English III- Intermediate I program

Universidad de Antioquia
Capacitación Docente en Lengua Extranjera Inglés
English III - Intermediate I

Presentation

The program of “Capacitación Docente en Lengua Extranjera Inglés” has been thought of as a space for the university faculty to share knowledge and increase negotiated interaction so that they could develop their communicative competence in English as a foreign language . Since independent work, self-assessment and the use of technology have been found to foster student autonomy through the development of learning strategies such as planning, self-evaluation and self-monitoring , these teaching-learning practices will be privileged along the different courses of the program.


Justification

In the globalised world in which we live, there is a growing need to communicate in English, either to keep up with the cutting edge scientific development carried out elsewhere latitudes or to make our own known overseas. Consequently, promoting the development of the faculty’s communicative competence in English becomes indispensable to achieve the competitiveness that the University has identified as one of its objectives in its development plan .


Course Objectives

General

o To promote the development of communicative competence in English as a Foreign Language, EFL.

o To promote negotiated interaction among the students and the teacher within a friendly atmosphere.


Specific

Regarding the socio-cultural component: At the end of this course, the students will…

o Express wishes and likes

o Give and follow suggestions

o Describe people and places

o Compare countries and cultures

o Be able to describe daily activities


Regarding the grammatical component: At the end of this course, the students will…

o acquire the lexicon as well as the morphological and phonological competence needed to communicate successfully within the contexts specified in every unit

o create and understand simples sentences using how much/many

o understand the differences between count and non count nouns

o create and understand sentences using comparatives and superlatives

o understand the difference between Present Continuous and Preset Simple tenses


Regarding the discourse competence: At the end of this course, the students will…

o create short dialogs giving directions

o make a short description of people and places

o write a letter to a hotel

o write a postcard


Regarding the strategic competence: At the end of this course, the students will…

o acquire some linguistic strategic abilities that could facilitate communication within the contexts specified in the program: paraphrasing, verifying information, using interlocutions.

o acquire reading and listening strategies such as skimming, scanning, prediction, activation of previous knowledge, usage of the dictionary, etc.

o develop some learning strategies that could help autonomous learning to take place: planning, self-monitoring, self-evaluating, cooperative work, etc.

o use technology as a valuable resource that facilitates the development of student-autonomy.


Methodology

This course is intended to be carried out within an approach that privileges communication within a negotiated interaction context as the one proposed by the post-method pedagogy. It is considered paramount to place the student as the center of the teaching-learning process where the teacher’s role is overall the one of an organizer, facilitator and support.

With the purpose of developing communicative competence , the students will utilize written, audio and audio-visual material along with technical resources such as the Internet. The teacher will follow the textbook “American Headway”, which they will complement with other authentic or graded resources according to their criteria.

Activities such as practical workshops, presentations, role plays, readings, and small projects, either in class or out of it, will be carried out with the aim of developing competence in the four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking.

The use of the mother tongue as a teaching-learning strategy is recommended only in the events in which it might be considered pertinent to facilitate comprehension. Likewise, the promotion of cooperative work as a teaching-learning tool as well as the use of technology as a student autonomy motivational and promotional factor, are highlighted.

Contents

Unit 1:

o Making polite requests
o Meals in your country and around the world
o Stores and shopping
o Count and non count nouns
o Much and many
o Short dialogs
o A letter to a hotel


Unit 2:

o Identifying differences between city and country life
o Comparatives and superlatives
o City and country adjectives.
o City places
o Directions
o Place prepositions
o Writing about your capital city


Unit 3:

o Describing your appearance
o What are people wearing?
o Daily activities
o Present Continuous and Preset Simple
o Go shopping!
o Clothes
o Possessive pronouns
o Tongue twisters


Unit 4:

o Describing your future plans and feelings
o Question forms
o Making suggestions
o Information questions about your general knowledge
o Traveling around the world
o Sports and weather
o Adverbs and Adjectives
o Writing a postcard and a story


Follow up and evaluation

Objectives of the course and evaluation criteria will be presented and discussed with the students. Formative assessment practices, understood as those that aim at measuring achievement within the process and helping students to improve their skills, should take place before summative events arrive. The use of rubrics (Picón, Goodrich Andrade) is highly recommended as evaluation tools for self- and teacher-assessment both during formative and summative events. The assessment system is suggested to be completed as follows:


Follow up: 60%

It could include

o A portfolio made out of worksheets, short compositions, writing activities based on reading assignments, etc.
o Presentations, interviews, role-plays and other oral production activities
o Listening comprehension exercises
o Small projects
o Quizzes


Final written exam: 20%
Final oral exam: 20%