This is an easy diagram that I designed for teachers who want to plan their receptive skills lessons. As shown in the table, vocabulary can be dealt with in each of the three main stages of the lesson depending on the teacher’s main aim; so if the teacher feels that the difficult words in the text may block his/her students’ understanding of the text, then he can deal with vocabulary in the pre-reading or listening stage. If he/she wants students to develop their abilities of guessing meanings of words from the context, then vocabulary can be addressed in the while-reading stage. Finally if the teacher thinks that some lexical items are worth clarifying and analysing, then he/she can deal with this in the post-reading or listening stage.
| Stage | Aim | |
| Pre-reading or listening | Lead in | To generate interest in the topic of the lesson |
| Set context | To generate interest in the topic of the text | |
| Previewing (optional) | To give Ls an idea about what the text is through the layout, headings and the text-accompanied pictures. | |
| Prediction (optional) | To use Ls’ knowledge of the text topic to guess what it is going to be about | |
| Pre-teach vocabulary
(optional) |
To prevent Ls blocking on unknown vocabulary in the questions or answers | |
| While-reading or listening
(Choose two at least.) |
Gist task | To give Ls a reason to read / listen at a general level |
| Specific information task | To give Ls a reason to read / listen for individual items of information | |
| Detailed task | To give Ls a reason to read / listen at a detailed level | |
| Guessing words from context | To help Ls work out the meaning of words by the help of the context | |
| Understanding opinion and attitude | To help Ls understand how the writer or speaker feels even if it is not clearly stated in the text | |
| Post-reading or listening
(Choose at least one.) |
Speaking | To give Ls the chance to respond to the text orally |
| Writing | To give Ls the chance to respond to the text in writing | |
| Text Analysis | To give Ls the chance to analyse useful language in the text | |