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Design Syllabus PDF
Design Syllabus PDF
In recent years there has been a good deal of debate on the teaching of English to
young learners. Although the article looks at the teaching of English to lower
primary children in an E S L context in Southeast Asia, it is not specific to one
region. The young learners in question are aged 6 to 8 years. The main focus of the
article is how best to design a syllabus and classwork materials suitable for young
learners wherever they may be. The writer stresses the need for appropriate targetsetting and makes the case for a topic- based/task-based syllabus. The underlying
rationale is that a second language syllabus should reflect the world of the child
and facilitate the bringing of acquisition into the classroom.
Introduction
Syllabus design:
goals and content
The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
279
Minimizing
mismatches
Based on the communicative agenda above, it could be argued that the best
type of syllabus for young learners of English is one which makes it possible
for them to acquire the target language within the acquisition-poor
environment of the classroom. The problem with skills-based, structural,
lexical, and other itemized syllabi is that they are needlessly prescriptive
and uni-directional. They are based on the false assumption that there is a
simple, one-to-one relationship between teaching and learning. Nunan
(1994) pointed out that learning is mutually constructed as a collaborative
experience between teachers and learners. He went on to outline the
mismatches that may occur between the agendas of teachers and learners in
three important domains: a) the experiential domain, b) the learning
process domain, and c) the language content domain.
The experiential
domain
In relation to this domain, language teaching should relate to the childs world.
It is necessary to re-discover and inhabit the world of the child. Children live
in a world of fantasy and make-believe, a world of dragons and monsters,
talking animals, and alien beings. In their world there are no tenses, nouns,
or adjectives; there are no schemas labelled grammar, lexis, phonology, or
discourse. It follows that when we plan a syllabus for young learners we
should make sure it is experientially appropriate. It should contain:
n topics of interest to children
n stories of all kinds
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James M. Bourke
n
n
n
n
n
n
n
n
There is still a place for language games and meaningful drills, but only in
so far as these language experiences act as a pivot point to more genuine
communication.
Itemized syllabi typically focus on the product and not on the learning
process. They ignore the fact that language is made in the mind and
requires active processing on the part of the learner. In contrast, a
process type syllabus requires learners to notice features of the input
and process them in various ways in order to convert input into intake.
The main objection to skills-based, structural, and other itemized
syllabi is that they are unnatural. They intervene in and interfere with
the learners emerging interlanguage, which is often described as
a built-in syllabus. Naturalness in second language learning implies
a commitment to acquisition-like activities in acquisition-rich
environments and the adoption of a minimal teaching strategy,
a viewpoint expressed by Von Humboldt: We cannot teach a language;
we can only create the conditions under which it will be learned
(Dakin 1973: 11).
What those optimal conditions are is still an open question, but different
researchers have suggested the following:
n
n
n
n
n
comprehensible input
a stress-free environment
the right to be silent
copious interaction
some focus on form.
The language
content domain
281
What is needed is roughly tuned language input, not finely tuned input.
The language has to be packaged in a way that makes sense to children.
Hence the relevance of topics as vehicles in which language can be
contextualized. The language input must be not only comprehensible, it
must also be memorable. Children need exposure to whole instances of
language use and not a series of disjointed bits of language. It is the authors
contention that topics provide a natural context for the integration of
language input and skills development.
Putting it together
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James M. Bourke
We show a large-size cut-out of the each animal to elicit what pupils already
know, for example:
Monkeys have fur and long tails.
They live in the jungle.
This one is a macaque.
The teacher may feed in some new words or ideas, for example, troop,
agile, chatter, naughty, etc. Then pupils discuss the size, food, covering
and habitat of the other animals.
As Hudelson (op. cit.) suggests, the language focus of the unit of work may
be any one or more of the following:
n identify each animal by name (This is. . ./Thats a. . .)
n describe animals according to their size (Its big/small/bigger/smaller/
fatter.)
n colour (Its brown/green.); appendages (It has a long trail, eight
legs); kind of skin (The . . .has fur/scales/feathers.); how they move
(The . . . runs/hops/crawls/flies.)
n classify animals according to their habitat. (The . . .lives in water/in the
jungle/in trees.)
n Making comparisons: (The monkey has ears. The mouse-deer has ears.
Both have ears./The frog does not have wings. The snake does not have
wings. Neither has wings./All birds have beaks. All butterflies have
wings. All ants have six legs.)
n Ability: (Frogs can swim, but they cant fly.).
Follow-up tasks may be any of the following:
a On a large picture poster, find the four animals; name them, using
labels.
b In pairs, talk about each animal.
c Listen to and sing the animal song. (on cassette)
d In groups play the gameDo you know this animal?
e Shared Reading from a Big Book about animals, e.g. Have you ever
seen. . .?
f Group writing: Write five sentences about any one of the animals.
The unit of work on Animals Around Us may take one or two weeks
depending on the amount of time set aside for English. Each lesson will be a
seamless whole, with flexible stages, and with the language focus integrated
within the various activities.
A topic on its own is not of much use. It is what one does with it that matters.
The topic provides the inspiration for a variety of tasks that pupils engage
in. In the present context a task is a structured activity involving learners
in some form of real interaction, which may or may not be supported by
pre-selected language items.
figure 1
Topic as interface
between interaction and
language focus
283
In the case of young learners, two kinds of task are especially relevant, viz.
1 Communication tasks (objective: fluency through interaction)
According to Estaire and Zanon (1994: 13) a communication task is a piece
of classroom work which has the following traits. It involves the learner in
n the comprehension of the second language (spoken or written),
n the production of the second language (spoken or written), and
n oral interaction in the second language.
Learners attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form. It
resembles activities which students carry out in everyday life and it may
involve all four skills.
2 Enabling tasks (objective: accuracy through focus-on-form)
An enabling task is a language-oriented activity designed to provide
students with the necessary linguistic tools to carry out a communication
task. It may take the form of a great variety of activities which focus on
language analysis, language awareness, or language practice. Enabling
tasks may come before or after a communication task even though Willis
(1996) insists that they should come last.
A task-based syllabus presupposes that pupils already have a working
knowledge of the second language. How could they possibly solve problems,
play games, or do information-gap tasks without a reasonable degree of
second language proficiency? But young learners do not normally have that
prior knowledge. Hence, at the lower primary level there has to be some
preliminary work on building up a repertoire of enabling language so as to
facilitate real interaction at a later stage. Not surprisingly, some teachers feel
that any talk of task-based learning in its strong form at lower primary
is premature. Pupils may not be ready to stay afloat, communicatively
speaking, until they are at upper primary level. Many teachers are quite
reluctant to accept that TB L on its own is the only way to go, a viewpoint
advocated by Nunan (2002: 23):
I think task based learning is the only way to go for younger learners
because it is entirely natural to get someone learning something by doing
rather than by memorising sentence patterns or whatever.
The writer takes the view that much depends on the learners readiness. If
they already know some English, one can plunge them into a structured
communicative task. However, if they do not, then some time will need to be
spent on building a linguistic platform.
Total integration
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James M. Bourke
As with reading, the topic provides the motivation, ideas, and most of the
language needed for writing. Pupils in lower primary classes are not
linguistically ready for group and individual story writing. Writing develops
slowly and lags some way behind speaking. It should not be rushed. In
Primary 1 the main writing activity should be handwriting, learning the
alphabet, writing common words and phrases, transcription, and some very
basic controlled exercises. In Primary 2 writing tasks can be more guided
than controlled. Various techniques can be used such as the W SQ A
technique developed by Burgess (1994) in Malaysia. WS QA is an acronym
for Word, Sentence, Question, Answer. It is a simple language game
designed to give structured practice in recycling a word in a self-generated
sentence, question, and answer. Other simple topic-related writing activities
can be found in Hadfield and Hadfield (2000). In Primary 3 one can
move on to the beginning of free writing. Work here too should be related
to the topic of the week.
Young learners are by definition struggling writers and teachers have to
provide the instructional scaffolding necessary for them to write in the
second language, English. There is nothing wrong with explicit teaching at
lower primary level. Pupils have to learn basic skills (such as handwriting,
spelling, and punctuation) before a process approach can be adopted at
upper primary level. It is not being suggested that young learners should not
write in English until they have mastered English grammar, spelling, and
Designing a topic-based syllabus for young learners
285
Conclusion
References
Burgess, P. 1994. Achieving accuracy in oral
communication through collaborative learning.
English Teaching Forum July 1994.
Dakin, J. 1973. The Language Laboratory and Language
Learning. Harlow: Longman.
Ellis, R. 1997. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Estaire, S. and J. Zanon. 1994. Planning Classwork:
A Task-based Approach. Oxford: Heinemann.
Hadfield, J. and C. Hadfield. 2000. Simple Writing
Activities. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
Hudelson, S. 1991. EFL teaching and children:
a topic-based approach. English Teaching Forum
October 1991.
Krashen, S. 1981. Second Language Acquisition and
Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Larsen-Freeman, D. 1997. Chaos/Complexity
science and second language acquisition. Applied
Linguistics 18/2.
Lloyd, S. 1992. The Phonics Handbook (3rd edition).
Chigwell, UK: Jolly Learning.
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