ADE/B.Ed.

(Hons) Elementary
Syllabus
Teaching English
Semester 4

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Technical Support: Education Development Centre (EDC); Teachers College, Columbia University

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 Syllabus: Teaching English
YEAR/SEMESTER: Year 2/Semester 4
CREDITS: 3 credits
PRE-REQUISITES: successful completion of courses in semesters 1-3

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This three-credit course has been designed to enable prospective teachers to teach English using
an interactive communicative approach to students aged 6 to 13. It will be taught over 16 weeks
with three face-to-face sessions per week, making a total of 48 sessions. The course aims to be
comprehensive in its coverage and depth so that, on its completion, participants will have gained
both a theoretical understanding of the basic principles of Second Language Acquisition and the
practical knowledge of how to apply these principles effectively in the language classroom. The
course focuses on ways of teaching young learners the four skills of listening, reading, speaking
and writing to enable them to reach a basic level of communicative competence in both spoken
and written English. In addition to learning how to teach and integrate the four skills in an
interactive, learner-centered manner, participants will gain an understanding of how grammar
awareness raising and vocabulary acquisition can be incorporated into a communicative teaching
approach. Finally, student teachers will learn how to design and develop their own teaching
materials and activities, and how to assess and test their students’ language proficiency and
progress.

COURSE OUTCOMES

On completing the course, student teachers are expected to:

a. have gained a basic understanding of how second/foreign languages are acquired and
possess a working knowledge of the following methods/approaches to Second Language
Acquisition: grammar-translation, audio-lingualism, the natural approach, communicative
language teaching.

b. be able to teach the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing to young
learners using an interactive communicative approach.

c. be able to design suitable teaching materials which focus on helping learners acquire a
basic level of communicative competence.

d. be able to assess their students’ language performance and progress using their own self-
designed assessment procedures.

e. know how to help learners develop basic grammatical competence and vocabulary
knowledge in English using a learner-centered communicative teaching approach.

f. be aware of the differences between teaching and testing when they are designing their
own classroom materials and activities.

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LEARNING AND TEACHING APPROACHES

The communicative approach to language learning and teaching (CLT) has as its goal the
acquisition of communicative competence by second language learners, and proposes a
communicative syllabus and methodology as the way to achieve this goal. Since its inception in
the 1980s, CLT has continued to evolve and develop, and current communicative language
teaching theory and practice now draw on a number of different educational traditions and
methods. As a result of this blend of teaching practices, CLT today refers not to a strict
methodology but to a set of generally agreed principles that can be applied in various ways
depending upon the cultural context, the level and age of the learners, and the proposed learning
outcomes. This course, Teaching English, aims to equip prospective teachers with the effective
methods and strategies they can use to help their students attain a basic level of communicative
competence in English. Some traditional methods such as jazz chants and grammar
consciousness-raising will be introduced to the participants as well as more authentic CLT-based
methods such as task-based learning and problem solving. By the end of the course, student
teachers should be in a position to select the methods, strategies and techniques which are most
relevant and appropriate for teaching their students to communicate successfully in speech and
writing.

SEMESTER OUTLINE FOR THE COURSE (6 units / 16 weeks)

Unit One: Introduction to Second Language Acquisition (2 weeks / 6 hours)

This unit will cover the first six sessions (two weeks) of the course. The objective is to give the
course participants the background they will need for understanding how human beings acquire
languages and the most influential ESL teaching methods and approaches that have been used in
recent years.

Week One
 Introduction to the Course Teaching English
 Introduction to Unit One and Initial Activity: Exploring course participants’
views of how languages are learned.
 What do people need to know to speak a foreign language well?
 Four influential ESL approaches
Week 1  The Grammar-Translation method and its limitations
 Behaviourism and the Audio-Lingual Method
 The Natural Approach
 The Interactionist Approach
 Practical teaching activities using the Interactionist Approach
 Criticism of the Interactionist Approach
 A quiz to review the four approaches to SLA
 Implications of the Post-Methods Era
Week 2  Factors Affecting Second Language Learning: Investigating learner differences
and learning styles
 What is Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)?

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Unit Two: Receptive Skills (Listening & Reading) (4 weeks / 12 hours)

Listening
The listening component of this unit will show the course participants ways of helping young
learners to improve their listening skills by offering them a combination of extensive and
intensive learning material. This component will also outline the different types of listening
activities that have been used in the communicative classroom (including pre-, mid- and post-
listening activities). In addition, it will highlight some of the problems learners face in real-life
listening and suggest ways of overcoming these problems.

Reading
The reading component of this unit will begin by making the course participants more aware of
what is involved in the reading process in the beginning stages (e.g. perceiving and decoding
letters in order to read words, gathering meaning from the words in a written text, etc.). It will
then go on to examine how teachers can help learners to develop their reading skills so that they
are able to deal with more complex texts and become efficient readers who get genuine pleasure
out of reading.

 What are listening skills?

 Listening as a skill: some listening theories
Week 3  How do children learn to listen?
 Some suggestions for classroom listening
Listening
 What does real-life listening involve?
 Extensive and Intensive Listening

 Techniques and Activities for Teaching Listening Skills communicatively

in the classroom
Week 4  Pre-Listening, While-Listening, and Post-Listening activities
 Designing effective listening materials and activities for the language
Listening classroom
 Practical microteaching of listening skills in the classroom

 What is reading?
 What is the purpose of reading inside and outside the classroom?
Week 5  The power of reading
 Reading comprehension skills
Reading
 Some suggestions for reading activities
 Factors affecting learning to read in a second language
 The role of the teacher in extensive and intensive reading

 Techniques and activities for teaching reading communicatively

 Pre-Reading, While-Reading, and Post-Reading activities
Week 6  Designing and developing effective reading activities for the language
classroom
Reading  Practical microteaching of reading skills in the classroom

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Unit Three: Productive Skills - Speaking and Writing (4 weeks / 12 hours)

Speaking
The aim of this component of the unit is to present student teachers with a principled approach
to the teaching of speaking skills so that their students can develop a basic level of
communicative competence in English. The unit outlines different types of tasks and activities
that can be used by the teacher to help young learners develop fluency and accuracy in their
speech.

Writing
This component of the unit will examine some of the approaches to writing that have been used
in ESL teaching (controlled writing, guided writing, genre-based writing, the product approach,
the process approach) and outline practical activities and tasks that can be used to help young
learners develop their writing skills.

 What are Speaking Skills?

 Helping learners to improve their pronunciation through the use of
Week 7 simple exercises and tasks
Speaking  How to introduce learners to the sound system of English – Use of varied
drills
 Ways of helping learners to improve their pronunciation through practical
classroom exercises (jazz chants, songs, rhymes, etc.)
 Teaching Basic Communication Strategies – relating functions to
appropriate language forms

 Experiencing, Designing and Evaluating Speaking Activities for the

Communicative Language Classroom I
Week 8 o Using songs to encourage speaking
Speaking o Asking and Answering simple questions
o A discussion game ‘Shipwrecked’

 Experiencing, Designing and Evaluating Speaking Activities for the

Communicative Language Classroom II
o Using pictures in a speaking exercise
o Using a story for acting and developing speaking

 Assessing CLT activities – a questionnaire

 Practical microteaching of speaking skills in the classroom and evaluation

 Key concepts in teaching second language writing : controlled writing,

guided writing, genre-based writing, the product approach, the process
Week 9 approach
Writing  Types of writing tasks that have been used effectively in Communicative
Language Teaching
 Practical CLT Writing activities such as describing a view, writing about a
personal experience, writing a dialogue between two friends, etc.

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  How to help students by giving them language scaffolding
 Giving useful feedback to learners on their writing.
Week 10  Designing writing materials and activities for the language classroom
Writing
 Practical microteaching of writing skills by groups in the classroom and
evaluation of the presentations

Unit Four: Teaching Grammar Communicatively (2 weeks / 6 hours)

This unit is intended to show course participants how they can teach grammar in a creative,
entertaining and communicative manner to help learners improve both their fluency and
accuracy in speech and writing. It begins by reviewing some basic grammatical structures in
English (such as subject-verb agreement, formation of questions and negatives, etc.) so that
student teachers have a clear understanding of how to form and use these structures accurately
themselves before they go on to teach this basic grammar to their young students. The unit then
suggests ways of presenting grammar in a fun, enjoyable and meaningful way to children.

 A review of basic concepts in grammar: tense, subject-verb agreement,

formation of interrogative and negative verb forms, SVO word order,
Week 11 simple/compound/complex sentences.
 Student teachers work through practical exercises and activities in the
above areas to ensure that they have a clear understanding of the
appropriate grammatical forms required for the structures outlined above.
The course facilitator gives student teachers some tips on how to edit
their work for errors.
 The place of grammar teaching in the second language acquisition
process; evaluating different approaches to grammar teaching taken by
course book writers

 What is a communicative approach to teaching grammar?

 Teaching techniques and activities to support communicative-based
Week Twelve grammar learning
 Designing and evaluating communicative grammar materials for the
language classroom
 Preparation by student teachers of their own activities for teaching
grammar
 Micro-teaching by student teachers in groups of the activities they have
prepared and evaluation of these activities by the class.

Unit Five: Teaching Vocabulary Effectively (2 weeks / 6 hours)

One aim of this unit is to show the course participants how vocabulary can be divided into
function words vs. lexical words, and high frequency words vs. low frequency words. The main
focus of the unit, however, is to give student teachers some practical ideas for designing their
own activities and tasks for vocabulary teaching/learning.

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  Function words vs. lexical words
 High frequency vs. low frequency words
Week 13  Discussion of which English words young learners will need to know to
be able to speak and write at a basic level. How should these items be
presented to the learners?
 Student teachers do web searches to choose 50 words they would like to
teach to their students. Discussion in class on how and why the 50 words
were selected.
 Making vocabulary a useful part of a language course – when and how
should vocabulary be taught to English learners?

 Practical activities for teaching and reviewing vocabulary

 Evaluating vocabulary activities
Week 14  Student teachers prepare 15-minute vocabulary teaching activities in
groups
 Micro-teaching by the student teachers in groups of the activities
prepared in the previous session

Unit Six: Assessing Language Performance (2 weeks / 6 hours)

This unit introduces the participants to some key concepts in assessment theory and to some
practical ways of testing the language skills of young learners. It also outlines the kinds of tests
the prospective teachers can develop themselves in order to measure how successfully their
course learning objectives have been achieved.

 Some basic principles and key concepts in assessment

 Basic principles for assessing children’s language learning
Week 15  Why do we test students?
 Tips and special considerations for Testing Young Learners
 Conflicts between classroom learning and classroom testing and ways of
reducing these conflicts
 Ways of Marking Language Tests and Giving Feedback
 Designing Language Tests for Young Learners

 Samples of test types that can be used to test young learners

 In groups, student teachers prepare their own materials for testing one of
Week 16 the four skills for a 15-minute presentation
 Micro-teaching in groups and evaluation of the testing materials by the
class

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SUGGESTED REFERENCES

Cameron, L. (2001) Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge: CUP.

Fanselow, J. (1987) Breaking Rules. New York: Longman.
Goh, C.M. (2007) Teaching Speaking in the Language Classroom. Singapore: SEAMEO-RELC.
Harmer, J. (2001) The Practice of English Language Teaching. Harlow: Pearson Educational.
Hughes, A. (2003) Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: CUP.
Hyland, K. (2003) Second Language Writing. Cambridge: CUP.
Lightbown, P. and N. Spada (1999). How Languages are Learned. Oxford: OUP.
Nation, P. (2002) Managing Vocabulary Learning. Singapore: SEAMEO-RELC.
Phillips, S. (1993) Young Learners. Oxford: OUP.
Richards, J.C. (2001) Curriculum Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge:CUP.
Richards, J.C. (2005) Communicative Language Teaching Today. Singapore: RELC.
Swan, M. (2005) Practical English Usage. Oxford: OUP.
Thornbury, S. (2005) Grammar. Oxford: OUP
Ur, P. (1996) A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP.

COURSE ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING POLICY

Course participants will be required to submit one short assignment and take a short quiz after
completing each unit of the course. Details of these assignments and tests will be shared by the
course instructor. It is suggested that course work count for at least 50% of the final grade. In
addition to course work, there will be mid and end-of-semester examinations.

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