Using Free Online Materials as the Basis of an Upper-Level IEP Listening and Speaking Course

Oct 15, 2026

A practical course design explains how freely available online video resources can ground an upper-level Intensive English Program (IEP) listening and speaking curriculum. The article details course strands and linking units, including extensive listening, intensive listening, note taking, interaction, language-focused speaking practice, and vocabulary development. For each strand, it provides rationales, concrete activities, and recommended online resources, including weekly listening charts, reflection routines, and discussion-based sharing of media sources.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Course Strands

Extensive Listening

Suggested Online Resources

Using Free Online Materials as the Basis of an Upper-Level IEP Listening and Speaking Course Freely available online videos are the basis of an Intensive English Program (IEP) listening and speaking course described in this article. Strands and activities of this course could easily be adapted for use in other institutions. For each strand of the course, rationales are stated, activities are described, and suggested online resources are listed. Introduction O nline authentic video materials hold great potential to enrich Intensive English Program (IEP) listening and speaking instruction, as has been noted by a variety of authors. One ad- vantage of online videos, according to Smidt and Hegelheimer (2004), is student control over video playback. Many authors (e.g., MacDonald, Badger, & White, 2000) emphasize the importance of the visual mode in video recordings for listening comprehension. Flowerdew and Miller (1997) emphasize that actual recordings of university lectures are an important facet of academic ESL preparation. Although online video resources primarily provide direct practice in listening skills, they can be used as the basis for developing course strands in both listening and speaking. For the last four years, I have been teaching and revising an IEP speaking and listening course based entirely on academic videos freely available from the Internet. In this article, I would like to share my lessons learned from this process. The course has six strands: extensive listening, intensive listening, note taking, interaction, language-focused speaking practice, and vocabulary development. These strands are tied together into several units with content themes based on video recordings from the Internet. My specific context is an IEP class that immediately precedes university enrollment, with students at a proficiency level ranging from intermediate to upper-intermedi- 118 • The CATESOL Journal 25.1 • 2013/2014 ate, and sometimes lower-advanced; however, many of the activities and resources I describe are adaptable to other contexts and proficiency levels. I will describe the course strands, indicating a rationale for each, along with suggested activities and sources for materials. It is my hope that readers will be inspired to use more of the wealth of materials available online to enrich the listening and speaking activities offered to their students. Course Strands Extensive Listening There has been a great deal of interest in recent years in including a program of extensive reading for ESL students in literate skills courses. One idea behind extensive reading practice is to help learners automatize their decoding processes by repeating the process over and over without struggling (see e.g., Nation, 2009, ch. 4) . Students improve their reading skills simply by reading a great deal of material that they find enjoyable and comprehensible, gaining “practice in comprehension, not practice in incomprehension” (Renandya & Farrell, 2010). Along the same lines, Renandya and Farrell (2010) call fora greater emphasis on extensive listening in ESL listening instruction, so as to provide sufficient practice and to reduce learners’ frustration with repeated attempts to understand material that is too difficult. To practice extensive listening, students can be encouraged to select appropriate listening materials from the many resources, both authentic and graded, that are freely available online. In my class, students keep a chart recording one to two hours a week of independent, extensive, online listening. The chart includes columns for time spent, source URL of the listening text, a one-sentence summary, comments on the student’s opinion of the listening, and a new word or words that the student noticed while listening. Every week, students submit their charts to be checked and make a brief post to an online voice board about some interesting thing they heard. At the middle and end of the term, students gath

FAQs

How are online videos used in the IEP listening and speaking course design?

The course uses freely available authentic online videos as the foundation for building listening and speaking strands, with activities and resources mapped to each strand and its rationale.

What is the role of extensive listening in the course?

Extensive listening aims to reduce frustration and help learners build comprehension by repeatedly listening to materials that are enjoyable and understandable, encouraging students to abandon overly difficult or uninteresting content.

What weekly task do students complete for extensive listening?

Students record one to two hours of independent extensive online listening in a chart that tracks time, source URL, a one-sentence summary, personal comments, and newly noticed vocabulary, then submit the chart and post a brief voice-board comment.

Oct 15, 2026

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