprehension.

C. Meaning

Enduring Understandings

Students will understand that …

Effective listening is an active process of constructing meaning, rather than recognizing every individual word.
Successful listeners use different strategies before, during, and after listening, depending on what they need to understand.
Prior knowledge, context, images, titles, and anticipated vocabulary can help listeners make useful predictions, but those predictions must be tested against what is actually heard.
Listening for the general idea and listening for specific information are different purposes and require different kinds of attention.
Good listeners use evidence from the audio to check and revise their interpretations, especially when their first prediction is incomplete or incorrect.
Difficulties in listening can become useful information when learners reflect on where comprehension broke down and which strategy might help next time.
GenAI can increase access to background knowledge, vocabulary, and practice opportunities, but meaningful listening development requires the learner to listen, interpret, and make decisions independently.

Essential Questions

How can I understand spoken English when I do not understand every word?
What should I do before, during, and after listening to make meaning more effectively?
How can I determine whether what I think I heard is supported by evidence from the audio?
When does GenAI support my development as a listener, and when does it begin to do the listening for me?

D. Acquisition

Students will know …

The purpose and basic characteristics of the before–during–after listening cycle.
The difference between listening for gist/general meaning and listening for specific information.
Pre-listening strategies including activating prior knowledge, examining contextual clues, anticipating vocabulary, and making predictions.
During-listening strategies including identifying topic and general meaning, recognizing keywords, and selectively listening for names, numbers, dates, times, places, and other important details.
Post-listening strategies including checking predictions, organizing information, comparing interpretations, verifying evidence, and reflecting on strategy effectiveness.
Basic language and contextual vocabulary related to:
- introductions and personal information;
- daily routines; and
- campus/university life.
Different ways of organizing listening information, including keywords, short notes, tables, timelines, and graphic organizers.
The difference between authorized AI-supported preparation and inappropriate AI use that substitutes for independent comprehension.

The syllabus explicitly establishes these Unit I strategies and specifies that GenAI may support prior-knowledge activation, context exploration, vocabulary anticipation, and preparation, but may not provide transcripts, translations, subtitles, summaries, or answers during comprehension activities.

Students will be able to …

Activate relevant prior knowledge before listening.
Use titles, images, speakers, locations, and other contextual clues to make reasonable predictions.
Identify the topic and general meaning of short A2-level oral texts.
Locate basic specific information, including names, numbers, dates, times, places, routines, and activities.
Record relevant information using keywords, tables, graphic organizers, or other accessible note-taking formats.
Compare their initial predictions with evidence from the audio.
Revise an interpretation when subsequent listening provides different or additional evidence.
Explain which listening strategy supported their comprehension and identify an appropriate strategy for future improvement.
Use authorized GenAI to prepare for listening while documenting the tool, date, prompt, and purpose of its use.
Complete actual listening-comprehension tasks independently without GenAI-generated answers, transcription, translation, or automated interpretation.

🎯 Stage 2 — Evidence

A. Performance Task (GRASPS)

Unit I Listening Project — Navigating My First Weeks at University

Goal:
Demonstrate strategic listening comprehension by using before-, during-, and after-listening strategies to construct and verify meaning from short A2-level oral texts concerning personal information, daily routines, and university life.

Role:
New university student / developing English-language listener.

Audience:
Classmates and instructor within the university English-learning community.

Situation:
You are beginning university and regularly encounter spoken English from classmates, professors, and campus situations. You will listen to several short conversations, introductions, descriptions, or announcements. Because you cannot expect to understand every word, you must use listening strategies to determine the general meaning, locate important details, and verify your understanding.

Product/Performance:
Students will complete a Listening Evidence Portfolio based on a set of short A2-level audio texts.

The portfolio will include:

Pre-listening preparation
Students use contextual information to activate prior knowledge, anticipate vocabulary, establish a listening purpose, and record predictions.
First listening: general meaning
Students independently identify the topic, context, speakers, and/or general meaning of the audio.
Subsequent listening: specific information
Students listen again to locate relevant details such as names, numbers, dates, times, places, routines, activities, or university-related information.
Post-listening verification
Students compare their initial predictions with what they heard and identify which predictions were confirmed, revised, or rejected using evidence from the audio.
Listening reflection
Students briefly identify which strategy helped them, where comprehension became difficult, and what they would do differently during a future listening task.

To align with UDL, students may organize and demonstrate supporting evidence through an appropriate format such as a traditional listening worksheet, table, timeline, graphic organizer, keyword notes, or another teacher-approved representation. The listening itself and the targeted comprehension outcomes remain common to all students.

When authorized, GenAI may be used before listening to activate background knowledge, anticipate relevant A2 vocabulary, develop prediction questions, or generate preparation materials. Students must document this use. During the actual listening-comprehension portion of the performance task, GenAI-generated transcripts, translations, subtitles, summaries, or answers are not permitted, consistent with the syllabus.

Standards/Rubric — Summary

General comprehension:
Accurately identifies the topic, communicative context, speakers, and overall meaning of short A2-level oral texts.
Specific information:
Accurately identifies relevant details such as names, numbers, dates, times, places, routines, activities, and other explicitly stated information.
Strategic listening:
Purposefully applies appropriate before-, during-, and after-listening strategies rather than attempting to understand every word.
Evidence and verification:
Uses information from the audio to confirm, modify, or reject predictions and interpretations.
Organization and representation:
Records and organizes listening information clearly through appropriate notes, tables, timelines, graphic organizers, or other approved formats.
Metacognitive reflection:
Identifies strategies that supported comprehension, recognizes areas of difficulty, and proposes an appropriate next step for improving future listening.
Language control (A1–A2 developing):
Uses comprehensible English appropriate to the learner’s developing proficiency when recording or explaining understanding.
Process, independence, and AI transparency:
Completes the listening-comprehension portions independently and documents any authorized GenAI preparation, including the tool, date, prompt, purpose, and influence on preparation. AI-generated interpretation does not substitute for the student’s own listening.

The syllabus establishes English use as 50% of the grade for each assessed item and identifies four listening projects as part of the overall course evaluation, so the detailed project rubric should ultimately preserve those course-level requirements.

B. Other Evidence

Short pre-listening prediction activities using titles, images, locations, or contextual information to activate prior knowledge and anticipate vocabulary.
Low-stakes gist-listening activities in which students identify the topic, speaker, context, purpose, or general meaning after an initial listening.
Short selective-listening exercises requiring students to recognize names, numbers, dates, times, places, schedules, routines, and other relevant details.
Listening-note activities using keywords, tables, timelines, diagrams, or graphic organizers, allowing multiple means of action and expression while maintaining the same listening target.
Pair and small-group post-listening comparisons in which students explain what they heard and identify evidence supporting their interpretation after first completing the listening independently.
Brief self-assessment checklists in which students evaluate their use of before-, during-, and after-listening strategies.
Reflective responses—written, audio-recorded, or another teacher-approved format—explaining a listening difficulty, the strategy used, and how the learner might approach a similar situation differently.
Short AI-literacy classification activities in which students distinguish between appropriate uses of GenAI for listening preparation and uses that improperly replace independent comprehension.
When GenAI preparation is authorized, a brief AI Learning Trace documenting the tool, date, prompt, purpose, relevant output, and the student’s decision about how—or whether—to use that preparation.

Benjamin L. Stewart

Explorer