Module description
In this module, you will develop an understanding of what is involved in acquiring and using language as discourse skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening). By the end of the module, you should have a good understanding of the roles of teachers and learners in the development of these skills areas and you will be able to evaluate and design activities and understand their use within integrated skills lessons.
Assessment details
Coursework
(1) One 1, 800 word report (worth 67% of the final mark)
(2) One group presentation (worth 33% of the final mark)
Educational aims & objectives
The general aims of the course are to:
- To develop an understanding of what is involved in acquiring and using language as discourse skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening);
- To develop an understanding of different approaches, techniques and strategies for teaching and learning the language skills in a second or foreign language;
- To develop basic skills in planning integrated skills lessons and courses;
- To develop skills in evaluating and designing materials and activities for teaching the language skills;
- To develop an understanding of the different roles of teachers and learners and how these are reflected in different ways of organising language skills-based lessons;
- To develop an understanding of techniques to assess learners’ knowledge of the language skills
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
- Analyse materials for teaching the language skills in terms of underlying approaches and principles;
- Evaluate materials for teaching the language skills in specific contexts;
- Select appropriate topics and texts for teaching the language skills;
- Design activities and tasks to practise the language skills based on an authentic text;
- Make and justify decisions about roles of teachers and learners and patterns of classroom organisation to use with different language learning activities;
- Plan a second or foreign language lesson involving the teaching of specific aspects of one or more of the language skills;
- Plan ways to assess learners’ developing ability to use language skills
Teaching pattern
The module builds on the insights into second language learning you will have gained through doing the Year One course of that name, and examines issues of methodology, course and materials design, and evaluation and testing, with a particular focus on language skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening). By the end of the course, you should have a good understanding of the key methodological issues and concepts in language teaching. You will be able to analyze texts for teaching purposes and evaluate and design teaching activities and lessons.
The main components are:
- Current approaches and methods in language teaching: communicative, task-based, etc.;
- Roles of teachers and learners;
- Materials for language teaching and learning: evaluation, use and design;
- Identifying and analysing learners’ needs, designing courses and syllabuses, planning lessons;
- Teaching language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening;
- Materials: using published materials, exploiting authentic materials, the design and production of language teaching tasks;
- The classroom as a social context: classroom management, patterns of classroom interaction, roles of teachers and learners, learner autonomy and learner training, using audio-visual aids;
- Assessing language skills;
- Lesson planning and classroom management