curriculum suggestions?
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Sheila Collins
- Posts: 46
- Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 6:20 pm
curriculum suggestions?
I am teaching E.S.L. over the internet, to children in China. Originally, my employer was all for child-lead learning, but he is now having a change of heart (or, rather, I think the parents are looking for something a little more traditional). I have put my foot down when it comes to New Concept Book 2: are there any other suggestions for an appropriate curriculum? I need something to cover ages 8 to 12, which uses visual or audio aids, but not physical aids.
"Modelling"
Heya, Sheila
Perhaps you should take a trip to your local language bookstore (or buy a few textbooks or sign-up to some membership sites) and look at the curriculum at work.
They're probably all structural syllabuses (which I'm not a fan of personally, but everyone and their dog seems to think they're great--or at least they must because they keep publishing the suckers!)...
What you could do is make an outline of the intended outcomes for the course, all broken down nicely the way that coursebooks do at the beginning. Send that your employer.
Then continue doing what you were doing!
Just make sure you DO actually cover the things that you say you will cover. But do it in the no doubt fun, engaging, and original way that you were doing it all along.
The concerns of parents--and by extension the employer given that it's his/her bread and butter--and then, by extension the concerns prompting your post here for the same reason--are valid.
The thing is, though, that parents are not educators. That's why they pay US! But they do like to THINK they know what their little Johnny should be learning. And it's based on what THEY learnt although they'll be the first to tell you that what they learnt didn't work and that's why they're busting their hump to pay for little Suzie's private classes.
And if you can figure out the psychology at work there, then you're going to be a Nobel Laureate!
Am I making any sense here or just ranting?
Design a syllabus based on what you probably feel the parents want (China = tons of grammar. Don't you know grammar = language acquisition? Derrr....).
Then make darned sure you actually DO cover those language points. I'm not advocating say one thing and do another.
But do it in such a way that the kiddies actually LEARN what they're supposed to and are engaged with the material. (Actually, if you can achieve the latter, it'll work gangbusters in achieving the former).
Tanuki
Perhaps you should take a trip to your local language bookstore (or buy a few textbooks or sign-up to some membership sites) and look at the curriculum at work.
They're probably all structural syllabuses (which I'm not a fan of personally, but everyone and their dog seems to think they're great--or at least they must because they keep publishing the suckers!)...
What you could do is make an outline of the intended outcomes for the course, all broken down nicely the way that coursebooks do at the beginning. Send that your employer.
Then continue doing what you were doing!
Just make sure you DO actually cover the things that you say you will cover. But do it in the no doubt fun, engaging, and original way that you were doing it all along.
The concerns of parents--and by extension the employer given that it's his/her bread and butter--and then, by extension the concerns prompting your post here for the same reason--are valid.
The thing is, though, that parents are not educators. That's why they pay US! But they do like to THINK they know what their little Johnny should be learning. And it's based on what THEY learnt although they'll be the first to tell you that what they learnt didn't work and that's why they're busting their hump to pay for little Suzie's private classes.
And if you can figure out the psychology at work there, then you're going to be a Nobel Laureate!
Am I making any sense here or just ranting?
Design a syllabus based on what you probably feel the parents want (China = tons of grammar. Don't you know grammar = language acquisition? Derrr....).
Then make darned sure you actually DO cover those language points. I'm not advocating say one thing and do another.
But do it in such a way that the kiddies actually LEARN what they're supposed to and are engaged with the material. (Actually, if you can achieve the latter, it'll work gangbusters in achieving the former).
Tanuki