IELTS Speaking Course Total Number of Words: 1770
Yifang Xu (Sherry) 251060296
Dr. Pejman Habibie
Syllabus and Materials Design
Dec. 10th, 2019
©Yifang Xu, 2019
The context of curriculum
This training course is organized by a Chinese educational institution. It is not a public-school set by the government, but is a training institution independent of public schools. The target students of this course are students who have graduated from domestic universities and plan to study abroad. Through this program, students attempt to achieve an overall IELTS score of 6.5 and a minimum of 6 in each subject. This lesson is mainly aimed at students' speaking ability. Our institution is set in China and the target students are Chinese students, so these students are “English as Foreign Language (EFL)” learners. Since the target students have successfully graduated from public universities, their quantity of vocabularies is about 5000, which is an advanced learner. Chinese students always lacked the environment and opportunities to train their spoken English for long time, that is why their spoken language ability is their weakest ability. Therefore, speaking courses are extremely important and necessary.
We chose to teach in small classes because Webb and Nation (2017) said that the biggest benefit of small class learning is that students have many opportunities to get feedback from their teachers. Thus, our class consists of ten students. The entire IELTS program is four-months long, while there is only one speaking class per week. This speaking lesson lasts three hours.
Teachers of this institution must achieve the requirement that IELTS score of 7.5 or higher. And for speaking teachers, the IELTS oral score must reach 8. In addition, the teacher must have a teacher certificate and they must have English-related bachelor degree. The goals of this course
Richards (2017) stated that “Describing learning outcomes is an essential aspect of backward design.” This curriculum exactly uses backward design. Because we start with the ultimate goal, the goal is to enable students to pass the IELTS test
successfully. Then we start to develop the syllabus based on this goal. In this speaking course, teacher’s goal is to lead students to become proficient in one of the topics related to IELTS speaking test, and organize them to have the speaking activity based on this topic.
Aim of this course: To develop basic communication skills that ensure students are able to describe the celebrity.
Objectives of this course: Students can use target words and phrases to describe a person. Students can fluently describe a celebrity. Students can conceive a two-minute conversation in a short period of time. Students can quickly engage in Q & A conversations with another student in English.
Outcome of this course: Students can answer each part 1 questions quickly and fluently. In addition, students can give a two minutes statement about specific topic independently and completely.
Competencies of this course: The use of target words and phrases. Fluency speaking skills. Quick ideation. Proficient conversation skills. The planning of this course
In the previous lesson plan, the first thing to consider is time management. The three hours include both class time and break time. In addition to ensuring that students are able to learn their target language skills, teacher also needs to ensure that students are not overstressed. Whereas, during the class time, it is necessary to arrange exercise time, activity time and teaching time.
Second, teachers should ensure that students can only communicate in the target language (English) in the classroom. Because this is a speaking course, the goal is to ensure that students get enough exercise during class time. Therefore, before class, teacher need to tell students that only English can be used in this class, and they should be supervised at all times during the course.
The third and more difficult point is how to guide students to think and create a complete story about topics. Sometimes it is difficult for IELTS students to come up with a complete story or idea about the topic in a short time (one minute). Therefore, when setting up this class, how to guide students to think is an important aspect to consider. Teacher cannot directly provide ideas to students, but needs to guide them to have the ability to think independently. Teacher gave students an example in the class materials, but need to prevent students from relying too much on this example. How the course is organized
Students will use the learning material teacher prepared for them during class. In addition, an online recording website will be used as the supporting tool. This lesson has three hours, and includes a twenty-minute break in these three hours. At the beginning of the class, teacher should tell the students the goals and topics of this lesson. Secondly, teacher need to state that English is the only language of communication during class time.
In the first 10 minutes, teacher will lead the students to do an ice-breaking speaking activity. Students need to work in pairs and tell each other what happened during last weekend. Next, teacher will spend 20 minutes familiarizing students with the target words and phrases in the learning material. For the next 20 minutes, teacher asked the students to make some sentences orally in small groups using the target word or phrase. When they are finished, they can have a ten-minute rest.
In the second stage of this course, we will spend 30 minutes doing a proficiency exercise at first, which is 4/3/2 activity (Maurice, 1983). After that, teacher will do a role paly activity with students that the teacher acts as an IELTS speaking examiner and conducts three-minute speaking quiz training with each student.
After next 10 minutes break, each student will give a 3 minutes presentation individually based on the part2 questions on the learning materials. In this stage, student need record their statements using an online recorder. Then send the recording to both teacher and themselves.
In the last 20 minutes, teacher will lead the students to read the model texts about part2 question in the learning materials together for self-reflection and comparison. Students have to reflect on whether they have room for improvement. After the lesson, the teacher needs to give students feedback based on the recordings submitted by each student. Teaching and learning method
In this course, teacher used skill-based syllabus approach to design this curriculum. Because the main purpose of this lesson is to improve students' speaking ability, so it only focuses on speaking skills. Students have to keep talking or speaking in English during class.
Teacher used backward design (Richards, 2013), which belongs to curriculum as product. We set course goals first, and then chose course content. Teacher analyzed the needs of the target students, and selected some materials and content that could achieve the final purpose to teach. Teacher develops their course outline based on selected materials above. Finally, teacher will assess whether the students have achieved their goals.
In this curriculum, teacher tends to develop a student-centered class. Because the target skill of this course is speaking ability, speaking is an output skill. Students need to take an active part in classroom activities and use spoken skills continuously. In this process, teacher’s role is leader and facilitator rather than dominators. Loveless (2019) argued that “student-centered is one of the most effective ways to help students develop the skills required for independent problem-solving and lifelong learning.” In order to develop students' ability to think independently in the IELTS test and to solve problems independently, a student-centered education model is necessary.
In the student-centered classroom, collaborative work is useful. Either study in a group or work in pairs can improve students’ communicative skills. In addition, communication strategies will also be taught when students interact with other students. Cervantes and Rodriguez (2012) defined communication strategies that communicative strategies try to bridge the gap between the language knowledge of a second language learner and the language knowledge of an interlocutor when communicating with people. Therefore, communication strategies are also very helpful for students to take the IELTS speaking test. They need to learn some communication strategies in case they encounter barriers or difficulties during the exam.
Finally, 4/3/2 activity “not only able to improve students’ speaking English but also to increase the students’ accuracy in speaking English.” (Zhou, 2006, p19) This activity can improve spoken fluency and accuracy through increasing time pressure. Therefore, teacher use this activity in the classroom so that students can increase their oral proficiency on this topic in a short time. The role of material and other resources
This course has less dependence on textbooks and other resources. This is because this class is a spoken course, and students need to spend a lot of time communicating or presenting. Teacher will provide students with a learning material including the vocabulary and phrases that summarized about this topic (celebrity). The purpose of these words is to promote students to think and communicate independently rather than requiring them to use these words or phrases. Besides, that online recording site is designed to enable students to save their own speeches for self-reflection and improvement after class. At the same time, the teacher can give the students some specific and useful feedback by listening to the student's recording again. Difficulties and limitation
This course used skill-based syllabus design approach, so the main focus is on the skills themselves. However, as Richards (2017) mentioned, this syllabus is aimed at discrete skill components rather than integrated language or communication skills. When I teach students spoken English, other language skills also need to be improved. For example, when students are speaking or discussing, grammar knowledge is important as well. However, there is no special part in teaching grammar in oral classes, which is a limitation.
In addition, since this lesson is a language-based course, students can only use English in class. Other languages such as the first language (Chinese) are not allowed. In the long term, this is very beneficial for students. However, if students are not proficient in English, it may easily cause problems such as stress, communication difficulties, and anxiety for students. Besides, if teacher persists in using English when students are not proficient, it may cause students having difficulty to understand some issues.
Assessment and feedback
In class, 20 minutes are used for students to make three-minute presentations individually. This is an assessment of the students. Through this assessment, teachers can detect whether students have improved their spoken fluency and accuracy through 4/3/2 activities and role playing. At the same time, when giving feedback to students, teachers can point out students' grammatical errors and correct them. And tell students where they need to improve.
In addition, students can reflect themselves by listening to their own recordings repeatedly. Find your mistakes and make corrections.
References
Cervantes, C.A.R. & Rodriguez, R.R. (2012). The Use of Communication Strategies
in the Beginner EFL Classroom. Gist Education and LEarninG rEsEarch JournaL. No. 6. p111-128
Loveless, B. (2019). Developing a Student-centered Classroom. Education Corner. Maurice, K. (1983). The fluency workshop. TESOL Newsletter, 17(4), 29.
Richards, J. C. (2013). Curriculum approaches in language teaching: Forward, central
and backward design. RELC Journal 44(1): 5-33.
Richards, J. C. (2017). Curriculum development in language teaching (Second ed.).
Cambridge: Cambridged University Press.
Webb, S., & Nation, I.S.P. (2017). How vocabulary is learned. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Zhou Aijie. 2006.A Further Study of the Effects of the 4/3/2 Technique on Spoken
English Production. CELEA Journal 65.
Appendix
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