Guidelines for Planning English

Language Lessons and Courses

TOEFL iBT® Edition

John Norris and Shoko Sasayama

Teaching
Framework
 TOEFL TEACHING FRAMEWORK
Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses
TOEFL iBT Edition
John Norris and Shoko Sasayama

The purpose of this framework is to provide general recommendations regarding the design
of curriculum, materials, and pedagogic activities that are intended to help learners develop
their academic English language proficiency. As the premier test of academic English
worldwide, the TOEFL iBT test offers both an important backdrop to these guidelines as well
as a meaningful target for English learning. The tasks on the TOEFL test reflect some of the
most important kinds of tasks that learners should be able to do in English in academic
settings; likewise, learning to communicate effectively in academic settings should result in
successful performance on the TOEFL test. In this framework, we outline basic considerations
for language instruction that will help learners develop their abilities to succeed on English
communication tasks that occur in academic settings. The practices recommended here are
derived both from empirical research findings in instructed second language acquisition and
the accumulated experiences of successful language teachers. For much more detailed
consideration of related issues, we suggest consulting the following texts: Norris, J. M., Davis, J.,

& Timpe-Laughlin, V. (2017). Second language educational experiences

for adult learners. Routledge.

Xi, X., & Norris, J. M. (Eds.) (2021). Assessing academic English for higher education admissions.
Routledge.
The document is organized as follows. First, we discuss general recommendations for
approaching the design of courses within an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) language
curriculum, addressing basic principles that should underlie course design. We also make
suggestions for course syllabus design, including the statement of student learning outcomes
and determination of appropriate scope and sequence of learning objectives and
instructional activities at the course level. We then outline the design of individual lessons in
the form of the recommended type and order of pedagogic tasks and materials. We
conclude with recommendations for teaching each of the four skills and associated
communication tasks, with overall suggestions regarding the design of lessons and materials
for each skill.

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 2
1. General Recommendations for EAP Instruction
The overarching focus of EAP instruction should be on developing learners’ abilities to engage
effectively in English communication within an academic environment. While TOEFL iBT test
tasks and content serve as an important backdrop to teaching and learning activities³ of course
learners want to improve their test scores³they should not in and of themselves be the sole
targets of instruction. Rather, it is the social, navigational, and especially academic purposes for
language use within a typical English-medium educational environment that provide the
appropriate targets for language learning within effective EAP courses. Tasks related to these
purposes for language use are certainly reflected in the TOEFL iBT test, and these kinds of tasks
can provide useful targets for language learning. To be clear, though, TOEFL iBT tasks are
designed for measurement purposes, not pedagogy; merely having learners practice TOEFL-like
tasks will not be sufficient to support effective language learning. In order to promote effective
English language development (in ways that will likely lead to increases in TOEFL scores), a
variety of carefully planned instructional activities will be called for. The following
recommendations are intended to provide a basic starting point in thinking about the design of
courses, lessons, and materials to support teachers and learners in working towards this goal.

1.1 Basic Principles

a. Instructional Content: The topics, situations, and tasks covered in an EAP course
should be based on the uses of English for social, navigational, and academic purposes1
within typical English-medium higher education settings around the world. Due to test
length and other practical considerations, social, navigational, and academic language
tasks are selectively represented in the TOEFL iBT speaking and listening sections
whereas a primary emphasis is placed on academic tasks in the reading and writing
sections. However, it is worth emphasizing that communication skills in all three
language use settings play an important role in surviving and thriving in higher
education. Navigating the various services, procedures, and traditions at university, as
well as socializing with fellow students, are critically important skills for success, as is
the ability to engage in various types of classroom and out-of-class academic tasks. To
the extent possible, authentic content (e.g.,

1 While academic language refers to uses of language to learn and communicate about content knowledge
(e.g., math, history), social language refers to uses of language for personal relationships (e.g., interacting with
friends, participating in extra-curricular activities). In comparison, navigational language includes communicating
with teachers, peers, university staff, and others about school-related activities (e.g., assignments, enrollment)
not about academic content.

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 3
 topics and situations reflective of contemporary university settings) that represents
these three trajectories of language use should form the foundation of language
learning materials and the focus of pedagogic activities. Content should also
deliberately represent a range of academic subject matters, campus life topics as well
as others of contemporary interest to students, and navigational/social situations that
require distinct registers of language use.

b. Relationship among the four skills: Language use in academic settings

frequently involves the use of multiple language skills, simultaneously or
consecutively. It is often the case that receptive skills serve as a precursor to
productive skills (e.g., read something then write about it), and certainly spoken
interactive communication (e.g., listening and speaking in a conversation) is
inherently skills-integrated. In developing meaningful instruction that is reflective of
this reality, materials and activities should frequently entail some degree of skills
integration. Where individual skills form the focus of separate courses, skills-
integration can be conveniently fostered through shared content. In other words,
each of the individual skills-focused courses might be built around the same content,
and sequenced in the same order, leading to a natural synergy through treatment of
the same or similar content across skills this approach is especially effective if
learners are taking such courses simultaneously. Another approach to skills
integration is to build it naturally into each lesson design, using target tasks and
pedagogic activities that inherently call upon multiple skills. At the same time, if there
is a desire to maintain focus on a particular skill, the corresponding materials should
emphasize the features of the tasks that require that particular skill. For example, in a
speaking-focused lesson, while learners may listen to conversational input, their
purpose in doing so can be oriented towards listening for how the speakers use
English to make their points (i.e., treating the listening as a model for speaking),
rather than listening primarily for comprehension, which would fit the focus of a
listening lesson.

c. Target tasks: Target tasks are the various activities that people are expected to be
able to do with English, within a given setting, such as a university classroom. For
example, having a discussion with classmates in order to plan a project would be a
common type of target task. Or, reading several articles and summarizing their main
points might be another. Target tasks provide the purpose for communicating with a
given audience within a particular situation³ fundamentally, EAP students are
learning English to be able to accomplish a variety of such target tasks in the
academic environment successfully. A handful of prototypical target tasks appear on
the TOEFL iBT test, representing some of the things learners really need to be able

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 4
 to do in English-medium settings. Of course, there are plenty of other specific tasks, or
variations on those prototypical tasks, that also characterize communication in such
settings. In designing materials and lessons, then, target tasks provide a convenient
and meaningful focus for guiding and sequencing lessons, and they help to situate and
contextualize language learning by providing a critical link to reality. Target tasks offer
the basic learning goal for a lesson (or a series of lessons), and they help constrain and
focus the types of language abilities that need to be developed along the way. Each
English-language lesson should have a clearly identified target task associated with it.
Learners should be aware of what the target task is that they are working towards, and
all instructional activities (pedagogic tasks, see next) should have an obvious relation to
that target task as well. Target tasks should also be selected and sequenced such that
learners (a) have a good chance of some degree of success in doing them, and (b) are
pushed to continually develop their English knowledge and skills further. For example,
for intermediate-level learners (around B1 on the CEFR), target tasks will generally
present the challenge of processing or producing somewhat extended amounts of
language use, beyond individual sentences or utterances, reflecting a variety of
language use situations that move from the personal and familiar to the more public,
interactive, and social. Target tasks should also be sequenced such that the cognitive
and linguistic demands gradually increase over the duration of instruction.

d. Pedagogic tasks: Pedagogic tasks are the various techniques by which learners
are guided, prompted, scaffolded, and otherwise encouraged to develop language
ability that is related to the target task. Pedagogic tasks include all activities that are
intentionally designed to bring about language learning. In general, these activities
should maintain a clear relationship to target tasks: (a) they should focus on
developing aspects of language knowledge and ability that are needed in the target
task; (b) they should help learners to understand situational and procedural aspects
of the target task (where, when, how, and with whom it happens); and (c) they
should help learners reflect on their own abilities in comparison with what is needed
for accomplishing the target task. Pedagogic tasks that have learners analyze
language input, for example, can help learners to identify how language forms are
used in particular ways within task models (e.g., analyzing a conversation or a
lecture or a reading passage). Pedagogic tasks that provide scaffolding of various
kinds (including simplification, sampling, glossing, guiding, framing, and other
scaffolds) can help learners approach holistic language use in a way that both
facilitates their understanding and enables them to realize and acquire patterns or
rules that are made salient by the scaffold. Discussion, negotiation, and other oral-
or chat-interactive pedagogic tasks can help learners to activate new language and

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 5
 practice using it within relatively low-stakes circumstances that nevertheless require
important processes like comprehension and production. There will also be a role for
more explicit language form-focused activities, such as grammar rule explanation or
vocabulary definition and practice. These explicit activities should, to the extent
possible, also maintain a clear link to the target task (i.e., focusing on language forms
that learners need for the task), and they should generally occur after learners have
had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the task and to begin developing
an awareness of the need for certain features of English that would help them in
doing the task. It is important to emphasize here that explicit language learning
activities should never stand alone, rather they should always emerge from an initial
focus on language use (i.e., the target task), and they should always lead to a
subsequent opportunity for the learner to incorporate the learned language into
meaningful communication.

e. Assessment and feedback: All EAP materials and lessons should be designed
With persistent, clear opportunities for assessments for language learners
development and performance, with a primary purpose of providing formative
feedback that is intended to encourage further learning. Assessment can and should
incorporate self-, peer-, and teacher-generated feedback, as well as automated
feedback where that is available (e.g., from SpeechRater2). Learners also need to be
taught how to interpret and make the most of feedback coming from these distinct
sources. At a minimum, assessment of simulated target tasks at the end of each
lesson provides a key opportunity for learners to demonstrate what they have
learned and for teachers (and others) to provide feedback. Assessment criteria and
expectations should be regularly discussed and utilized pedagogically (e.g., sharing
of rubrics for rating target task performance), such that learners develop a
heightened awareness of what a successful task performance looks like and how
language functions in accomplishing communication tasks to varying degrees of
success. Assessment criteria (and the focus of feedback) should also be leveled
according to legitimate expectations for learners with different proficiencies. With
intermediate proficiency learners (e.g., CEFR B1), for example, level-appropriate
expectations for speaking tasks might reflect the descriptions of speaking ability
around a rating of 2 on the TOEFL iBT speaking rubrics3 (i.e., rather than a 3 or 4,
which reflects a higher level of proficiency). Feedback on target and pedagogic tasks
within specific lessons should also be focused on aspects of language that are
developmentally appropriate targets and relevant to the expectations of the task.

2 For
more information see: https://www.ets.org/research/topics/as_nlp/speech/
3 TOEFL iBT speaking and writing task rubrics can be found here: https://www.ets.org/toefl/test-
takers/ibt/resources/scoring/
TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 6
 For example, an intermediate-level writing task might be assessed primarily for the
extent to which learners utilize longer, more syntactically complex sentences, with
feedback focused on sentences that might be restructured in more complex,
sophisticated ways that reflect academic writing. That same task might not be
assessed for other features, such as lexical variety or grammatical accuracy, if the
intent of the task was to develop more complex syntax. Keep in mind that effective
feedback is always focused. Providing feedback on all errors made will make it
ineffective as learners will not be able to pay attention to and process all the various
types of feedback they receive.

1.2 Syllabus Design

EAP courses of any duration will benefit from careful planning of the purpose and focus of
teaching and learning activities. Of course, it is always useful to pay attention to individual
student’s needs and tailor instruction accordingly, but courses can and should be planned in
advance for specific groups of learners with known characteristics and needs. A course syllabus
provides the mechanism for planning how a series of language learning lessons should fit
together to accomplish EAP learning goals within the designated time available (e.g., the number
of class meetings, the number of weeks in the course). Effective syllabus design has two major
elements: a statement of Student Learning Outcomes and a description of Scope and
Sequence. Using a trip as an analogy, the statement of Student Learning Outcomes is
equivalent to the final destination, and the description of Scope and Sequence is an itinerary
showing specific plans along the way to reaching the final destination.

a. Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) state in readily understandable terms what it

is that students should know and be able to do by the end of a course or series of
courses. Good SLOs capture the value of language instruction by focusing on how
learners will benefit, rather than what they will be doing in the course. For example,
“Students will practice rules of English grammar” is not a good SLO, because it
emphasizes what learners will be doing in the classroom, instead of how they will
benefit. By contrast, “Students will know how to formulate declarative and
interrogative sentences in English with accurate word order” is better, in that it states
explicitly what students will gain from learning a particular aspect of grammar.
Nevertheless, though stated well, this outcome might not really capture the value of a
course. A more fitting SLO—and one that is directly related to a skill tested on TOEFL
iBT—might be “Students will be able to write effectively in English to produce coherent
and logical arguments, about topics of general interest, in paragraphs of 4 to 6
sentences in length, with good command over basic rules of syntax and morphology.”
This kind of SLO indicates one concrete achievement that

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 7
 students will get out of a course of instruction by focusing explicitly on what they will
know and be able to do, and it provides course designers with a clear target for lesson
design. A comprehensive set of such SLOs is the starting point for designing a
language course syllabus.

A convenient approach to defining SLOs related to language ability is to think about

the kinds of target tasks learners should be working towards and how well they should
be able to do them as a result of instruction. Tasks offer a transparent representation
of language in use, which should be the goal of any language course and especially an
EAP course that is related to TOEFL. Tasks also offer the opportunity to address
different aspects of language knowledge and skills that will be called upon in their
accomplishment. For EAP courses, obvious target tasks include those things that
students will need to do with language in the academic environment, with an emphasis
on distinct skills. For the listening skill, here is an example SLO that might fit an
intermediate-level course:

“Students will be able to listen to a relatively brief conversation between two college
students, discussing a familiar topic, and they will comprehend the main ideas
expressed as well as some specific details.”

Additional SLOs for the listening course would then address other target task types
(e.g., lecture listening and note-taking, listening to announcements, and so on) in order
to round out what it is that learners will be learning how to do with the listening skill.
Note also that the SLO indicates a level of difficulty of the task, which would be based
on an estimation of what learners at the particular course level can be expected to
master by the end of that course: Here, they are listening to a brief (not extended)
conversation, on a familiar (not unfamiliar) topic, and they are expected to get the
gist/main idea of the conversation but only some of the details. The idea with the SLO,
then, is to indicate appropriate tasks as well as levels of language development
expected from learners in accomplishing the tasks.

In selecting and levelling SLOs on the basis of target tasks, it is useful to analyze the
expectations associated with a given task, according to features such as:
Content/Topic familiarity
Medium of language use (e.g., listening, speaking, or both)
Situation/Domain expectations (e.g., appropriate register, role of context)
Purpose of communication
Linguistic complexity of task input/stimulus materials
Cognitive complexity of task input/stimulus materials
Communication demands (linguistic, cognitive, and social)

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 8
 Relevant language skills/strategies/knowledge expected to be engaged

On this basis, SLOs and associated target tasks can be identified that present
learners in a given course with appropriate demands, both linguistic and otherwise,
in order to push their language development and learning achievement without
overwhelming them with excessive challenges. Other sources of information should
be consulted in identifying appropriate expectations for learners at various course
levels. One helpful source for levelling learning expectations can be found in the
TOEFL iBT and ITP score descriptions and feedback/improvement guides. 4

Similarly, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) 5

may offer a helpful depiction of task types and levels of ability associated with fitting
degrees of language proficiency. In the end, however, the intuitions of experienced
teachers who understand their specific groups of learners may be the best source
for making decisions about appropriate learning outcomes and levels of
achievement.
In addition to focused language learning outcomes of the sorts described above,
higher order outcomes may also be beneficial in conceiving of the value of a
course (e.g., from the perspective of students or parents) and in linking courses
together in an overall programmatic sequence. Here, for example, it may be
worthwhile to conceive of the outcomes of a course in terms of achieving a
particular score range on a TOEFL test, a particular proficiency level on the CEFR, or
similar. Certainly, these types of overall outcomes statements are helpful in
capturing the potential value of a course in practical terms. However, for the
purpose of informing course and lesson design, they are insufficient in and of
themselves, and much more specific SLOs of the sort introduced above will be
called for.

b. Scope and Sequence: While SLOs refer to the overall end goals of a course or
series of courses, a Scope and Sequence (SAS) describes how a series of
instructional steps will support learners to achieve which SLOs. Fundamentally, the
SAS lays out the design of a course in terms of what content will be covered, with
what materials and pedagogic activities (including assessments), in what order, and
with what language learning expectations. An effective SAS will be ‘backwards
designed’, in that it should provide a clear road map to teachers and students
regarding what needs to be covered in each instructional unit or class session in
order to achieve a particular set of SLOs. The key here is that what gets taught in

4 See https://www.ets.org/toefl/ibt/scores/improve and https://www.ets.org/s/toefl_itp/pdf/test_score_descriptors.pdf

5 See https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/level-descriptions

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 9
 the classroom should be determined by the SLOs, and not vice versa. A well-
articulated SAS requires several key elements that should be carefully considered and
spelled out.

First, the SAS provides specific information regarding the materials and learning
activities to be used for instruction. For example, if the goal of an instructional unit is to
focus on the development of students’ ability to extract specific information from an
academic text, then reading materials and pedagogic tasks should be chosen to focus
on developing that specific skill in relation to learners’ ability evel. In designing
materials and language activities, the designer would need to consider specific real- life
situations that would require readers to extract specific information without going
through extended texts. For example, situations that involve reading non- prose texts
for basic understanding (e.g., navigating signs at an airport) may provide simple and
easy-to-read materials for learners at more beginning levels and create a real purpose
for reading.

Second, the SAS should connect language activities and materials in a logical order
that makes sense to both teachers and learners. In doing so, again, a first step is to
identify a range of targeted tasks, skills, and language knowledge (see SLOs above).
Then, these learning targets can be ordered such that the things learners have
learned previously become building blocks for what follows in the next lesson or
unit. For example, a range of reading skills relevant to TOEFL iBT test tasks might
first be identified and listed in the order of complexity below.
a. Skim for general understanding
b. Scan for specific information
c. Read for basic information
Understand gist/main idea
Make logical inferences based on given facts and background knowledge
d. Read to connect information
e. Read to learn—that is, read to transform knowledge from reading texts into
readers’ own representation of meaning
Keep in mind that these reading skills are not strictly linear in terms of complexity or
challenge presented to learners. They also interact with the complexity of the
specific texts that need to be processed for comprehension. For example, making a
very simple inference from a brief reading might be less complex than reading a
very dense text for basic information. Therefore, when sequencing the introduction
of skills or other learning objectives within or across units, it is important to also
consider the overall challenge of the target text or task, and to make sure the

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 10
 complexity level of the information to be processed is also appropriate for the group
of students.

In this example, course designers would next select and create reading materials
and activities that reflect this progression of reading skills within and across units.
The choice and sequence of materials and language teaching points should be
carefully identified and evaluated against the ultimate SLOs to be achieved.
Repetition is another key element to an effective SAS. Repetition is necessary to
reinforce previous learning and ultimately to ensure the mastery of targeted skills
and knowledge. Instruction should reinforce previous learning across units (also
known as ‘spiraling’) so that learners are able to expand their skills while
consolidating what they have learned previously. The SAS should be designed to
require learners to be able to apply all the knowledge and skills that they have
learned throughout a course by the end of the course.

Finally, the SAS should include an element of continuous formative assessment

throughout a course and point to additional supporting materials and activities to
ensure that instruction helps learners make progress toward the final SLOs.
Formative assessments should be designed to complement instruction, and they
should focus on specific areas of learning to provide maximal support. Summative
assessment(s) as well should be built into the SAS as a means for demonstrating
student learning at important junctures in the course.

1.3 Lesson Design: Sequencing Target and Pedagogic Tasks

Generally, though with some flexibility in how these principles are applied across the four
skills, each lesson or unit should have the following components, roughly in the order
presented here:

a. An engaging introduction to the target task or language use situation: The

purpose here is to generate learner interest and motivation by having them
see/hear/consider key features of the target task, to stimulate their readiness to learn
about the target task, and to expose them to language used within the task. This
target task introduction may take place at the levelof ‘task type’and precede a series
of lessons (e.g., the task type of writing argumentative essays, followed by a series of
lessons focusing on specific essay tasks and topics).
b. Recall and schema-building activities: In this stage, learners are prompted to
consider what they already know about the target task and situation, including
aspects of the setting/context, participants/audience, and purpose for

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 11
 communication. Learners should also generate ideas about what they do not know,
both in terms of the task and situation but also in terms of likely demands on
language needed to accomplish the task successfully. Learner self-assessment can
be particularly useful at this stage.

c. Analysis of (simulated) authentic language input: Here, learners are exposed

to substantial communicative input that provides a model of language use in the
target task. Ideally, authentic exemplars of target task communication6 will be
provided to learners (e.g., video/audio recordings of the target task, written samples,
and so on). Learners should be allowed time to work with the input holistically at first,
discovering for themselves the basic meaning-making characteristics of the task.
Subsequent activities should encourage them to focus on aspects of how
communication happens (e.g., steps involved in the task, who does what) as well as the
role played by specific uses of language (e.g., grammatical, lexical, phonological,
discursive, and other language forms that play an important role in the given
communication task). As needed, additional form-focused activities may be included
at this stage to facilitate learners’ development of language related to the task.

d. Scaffolded work on using language in tasks: At this stage, learners should

progress from analyzing how others use language to activities that require the learners
themselves to use the language communicatively. Generally, this type of language use
will occur through a variety of simplified, segmented, structured, and otherwise
scaffolded communicative activities that are based on the target task but do not in-
and-of themselves constitute the target task. In other words, learners are not simply
asked to do the target task (e.g., give a presentation in English), rather they are
provided numerous opportunities to gradually develop the language knowledge and
skills needed to accomplish the target task (e.g., first practice how to start a
presentation, then develop an understanding of how to transition from one section to
the next using transition phrases, then…). Activities here will generally include a focus
on language form, which may occur intentionally (i.e., a planned introduction of a
grammar rule or vocabulary word) or incidentally (i.e., a spontaneous treatment of a
language form in response to learners’ needs). Any form-focused activities, however,
should be embedded within an overall relationship to the actual language used for
communication in the task.

6 Authentic exemplars do not have to be (or in some cases should not be) something that native speakers
performed in the real world. A piece of writing or a recording by a fellow language learner who successfully
completed a given target task can be considered an authentic exemplar. Such an exemple may also be more
effective in helping learners better understand what the task expectations are and what they will be able to do
at the end of a lesson/unit.

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 12
 e. Interaction with peers and other interlocutors: Possibly in combination or
alternation with the previous stage, learners should be given the opportunity to
interact communicatively in English with others. Such interaction may take a variety
of forms, including activities designed to encourage negotiation of meaning (e.g.,
information-gap activities), collaborative co-construction of language form (e.g.,
planning how language will be used in a task), and others. The emphasis here is on
relatively low-stakes opportunities to use the language purposefully and interactively.
It is during these kinds of interactive activities that numerous opportunities arise for
providing learners with feedback about their language use and/or task
accomplishment, at the precise moments when that feedback is most useful. Peers
and learners themselves can be encouraged (and coached) to think about formative
feedback, and teachers can plan approaches to providing feedback in anticipation of
these opportunities.
f. Target task performance: Lessons should finish by giving learners the
opportunity to engage in (simulated) target task performance. Applying what they
have learned in attempting the ‘real thing’ will highlight the communicative purpose of
language learning; it will allow learners to understand what they have (and have not)
achieved; and it will provide a basis for teachers to monitor progress and provide
feedback.
g. Assessment for feedback: Target task performances should be assessed
according to the extent to which tasks were accomplished according to ‘real-world’
criteria based on what task accomplishment actually looks like. Feedback should
highlight strengths as well as selected areas in need of attention, all driven by the
expectations of the specific target task (i.e., not by expectations for grammatical
accuracy in the abstract). Assessment can and should be undertaken by learners
themselves and their peers, as well as by teachers on a periodic basis.
h. TOEFL iBT task practice: As needed, lessons should add on test-practice activities
that involve learners in attempting or repeating simulated TOEFL iBT tasks. Ideally, the
content of these activities will be related more or less directly to the content covered
in the lesson, and in some cases the activities may share communicative similarities
with the lessons· target tasks, though typically the target tasks will include elements of
context and communication purpose that might not be reflected in test tasks.

2. Four-Skills Lesson and Materials Development

In the following sections, instructional practices are suggested for guiding the design of lessons
and materials in relation to each of the four language skills (speaking, listening, writing, reading).
These suggested practices are intended to provide a sense of what kinds of

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 13
teaching and learning activities should occupy the majority of instructional time, but they are
not intended to be either comprehensive or exclusive (i.e., other activities may be useful as
well). Lesson designs will also vary depending on the intended learning outcomes, the specific
target tasks being taught, and the language proficiency of the learners.

2.1 Speaking

Fundamentally, speaking lessons and materials should encourage and enable speaking in the
target language, and a majority of the time should be devoted to having learners speak in
English (i.e., as opposed to having them learn grammar or vocabulary, or speak in their first
language). A primary concern with many English teaching contexts worldwide is that there is
very little actual speaking or speaking-focused learning discernable in course design. Similarly,
the speaking that does occur in courses may not reflect the kinds of speaking tasks that occur
in English academic settings, which will constrain the ways in which, and the degrees to which,
learners develop various aspects of their academic speaking ability.
In general, learners who are preparing for a transition into academic English-medium settings
(or preparing for the TOEFL iBT), will need to be working on all aspects of their speaking ability,
including in particular: (a) developing intelligible pronunciation and articulation, as well as
accurate intonation, stress, and rhythm; (b) expanding from fragmented or sentence-level to
lengthier amounts of coherent spoken discourse; and (c) increasing their fluency. They should
also be developing their understandings of English pragmatics and discourse conventions that
characterize certain speaking registers, events, and audiences³especially in relation to the
academic domain and the variety of interlocutors (other speakers) they will encounter there.
Lessons should include speaking tasks that range from monologic to dialogic to group-based, as
well as those that span the informal and interpersonal to the formal, presentational, and public-
secondary types of demands and audiences.
In order to support the persistent development of these aspects of English speaking ability,
we make the following basic recommendations:

Begin and end every lesson with opportunities for learners to speak in English.
Identify target tasks that require speaking abilities for their accomplishment, and
build lessons around these target tasks. To make the lessons maximally effective,
those target tasks should be something that learners will need to be able to do
successfully to survive and thrive in the academic domain.
Vary the types of target tasks; not all lessons should focus on conversational or
interactional speaking, for example. Give learners opportunities to work on different
genres of speaking (e.g., social, navigational, academic tasks of different kinds),
including monologic (e.g., class presentation) as well as dialogic tasks (e.g.,
discussion).
TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 14
 Include ample opportunity for low-stakes speaking practice, in the form of
discussions, question and answer sessions, brainstorming, etc.; create
opportunities for low-stakes interaction with peers as well as the teacher (and
potentially other English interlocutors native speakers or otherwise as feasible).
Provide good speaking models in the form of recorded (video/audio) speaking
events that present learners with relevant input that they can analyze and use for
further developing their own speaking; allow learners ample exposure to the input,
and encourage them to analyze how different aspects of spoken language are
used in order to achieve specific communication goals within it.
Encourage learners to focus on specific aspects of their speaking ability within a
given lesson, not all of it all the time; the particular focus can be determined by
speaking abilities that are critical for the target task in a given lesson (e.g.,
pronunciation, pragmatics, fluency, task accomplishment).
Provide explicit instruction on specific aspects of speaking ability when learners
are ready to benefit from it, typically following exposure of learners to the need for
using the specific aspects (e.g., after they have tried to make sense of an audio
recording, after they have tried to do a speaking task that calls for a given
language form).
Utilize interactive tasks as pedagogic activities that give learners a reason to
communicate (e.g., in order to jointly solve a problem or accomplish a goal) and
that encourage actual meaning exchange, negotiation, repair, etc.; have learners
interact in English regularly, with peers, the teacher, others. Have learners perform
target tasks under simulated or authentic conditions, typically as the culminating
speaking activity in a lesson or series of lessons.
Give learners opportunities to plan (prepare for, but not memorize) how they will
speak on given tasks, especially the first time they attempt the task; repeat
speaking tasks as a regular opportunity for improvement; for more familiar tasks,
remove planning opportunities to encourage development of spontaneous
speaking abilities.
Utilize recordings of students speaking for self-, peer-, and teacher assessment of
target task performance on a regular basis.
Provide feedback selectively, and always with a focus on specific aspects of
speaking ability that will help learners in the context of accomplishing a given task.
Take advantage of rubrics that define different aspects of speaking ability for
different kinds of tasks, as a basis for assessing and providing feedback (e.g.,
TOEFL iBT speaking rubrics).

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 15
2.2 Listening

As with speaking, the teaching of listening as a communicative skill should revolve around the
variety of typical (authentic) tasks students are likely to encounter in a university (social,
navigational, academic) setting in an English-speaking environment. Fundamentally, the focus
of academic English listening lessons should be on intensive and repeated listening with a
clear purpose and often in integration with other skills. While foundational knowledge and
skills (e.g., vocabulary knowledge) are important for successful listening, decontextualized
learning of such skills should generally be avoided in favor of their development through
comprehension-oriented listening tasks. Furthermore, given the variety of actual listening
tasks that learners are likely to encounter (and the variety of voices they will need to
understand), it is important to include diverse listening tasks, contexts, interlocutors, and
demands in the design of listening lessons. These additional recommendations should help in
thinking about the design of academic listening instruction:

Provide a purpose for listening: Why is the learner engaged in this listening? How
does it relate to a (social, navigational, academic) situation within an educational
context? What will a learner do with the information they gather from listening?
What happens next, as a result of a given listening task?
Expose learners to holistic, authentic listening input first (e.g., a set of directions to
a destination)prior to focusing on discrete parts of the listening (e.g., vocabulary
used for giving directions). It is important to have learners focus on meaning and
make sure that they attempt to comprehend the overall meaning of listening input
first.
Vary the focus of listening comprehension activities, to include a focus on general
meaning, specific details, and implied meanings.
To encourage different kinds of focus, have learners listen with a scaffold (e.g., a
table to fill in, a set of comprehension or guiding questions).
Emphasize language learning in the listening context:
- Introduce challenging words, phrases, or grammatical patterns during warm-up
discussions, especially when guiding students in predicting what they are going to hear.
- Provide authentic visuals, such as presentation slides for academic lectures, to
establish a context that mimics a real-world classroom and helps students learn by
association.
- Include new words, phrases, or grammatical patterns in listening input to
encourage the practice of guessing the meaning from the context.
- Have students listen to input multiple times prior to providing an explicit focus on
language as it is used in the input; learners should have to try hard to comprehend on
their own, prior to receiving support.

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 16
 Make repeated use of listening-intensive analytic activities:
- Listen to chunks of speech or pairs of turns, gradually increasing the amount of
speech to be processed.
- Listen with a scaffold that focuses learner attention on particular aspects of the
input (e.g., parts of speech, critical vocabulary, features of a speaker’s language variety,
how speakers create emphasis); for example, subtitles or a transcript of a video with
highlighting of particular forms will lead learners to focus on them.
- Have learners explore transcripts in comparison with audio input (especially useful
for lower proficiency learners) to identify parts of the listening they do not yet
understand.
Have learners work in pairs on language-focused listening activities (e.g., dictogloss,
where learners attempt to transcribe exactly what they hear), to encourage
interaction and to facilitate learning from each other.
Introduce note-taking and the use of graphic organizers, especially for academic
lectures, followed by pair or full-class review of notes taken in relation to the
content covered.
Finish lessons/units by having students work on an intact final task that requires
listening for a clear purpose.

2.3 Writing

Instructional materials and lessons should be designed to encourage and enable writing ability
for the variety of real-life tasks that take place in academic settings. A majority of the lesson
time should be devoted to having learners write (or engage in writing-related activities, like
planning to write) in authentic situations with specific purposes for writing. For learners
preparing to embark on academic studies in an English-medium setting, it is likely that learners
will need to be working on improving all aspects of their writing ability, including a particular
focus on: (a) using a variety of sentence structures from simple to complex; (b) using genre- and
audience-appropriate pragmatics and writing conventions; (c) using precise language and
academic vocabulary to express ideas in writing; (d) using transitional words and other
discourse markers to produce cohesive texts, and organizing sentences and paragraphs to
show a logical progression of thoughts; (e) using details to support opinions; and (f) writing
based on source information. They should also develop an appreciation for how distinct genres,
authors’ styles, and rhetorical devices are used for accomplishing different purposes in writing.
In particular, they should develop familiarity with distinct audiences for writing and the
implications for how they choose to write.

In order to keep writing lessons authentic and amenable to broad-based development of writing
competence (beyond just writing for test-taking purposes), consider the following.

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 17
 Incorporate real-life writing tasks as the targets for a lesson/unit (including
potential adaptation of TOEFL iBT tasks into real-life scenarios). For example,
below are some authentic writing task types that happen frequently in academic
settings:
- Report factual information to a scholarly or scientific audience
- Explain a concept to someone who does not understand it
- Describe people, places, things in sufficient detail
- Narrate events and/or tell stories
- Summarize input material (listening and reading) in concise and comprehensive
ways
- Express an opinion about a controversial topic
- Present and defend an argument on the basis of evidence
- Write emails or letters for specific purposes and audiences
- Participate in an online asynchronous discussion with peers and teachers
- Respond to short-answer test items
- Proofread and edit someone else’s writing
Always provide a clear rhetorical context including purposes and audiences for
writing; it can be useful to have learners work with input texts to discern/guess for
themselves the purposes and audiences for someone else’s writing, prior to
working on their own. This activity will help them make the connection between
linguistic forms (e.g., vocabulary, grammatical structures, pragmatics) and
meaning in particular contexts or genres.
Expose learners to a variety of authentic written texts to model effective writing.
Introduce a variety of genres (e.g., descriptive, narrative, expository,
argumentative, transactional texts) and occasions for writing.
Encourage learners to analyze and evaluate writing critically³ for example, what
type of rhetorical effects did an author try to achieve? Why did an author choose a
specific genre? How did an author utilize specific vocabulary or grammatical
structures to achieve a writing goal? Why was the text organized in a particular
way?
Use language examples from authentic writing sources to teach or direct learners·
attention to the use of language forms (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, pragmatics) in
context.
Have learners work on producing a variety of written texts that differ in terms of
communication purposes and audience for example, writing an email to a
professor versus describing information presented in a graph or table to inform
readers.
Provide ample opportunity for process writing: outlining, drafting, revising,
‘publishing’.
Posting learners’ writing(e.g., on a website) or publishing it otherwise (e.g., as an in-
house journal) is one way to make writing tasks more authentic, purposeful, and
relevant to the real world.
TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 18
 Incorporate free writing or brainstorming activities as a basis for idea generation,
prior to focusing on specific structures or organizational dimensions of a given
piece of writing.
Have learners discern genre-appropriate writing conventions through authentic
input (with scaffolded activities) and develop their own schema, outlines,
organizational structures for a given writing task, rather than applying
prefabricated templates.
Utilize feedback selectively to focus on particular aspects of the writing process
(e.g., feedback on ideas first, then feedback on structure and organization, then
feedback on language usage).
Engage learners in self-assessment or -reflection as well as provision of peer
feedback on a regular basis, especially with a focus on idea conveyance.
Take advantage of rubrics that define different aspects of writing ability for
different kinds of tasks, as a basis for assessing and providing feedback (e.g.,
TOEFL iBT writing rubrics).

2.4 Reading

Reading materials and lessons should be designed to encourage learners to use English for
receptive communication that is mediated by written input, of which there are many varieties
and sources in the English academic setting. A majority of the lesson time should be devoted
to having learners use English to engage with reading of authentic texts in authentic
situations and for specific purposes (i.e., as opposed to having them focus on
decontextualized grammar or vocabulary skill-building, or strategies for answering test
questions). Perhaps most relevant for learners preparing to study in an English-medium
academic setting will be a focus on: (a) constructing inferential as well as explicit meanings
from texts; (b) expanding linguistic knowledge (grammar, vocabulary, discourse practices);
and (c) developing understandings of different genres of texts and literary styles and
conventions in English.

In order to support the persistent development of all of these aspects of English reading
ability, we make the following basic recommendations:
Structure lessons and units to emphasize the accomplishment of authentic reading
tasks for a purpose.
Begin with pre-reading activities followed by structured reading of authentic texts
and ending with more independent reading tasks.
Consider how classroom language activities relate to real-life language activities by
answering the following questions. Let the answers to these questions guide the
development of materials and instruction.

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 19
 - What type of reading materials are learners likely to read in real-life academic
contexts?
- What type of information do readers extract from what they read?
- Why do readers read and what do they do with the information they extract
from reading materials?

Use pre-reading activities to engage and prepare learners for the lesson in terms of
the topic of a reading passage (i.e., content), purpose for reading, and language
involved.
Utilize interactive tasks as pedagogic activities that give learners a reason to
communicate about what they are reading(e.g., in order to jointly solve a problem or
accomplish a goal); have learners interact in English regularly, with peers, the teacher,
others, to communicate about what they are reading.
Balance content (i.e., reading skills and purposes) and language in designing activities;
an instructional activity could improve enabling language skills (e.g., vocabulary,
grammar), high-level reading comprehension skills, or both.
Use language examples from main reading texts to determine which grammar points,
vocabulary, and expressions to focus on. Reinforce and focus learning with brief
language exercises (e.g.,fill-in blanks, matching, error correction, and summary
writing) derived from target reading texts.
Incorporate interactive (pair, group)reading tasks that focus on language form (e.g.,
information-gap text reconstruction activities that focus on information flow within
or across paragraphs).
Encourage reading fluency development through authentic exercises such as timed
reading, reading aloud, and extensive reading. Providing an authentic scenario, such
as “read a job ad posted at a station before you have to jump on a train” or “read a
flyer aloud to a friend who missed the meeting today,” will help frame the activity in
relation to the real world and make it more interesting for learners.
Intersperse opportunities for reading-to-learn with a focus on detailed
comprehension and interpretation (e.g., reading with a dictionary).
Expose learners to a variety of text types (e.g., graphs, opinion pieces, e-mails,
textbooks, newspapers, websites, wikis) and a variety of content or topics, and
encourage learnersto critically evaluatehow information is presented and why it is
presented in distinct ways.
Include integrated activities that elicit other language modalities but focus on
reading-based activities as the source of information (e.g., read-to-write tasks).
Make use of task repetition to enforce learning of language forms and automatize
reading processes. For example, depending on learner needs, it may be a good idea to
include important vocabulary, grammar, and expressions that are integral to

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 20
 accomplishing the target task across multiple reading texts, so learners will be
exposed to key language forms repeatedly.
Encourage learners to explore, state, and reflect on their own learning goals for
reading. This technique is useful especially when the class consists of mixed-
ability learners or learners with distinct needs and also for fosteringstudents’
autonomy in general.

In Sum
Developing learners’ abilities to engage effectively in English communication within an academic
environment is a challenging but worthwhile goal. These guidelines provide a solid, evidence-
based foundation for working towards that goal. It is up to course and materials designers, and
especially teachers, to intentionally and creatively apply these recommended practices in
meeting the actual needs of specific students in their local contexts. In doing so, they will be
helping students advance their academic English abilities in maximally meaningful ways, and
those advances will be reflected in students’ performances on tests of academic English like the
TOEFL iBT.

TOEFL Teaching Framework | Guidelines for Planning English Language Lessons and Courses 21