Having published several posts on individual skills, I felt that they needed better organisation and something to “hang onto” as it were. To that end, here are some short thoughts on syllabus and curriculum. Read the rest of this entry »
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1. Manipulating the script of the language: handwriting, spelling and punctuation.
2. Expressing grammatical [syntactic and morphological] relationships at the sentence level.
3. Expressing relationships between parts of a written text through cohesive devices [especially through grammatical devices such as noun-pronoun reference]. Read the rest of this entry »
1. Deducing meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items through understanding word formation and contextual clues in utterances and spoken text
2. Recognising and understanding phonological features of speech [especially those forms associated with supra-segmental features] Read the rest of this entry »
- Approaching writing as a process accomplished in stages
- Scrutinizing work more critically
- Revising work to make it intelligible by adding, removing, substituting, and/or recombining material
- Keeping a portfolio of work to chart progress
- Raising awareness of different types of written texts with different purposes
- Filling out typical forms
- Writing short factual texts explaining reasons for an action and [or] making simple recommendations
- Writing statements using principles of coordination and subordination
- Listening to types of speech in different authentic contexts
- Listening to everyday speech and interactions
- Listening to and identifying single or multiple speakers
- Listening to both planned and unplanned speech
- Developing ability to describe objects and processes
- Responding to various forms of questions and sustained questioning in appropriate contexts
- Interacting in real world speaking activities
- Performing one way and two-way information tasks
- Raising awareness of conversational structure [opening, turn-taking, sustaining a turn, negotiating meaning, nominating a topic, repairing a mistake, linking ideas, adjusting the message by rephrasing, or using circumlocutions, changing topics, & closing a conversation]
In this post the classroom ideas are marked with a:
Whatever type of approach you intend to use for a particular activity in the classroom, making the differentiation between fluency and accuracy is a very important one.
However, here are some things to think about. From Brumfit…
- Just because we are talking about fluency, it does not mean that accuracy cannot be present. Accuracy is a focus on issues of appropriacy and other formal factors.
- Overuse of accuracy monitoring can cripple language development, making the students lose confidence through the teacher’s over correction.
- Any language activity that involves the learners not working like native speakers cannot be called a fluency activity.
- The “quality” of the language is irrelevant.
- Because:
- work that focuses on language alone = accuracy work
- and work that focuses on the language of the native speaker = fluency work.
Some courses fail the learners in that they fail to distinguish between spoken and written language. The litmus test for this assertion is to ask whether the syllabus/curriculum treats spoken language as something distinct from written language with its own grammar, syntax and lexicon. If productive skills work is a vehicle for the teaching of structures rather than training for skill and sub-skill acquisition then the course would probably have to be described as a grammar based course, no matter how communicative it is hyped up to be.
Here then, are some of the features of spoken language as I have identified them. Read the rest of this entry »
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