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Designing Appropriate Curricula for Young Learners
fielder: Rebecca Tompsett

see also Non-linguistic competencies, compiled by Rebecca Jones 
as part of this discussion

 

In my opening questions I suggested that when we design a language programme for Young Learners in particular, it is equally important to ask ourselves HOW we will approach teaching -ie what types of activities we use in the classroom and how we organise them as the language content itself.

This is considered to be the process approach. I think Tricia Hedge in Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom (2000) puts it rather well when she says that "The question has become not so much on what basis to create a list of items to be taught as how to create an optimal environment to facilitate the processes through which language is learned." So with children especially we need to start with what we know and feel and have experienced about how children learn.

Sandie quoted the general educational definition of Curriculum from Ron White's (1988) The ELT Curriculum as "the totality of content to be taught and aims to be realised within one school or education system". She then referred to White's description of the process approach to Curriculum design which has a broader view where the process is circular and interconnected and includes not only content but methodology (teaching experiences) and evaluation.

                Aims and purposes - - - - - - - -Objectives - - - -Teaching experiences - - - - - - - -Evaluation - - - - - - - (and back to aims and purposes again).

Sandie noted that even when teachers are using a set course book they are taking on the responsibility of programme designers when they make choices in their implementation of the text and support it with additional activities.

The discussion then moved to selecting and sequencing the content. Both Sandie and myself agreed that the principal general objective of a YL course is affective -we are interested in giving the children a positive first experience in the foreign language and culture -a very important feature in these days of growing racial intolerance and misunderstanding. Sandie's specific language objectives for very young learners are that they learn simple words in the FL that are meaningful to them and furthermore can use them in context probably as part of an utterance in the mother tongue. The words are chosen from themes related to the children's everyday lives and interests and are eventually incorporated into stories. The stories are retold during the year, and the games that are used to learn/practice the new words are repeated or available for children to play with on their own so this takes care of recycling -a point which I had mentioned was an important consideration when planning a programme for YLs.

I described the way that I, like Sandie, start with a motivating topic when planning a curriculum for somewhat older learners (8-11 year-olds). My scheme is like this:

I usually draw it like a brain map with the topic at the centre and the tasks and language activities radiating out. The tasks are chosen so that the basic vocabulary, language chunks and structures that we wish to cover in the curriculum/assigned course book (colours, numbers, adjectives  etc.) are continually being recycled but in the fresh context of each new topic. The tasks are sequenced so that those with less demanding language come earlier and later tasks build on the language of earlier ones. Enabling tasks also include simple grammar sensitization tasks which help the learners to notice important aspects of the language like word order. Diane Phillips et al. Projects with Young Learners is very useful for planning and implementing projects.

Rebecca Jones made a very valuable contribution to the discussion when she mentioned that developing the learners' linguistic and non-linguistic competencies should be a very important objective of a YL programme, but that they are often taken for granted. She mentioned the following competencies:

Sandie added:

I would also add, especially for the older children, competencies that they need to become independent learners.

Finally I again brought up my initial comment that we are making a decision about both what we teach and how to teach it when we design a curriculum for YLs. What I wanted to emphasise was that we need to take into consideration how children learn language (very much how they learned their L1) when we plan a programme. I observed that an important area of the learning comes through classroom interaction while taking part in meaningful activities in the classroom. I notice this when I am constantly surprised by what my students have learned in their classes when they come up with a situation when they have to improvise in English. Finally from this observation I stated my belief that the first consideration in planning a curriculum is that topics and types of activities are suitable for the age group and context create a suitable environment for language learning.

Web links:

Very Young Learners (<7 yrs old)  Primary (7-12)  Secondary (13-17)

A formative evaluation of a task-based EFL programme for Korean university students chapters 6 & 3.4: though not specifically for young learners, these chapters describe an interesting  framework for syllabus and curriculum design from a constructivist perspective.

 The Place of "Culture" in the Foreign Language Classroom: A Reflection: can we not teach culture in the EFL classroom? Do we need to re-examine the notions of integrative and instrumental motivation?

How EFL/ESL is taught in class: descriptions of how YLs are taught EFL/ESL around the world.

Richmond park chat transcripts (click on "park events", then on the title you want) though not specifically concerned with curriculum design, the following chats address some related issues: 

 

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