Syllabus

Approach

The approaches we chose were one aimed at helping the learners to develop their language skills and probably create strategies that will serve them even after the end of the course and make the students able to understand all the issues clearly. To do this, we will choose one of the main principles of this approach (Skill-centred course design), whose name is pragmatic, based on a goal-oriented courses which establishes goals that students must achieve up to a certain time during the course, which makes it possible to look at the level of progress that the course is having.

  

Skill-based syllabus

For our course, we want to choose a type of study program that allows us to improve some specific skills that our students of the geography course at the University of Córdoba need to level their A2 level. It should be noted that they have a good level of writing and reading but have many difficulties when expressing their ideas in English (speaking) and also do not have a good level of listening. We have found a type of program that could solve the shortcomings found in that course. The syllabus we chose focuses on language skills rather than formal aspects of language. This type of syllabus facilitates us to easily determine the materials that are possibly required to carry out this course due to the fact that we already know where the course is pointing and in this case it is to level the listening and speaking skills.

Suggested methodology

 Our methodology is based on a Skill-centred course design that will help our students improve some language skills such as speaking and listening. For which a series of objectives or goals will be established which students should reach throughout the course.

A brief introduction to the audio-lingual method is as follows:

         The Audio-Lingual Method aims to develop communicative competence of students using dialogues and drills. The use of dialogues and drills are effective in foreign language teaching as they lead the students to produce speech. Repetition of the dialogues and the drills will enable students to respond quickly and accurately in spoken language (Mart, 2013, P.64).

In this course students will learn a new language through a method which is based on the repetition of words, and even phrases or sometimes dialogues. In this way the student learns, to speak and to listen, leaving for when the knowledge is acquired, the skills to read or write. In this method, grammar takes second place and it is assumed that grammar is learned naturally.

                                                  Referencia

  Mart, C. T. (2013). The audio-lingual method: An easy way of achieving speech. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 3(12), 63.

 

Resources and material

This course will employ well-known and easy-to-use websites for students such as the British English course page through which students will be able to practice a lot the listening part by selecting the A2 level which is the one that is wanted to level in this geography course of the University of Cordoba. In addition we can use some texts of this web page so that they not only listen to it but also so that they can express their ideas of what they understood from the listening of the reading and thus put into practice the part of speaking that is an important skills that this course must improve. On the other hand in the classes the students will be the main protagonists in the classroom, that is to say they will be more participatory and elaborators of the materials in the classroom with the purpose they will be creativity in the language learning, and also try to  improve their performance by the use of their own material.

In this course we will of course adapt videos according to the level of English students are in, through these educational videos students will be able to improve their listening skills and even gain the attention of students in the classroom which they can debate their ideas for students to practice their speaking and listening skills as they are the skills to level in this course.

Pre-activity.

For example, in the first unit we will work with the boys which is related to personal information.

First in the classroom the students will be in a group to give them a related text of how to ask for and give personal information, the students will read it while they listen to it in English so that they become familiar with the correct pronunciation of the new language to be learned. Then the teacher will repeat the most important phrases or expressions of the reading to read them in the classroom and then the students repeat them and if possible memorize them. Then the students may have to make a presentation of the correct use of how to give and request personal information. While some students are making their presentation the others will be listening carefully so that at the end of the class they give suggestions to their classmates. In this way the teacher can see if the course is progressing and that the suggestions may help the professional development of each student.