Setting: 

Community English class @Community Service Center

Age of Students: adults
Level of Students: Intermediate low
Class Meetings: Monday, Wednesdays & Fridays from 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.

What is the topic of this unit?

The topic for our unit is shopping, which is highly related to students’ daily life. Our topics within the unit of shopping include buying
groceries (e.g, food names, categories, measure words), buying clothes (e.g., sizes, textures, functions), and customer service (e.g,
return and refund, exchange, shipping options) . 

Rationale: 
We set our teaching context at a U.S based community service center that offers English classes to new immigrants and
English learners in the surrounding neighborhood. All of the target students speak English as their second or third language, and they
are either in or above the intermediate-low proficiency level (ACTFL) in English. They can use basic words and short phrases to
communicate but need further practice to expand vocabulary and phrases for daily life. The classes will be held three times a week on
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and are limited to small sizes around 16 learners. 
Since all our students are now living in an English-speaking country, their urgent need is to get familiar with more words in
daily use and to be understood in conversations. Therefore, we set our topic as shopping which frequently appears in people’s lives.
We decide to set our scenarios at grocery stores and shopping malls since these are places people frequently purchase necessities.
Consequently, categorized vocabulary and sentence frames are the focuses of the unit. For further exploration, we consider that
students might meet issues that they need to ask for products they cannot find, ask for recommendations from the salesperson, or
require exchange/return/refunds for problematic products, so the ability to describe products and using sentence structures are the
objectives for this unit. In addition, we choose to include the topic of customer service as it is an opportunity for students to learn
social norms in this speech event. We as teachers believe that it’s important to teach learners how to use language during social
interactions since talking with friends and families is different from talking with customer service staff. 
For most of our classes, we will start with input-based tasks to provide specific language forms for students. Then, we will
move on to either focused or unfocused tasks depending on what skills we want students to develop in each lesson. Since our main
goal is to prepare learners ready to use the communicative language outside the classroom, most of our tasks will tend to be more
meaning-focused. Teachers will observe and facilitate the class as students are doing their tasks, in which formative assessment is
conducted. For the post-task stages, we will include exit tickets, open-ended questions, or other activities to conclude our class.
Overall, the complexity of tasks increases throughout the unit with the focus gradually moving from the form to meaning. 
Unit Plan Theme: Shopping
Setting: Community English class @Community Service Center
Age of Students: Adults
Level: Intermediate Low 
Each class is two hours in length on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and will be conducted in-person. 

Week/Day Monday Wednesday Friday

Week 1  Teacher-led ice-breaking  Grocery shopping  Describing food and how

activity:  review:  to cook (an input-based
Grocery A three-round activity that
shopping groups and regroups students
based on their shopping
preferences to get students
familiar with their peers as
well as the topic of shopping.
 Where is my food (an
information gap task):
Teacher elicits students’
knowledge about grocery
shopping and teaches
vocabulary and sentence
frames students would use for
the task. Students are assigned
with different sets of
information, work in pairs,
and ask each other for
information including
sections, aisles, prices of food
items, etc.   share in the next class.
A Kahoot game that helps task): 
students refresh their Games about finding
mind about the linguistic similarities and differences,
features they learned on using adjectives ending
Monday.  with “-y” suffix to describe
 Classifying food items food items, learn simple
(a pedagogical task):  verbs in cooking
Teacher shows pictures  Make your own recipe:
of groups of food and Teacher shows a video
students give reasons about making a dish.
why certain food items do Students work in groups to
not belong to the group come up with their recipes
using “because”. about dishes using verbs
 Shoppers and and adjectives. Report to
Nutritionists task:  the class.
Students work in groups,  Homework: 
share expectations for Take a picture of your dish
meals, and design meal if you made one using the
plans for each other. recipes from class. Ready to

Week 2  Shopping mall designing:  Imitate fashion models:  Opinions about clothes:
 The teacher first plays a video
Shopping about elements and signs in
for clothes shopping malls as a pre-task.
Then students are given a
blank floor plan and they can
work in pairs to
design/arrange different
elements in their shopping
malls.
 Where to find (information
gap task):  different scenarios such
Students are given a floor plan
of KOP (King of Prussia) and
they should help their partners
to find the targeted places.  the scenarios and give
The teacher will provide
some pictures of fashion
models. Students need to
search for similar clothes
using key feature words
from a shopping website
for daily outfit.
 What is your outfit
(opinion gap task):
The teacher will provide
as swimming, hiking,
parties, etc. Students
should find clothes fit for
reasons.  get different roles role play
Students can dress in their
favorite clothes to class or
bring their disliked clothes.
Students work in pairs to
give some opinions or
advice about their partner’s
clothes. 
 Role play task
(information gap task):
The teacher provides some
scenarios such as asking for
a fitting room, asking for
recommendations, asking
for solutions to out-of-stock
clothes, etc. Students who
in pairs to tackle problems. 
 Homework:
If comfortable, write down
some incidental situations
you met before when you
were shopping and your
solutions to those. 

Week 3  Brainstorming and  Sequencing shopping:   End of unit task: Welcome

storytelling: Using a flowchart, to my store!
Customer Students share about their past students rank orders of Students work in pairs or
Service experiences of buying what they normally do for trios to run a business. They
unsatisfied items and their shopping (e.g., start with will describe items they
solutions. Others will share expectations, choose sell, floor plan and location,
their possible solutions if in items, purchase, … create policies for their
the same situation.  return/refund). stores. Students will create
 Make an exchange:   Need a refund? (in posters or advertisements to
Teacher shows students some
exchange policies from
several stores. Pre-teach
language points about
shipping. Provide problem
solving scenarios of
exchanging unsatisfied items.
person and online attract customers.
customer service task):
Teacher shows students
some return and refund
policies from several
stores. Pre-teach
language points about
return payment methods.
Provide problem solving
scenarios of returning
unsatisfied items through
both in person and online
service.