SAMPLE SYLLABUS FOR TEACHING AND ASSESMENT OF

GRAMMAR
Course overview:
This course is designed for foreigners learning English at an ABC and Elementary
levels to acquire and develop the English language knowledge and skills. The
course is defined within the common reference European Framework and
corresponds to the classic division into Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate.
A1
(Breakthrough) Pre-Intermediate
A
(Basic User)
A2 In
(Waystage) termediate

The aim of the syllabus is to prepare students to use English for their professional
studies in the Higher School of Economics and consequently for their professional
needs in real life and work. This is realized as KET at Breakthrough level.
This preparatory course will further give the students the opportunity to speak on
general topics, to communicate in Business environment and to understand texts on
business and finance in the English speaking world. This is realized at 2 different
levels: ABC and Basic User (beginners).
The Basic User course incorporates 3 basic components:
1. General English
2. Business English
3. Professional (English for Specific Purposes) English
The course aims at developing a wide range of skills:
 Language Development, which involves grammar and extensive vocabulary
learning.
 Writing skills, which have a specific focus on literacy and short essays,
memoranda, notes.
 Reading, which involves study of instructional business-related texts of
topical relevance.
 Listening, which includes comprehension of gist and detailed information.
 Communication skills, which cover communication situations (within the
framework of Breakthrough level).
Course objectives:
The main objectives of the syllabus are:
  to provide material for the students to learn pronunciation of the English
sounds, to learn to read, write, and to know the fundamentals of English
grammar and vocabulary;
 to develop the students' reading skills to enable them to skim an adapted text
for main idea, to scan an adapted text for specific information, to interpret an
adapted text for inferences;
 to develop the students' writing skills to enable them to respond to input
applying information to a specified task, to elicit, to select, to summarize
information in essays (140-160 words);
 to develop the students' listening skills to enable them to understand and
apply specific information from the input (within the framework of
Breakthrough level);
 to develop the students' speaking skills to enable them to use general, social
and professional language (within the framework of Breakthrough level);
 to develop the students' general capacity to a level that enables them to use
English in their professional and academic environment (within the
framework of Breakthrough level).
Methods of assessment:
Assessment is by coursework (40%), which integrates the following:
 Individual and group oral presentations
 Oral interactions (including pair work)
 Written tests and tasks of various length (memoranda, notes)
 Essays
 Listening/ viewing
 Communicating the gist of simple reading passages
 Translation of simple texts on economics.
 A measure of classroom participation, progress and motivation accounts for 20%
of the overall assessment. A final exam comprising KET listening comprehension,
an extract for rendering into English and an oral topic accounts for 40% of the total
credit.
Main reading:
This syllabus may be fulfilled on the basis of textbooks and training materials,
original special supplementary materials adapted for the elementary level. The
usage of up-to-date adapted materials will help students to obtain the necessary
skills in reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Business English Course book:
М.А. Шевелева. English on Economics. М., 1998.
 Cotton D., Falvey D., Kent S. Market Leader. Intermediate Business
English. Longman, 2001.
General English Course books:
Ю.Б. Голицынский. Грамматика. Сборник упражнений. С.-П., 2002.
Evans V., Dooley J. Upstream. Intermediate Course book. Express
Publishing. 2002.
Evans V., Dooley J. Upstream. Intermediate workbook. Express Publishing.
2002.
Evans V., Dooley J. Upstream. Grammar. Express Publishing. 2002.
ESP Course book:
ESP –1 Texts on Economics.
Course Outline

The content of the English syllabus is based on preliminary testing and grouping
the students into three streams: Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate and Upper-
Intermediate. This approach helps students in the lower-level groups to achieve the
needed competence and students in the more advanced groups to perfect their
knowledge of English.

1.General English

The students learn to pronounce, read and write. They acquire their knowledge of
fundamental grammatical structures and functions (e.g. sentence types, tenses,
voice, parts of speech, word order, expressing possibility, obligation, necessity,
prohibition, criticism; expressing preferences, making assumptions; asking for/
refusing/giving permission; making offers, sugestions, etc.) They acquire their
fundamental vocabulary to fulfill the above mentioned functions in roles, topics
and discussions.
The students are taught to be able to converse on different topics (people, jobs,
places to visit, festivals/celebrations, disasters/accidents, eating habits,
sports/hobbies, environment, education, entertainment, transport, crime, etc.).
The students learn to understand spoken language. Listening texts include
monologues and interacting speakers. They are taught to focus on understanding
the gist, the main points, look for detail or specific information, deduce the
meaning.
The students are offered adapted/instructional reading material and are encouraged
to learn to use different strategies for different reading purposes: identifying the
main points in a text, looking for detail, locating specific information in a text,
understanding a text structure, etc.
The students are expected to learn to produce written texts of various types: formal
/ informal / transactional letters, argumentative essays (expressing opinions, for
and against), narration (story writing), memoranda and notes.
2. Professional (ESP) English
The purpose of ESP course is to prepare the students for doing Economics,
Mathematics and Statistics in English.
Development of the students' restricted knowledge in economic terms and topics
includes: different economic systems, central control of economy, labour utilities,
demand and supply, money, markets and monopolies, banking.
The students' competence in ESP is measured by their ability to:
 understand and interpret information presented in verbal, numerical or
graphical form;
 organize and present ideas and statements in a clear, logical and appropriate
form.
3. Business English
Business English course starts during the first intensive course with the
introduction of the students into the world of business.
The course aims to:
 develop the students' comprehension of business and economic texts;
 develop the students' listening skills in the field of business and economics;
 provide the students with opportunities to express business concepts by
reformulating them in their own words while summarizing.
The students' competence in this aspect is measured by their ability to demonstrate
their communication skills in the key business areas of meetings, negotiations,
telephoning and social English, as well as the ability to write memos, notes.
4. Skills development
Students are taught to develop their skills in:
Reading which includes:
Skimming, scanning, detailed reading, guessing unknown words from context,
understanding text organization, recognizing argument and counter-argument;
distinguishing between main information and supporting detail, fact and opinion,
hypothesis versus evidence; summarizing and note-taking.
Writing includes:
 Essay content and structure (patterns of organization, paragraphing,
discussion – argument/counter-argument, advantages and disadvantages,
topic sentence and supporting ideas, coherence and cohesion, punctuation).
 Functions (generalization, definitions, exemplification, classification,
comparison and contrast, cause and effect, process and procedure,
interpretation of data).
 Style (passive constructions, avoiding verbosity)
  Punctuation
Listening includes:
 General comprehension (listening for gist, listening for detailed information,
evaluating the importance of information).
 Lectures (identifying the topic and main themes, identifying relationships
among major ideas, comprehending key information).
Speaking includes:
 Seminar skills (agreeing and disagreeing, clarifying, questioning,
concluding).
 Presentation skills (introductions and stating the purpose, signposting,
highlighting key points, summaries, conclusions).
The students' competence in skills development is measured by their ability to
understand and produce written and spoken language in an educational context, to
perform the following academic tasks:
 reading and understanding written academic language;
 writing assignments in an appropriate style for university study;
 listening to and comprehending spoken language (within the framework of
Breakthrough level);
 speaking to colleagues and lecturers (within the framework of Breakthrough
level).
Teaching hours for topics and activities

Topics titles TOTAL (hours)

 
1st semester (September – December)
1. My family. Myself.
2. Meeting people. Making Contacts.
3. A city. Getting about town.
4. Our flat. Home life. General English Intensive course  96

 
2nd semester (January-June)
1. Travelling. Going abroad.
2. Going through Customs.
3. At a hotel.
4. Shopping. General English 36 
5. Eating out.
 1. Making a phone call.
2. A modern office.
3. Discussing business. Business English  36

1. Economics and unemployment.

2. Jobs and sales.
3. Markets and production.
4. Prices. ESP  36

  Total: 204
Teaching and learning methods:
Teaching, learning and assessment are designed to enable students to achieve the
course objectives described above. While part of any session is likely to involve
direct teaching, the emphasis is on student participation and teachers should
encourage students to take part actively in discussion and in tasks.
 Independent learning:
Students are expected to spend time studying outside the class, and we provide
guidance, facilities and materials to help them develop their expertise as pre-
intermediate language learners. For this course, they are asked to consolidate their
class work, to read, watch or listen to material in English, to prepare exercises and
activities for the class, to write assignments, undertake projects and generally
acquire a repertoire of effective language learning strategies.
 
Course materials:
Adapted materials will be used in class, linked to the topic areas studied. Topic-
based self-access resources (authentic print, audio and video), dictionaries and
grammars are also available.
 THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LEARNING

What is language?

Language is the primary method of human communication, but there are also other ways to
communicate without the use of language. When asked to define language we tend to think of a
verbal and written system in which certain sounds and symbols come together in a specific way
to convey meaning. Language in its most complex form is unique to humans, although some
animals have been found to have basic communication patterns. Languages often have verbal
and written components, but how we classify something like American Sign Language? Animals
manage to communicate — do they have language? How did language evolve? How do we learn
enough language ourselves to begin to answer this question?

Why is it so surprising that we can learn language?

If you’ve ever tried to learn a new language, you know it’s not easy. There are new rules of
grammar which come with many exceptions, new sounds that are hard to make, endless lists of
vocabulary to commit to memory and so on. And yet, you managed to learn the basics of your
very first language around the time you were two years old; no textbooks in sight.
Not only are children able to absorb the complicated rules of grammar without formal teaching,
they do so from a limited vocabulary. Regardless of how much a child is spoken to, they will not
hear every possible word and sentence by the time they begin speaking. Yet when they do start
to talk, children begin to follow grammatical rules and apply them to form new, innovative
phrases. This level of information processing is incredibly impressive in anyone, much less
someone still figuring out counting and skipping!

What do we know?

As is often the case in psychology and sociology, it’s hard to get what we normally think of as
data about language acquisition. It’s not a chemical we can test for or a distance we can measure
(imagine asking a 2 year old how many words they know — not a particularly useful or
productive task, right? ). However, there are some facts that are generally agreed upon by the
scientific community. The first couple years of life are the critical period for language learning,
which becomes a much harder task as people age. Children usually say their first words around
10-18 months of age, and graduate to phrases sometime before they are two years old. In fact,
studies have shown that 18 month olds can tell the difference between correctly formed verb
pairs (is jumping) and incorrect ones (will jumping). Somewhere between four and seven years
old children begin to be able to tell stories that more or less make sense.
We also know that learning a language is not like walking up the steady increase of a ramp, but
more like walking the hills and valleys of a country road. Usually when we learn a new skill, the
more we practice the better we get. However, this isn’t always true in the early stages of
language development. When children are first learning to talk, the verbs they use are usually the
most common such as go, eat, talk, give, run, etc. These are often irregular in the past tense.
Although at first they use the past tense properly (“I ran”, “he went”, etc), kids typically regress
for a while. They often over-follow rules, saying phrases like “I runned” instead of “I ran”. As
their vocabularies expand rapidly (known as vocabulary burst), some researchers believe
children notice patterns in language, and that leads to over-correction as described in the
example above. Eventually, children begin to understand where the rules apply and where they
don’t, and then properly form the past tense once more. This is known as a U shaped learning
curve, because the language mastery started high, dropped for a period of time, and then
improved again. Thus, there appears to be a mimicking (copying) phase first and then a time of
broad generalizations before children settle into language.

What are the major theories about language acquisition? The most well-known theory about
language acquisition is the nativist theory, which suggests that we are born with something in
our genes that allows us to learn language. It proposes that there is a theoretical language
acquisition device (LAD) somewhere in our brains that is responsible for learning a language the
same way the hypothalamus is responsible for maintaining your body temperature. If language
was partly biological, it could explain why humans seem to have far more complicated
communication patterns than any other species .

Although no physical “language organ” exists in the brain, language acquisition can be
hampered if certain parts of the brain are damaged during critical periods of language
development. Damage to the left hemisphere, for example can lead to aphasia - a disorder which
causes problems with language, while leaving intelligence untouched. For example, in
Wernicke’s aphasia, patients with damage in a certain region of the brain can no longer
understand language. Although they can still form normal sentences, neither what they say nor
the words of others make any sense to them. Patients with Broca’s aphasia on the other hand,
have problems forming language but no trouble understanding what is said to them. Studies have
shown that young children with damage in similar regions of the brain can actually grow up with
only slightly impaired language ability - implying that the brain can develop new language
pathways that are good, but not quite as good as the original (Reilly, 1998).
Nativist theory also suggests that there is a universal grammar that is shared across differing
languages, because this grammar is part of our genetic make-up. The majority of world
languages have verbs and nouns, although this is not true in every instance, as well as similar
ways to structure thoughts. Language is thought of as having a finite amount of rules from which
we can build an infinite amount of phrases, and the core of these rules is somehow programmed
into our brains. This is an ideal theory for explaining how young children can learn such
complicated ideas so quickly, or why there are so many similarities in language around the
world. This theory is comparable to how we think of numbers; regardless of cultural background,
math always works the same way.Another way to look at language learning is to treat it like
learning a new skill. The learning theory of language acquisition suggests that children learn a
language much like they learn to tie their shoes or how to count; through repetition and
reinforcement. When babies first learn to babble, parents and guardians smile, coo, and hug them
for this behavior. As they grow older, children are praised for speaking properly and corrected
when they misspeak. Thus, language arises from stimuli and stimuli response. While this is
logical, it fails to explain how new words or phrases come about, since children are only
parroting the things they have heard from others.
The interactionist approach (sociocultural theory) combines ideas from sociology and biology
to explain how language is developed. According to this theory, children learn language out of a
desire to communicate with the world around them. Language emerges from, and is dependent
upon, social interaction. The Interactionist approach claims that if our language ability develops
out of a desire to communicate, then language is dependent upon whom we want to
communicate with. This means the environment you grow up in will heavily affect how well and
how quickly you learn to talk. For example, infants being raised by only their mother are more
likely to learn the word “mama”, and less likely to develop “dada”. Among the first words we
learn are ways to demand attention or food. If you’ve ever tried to learn a new language, you
may recognize this theory’s influence. Language classes often teach commonly used vocabulary
and phrases first, and then focus on building conversations rather than simple rote memorization.
Even when we expand our vocabularies in our native language, we remember the words we use
the most.It’s important to keep in mind that theories of language acquisition are just ideas
created by researchers to explain their observations. How accurate these theories are to the real
world is debatable. Language acquisition is a complicated process influenced by the genetics of
an individual as well as the environment they live in
How do scientists today study language learning?
Many of these theories initially came about as a result of what is called “armchair psychology”;
that is, sitting and thinking about a problem. It is extremely difficult to collect objective and
accurate data on what’s going on in the brain in terms of its direct relationship to a behavior such
as language. That said, some computational models of language acquisition have been gaining
traction in the past several decades. A computational model is a mathematical way to recreate
complicated systems we see everyday; from how water flows in a river, to how children learn
languages. The model is built to represent the way we think something happens. For example, in
the model of the learning theory approach, a word would be learned faster if it came up a lot or
the subject received a lot of input about it. Then, linguists change how different variables work
to see what affect that would have on the system. If the model behaves and “learns” the same
way that we do, it’s a good sign that the model is on the right track. These models have helped to
identify and measure linguistical features such as the critical period for language learning, the
vocabulary burst, and the U-shaped learning mentioned earlier.
New brain imaging technology, such as MRIs and fMRIs have also allowed scientists to look at
the brains of children and patients with language-acquisition disorders to understand this
complicated event. An fMRI can track where and when our brains use energy. If a certain part of
your brain lights up while you’re learning a language, that part of your brain is using energy, and
in this context might be related to language-acquisition. Of course we learn over time and not all
at once, so there is a limit to what we can learn via imaging which represents the brain in a single
moment.
While we still have a ways to go before we completely understand how we learn a language, we
definitely know enough to know that it’s a pretty incredible feat. So give yourself a well-
deserved pat on the back and just remember that the phrase “it’s so easy, a child could do it!”
doesn’t always apply.