Module #9 Course Design: Course syllabus & Cover letter(Continued)

Course Evaluation Plan

Course Calendar

Module #9 Course Design: Course syllabus & Cover letter

Cover Letter

Ja Eun Kim
Seyun Middle School, Yeonhee- dong
Seoul, Korea
(02) 332-7375

December 17, 2010

Antoaneta Bonev, Ph.D.
California State University, San Bernardino
5500 University ParkwaySan Bernardino, CA 92374

Dear Dr. Bonev and colleagues

I am currently working at a middle school and teaching the 9th grade intermediate level. There are three different levels: elementary, intermediate, and advanced. Also, the same textbook is used for all levels. English education in Korea had been focused on mostly reading, grammar, and writing, more than speaking and listening. However, the new Korean President Lee Myung Bak has reinforced communicative competence in English. Thus, team teaching with a native speaking English teacher has been commonly performed in classes now. Therefore, I have designed this course, with a native speaker’s cooperation in speaking and listening. For speaking, the native speaker will intensively teach on how to produce a sound clearly.

Since the school already decided to use the same textbook for each level, I added more supportive worksheets for my intermediate students. For reading, they need to build up their vocabulary skills which are related with various topics. The textbook, however, does not provide enough definitions of vocabularies for each chapter, so I created extra vocabulary worksheets for weekly vocabulary quiz. For writing, they need to comprehend key grammar points before writing. By introducing the main grammar points in the beginning of each chapter, students will be able to catch the grammar points which are hidden in the reading contexts. These grammar points will be repeated several times throughout the speaking, listening, and reading. Once they understand the grammar points, they will participate in the writing activities. If needed, further activities or extra worksheets will be given to master the grammar points before moving on to the next chapter. For each chapter, they will be taught these main grammar points through the integration of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

This textbook does not include enough listening practice, but students will be exposed to natural English pronunciation done by the native speaking English teacher. The native teacher will meet the students once a week just for speaking and listening. By interacting with each other, students will develop their confidence and interest in English as a foreign language instead of a tool which they must study in order to get a good score on a test.
This course will approach comfortably to the intermediate students. Encouraging students to study English hard is important, but I believe motivating the students is more important. Their English proficiency level is not high, but there is always a possibility to enhance their English skills inclusively. I hope this course meets the needs for the intermediate students on learning English.

Sincerely,

JaEun Kim

9th Grade English Language Course Syllabus

Course Title: Integrated English Language Course
Instructor: Ja Eun Kim (Vocabulary, Reading, Writing, Grammar)
Teaching Method: Co-teaching with a Native Speaking English teacher
(speaking & Pronunciation parts)
E-mail: gracelia@hanmail.net
Year/Semester: 2010/Winter
Grade Level: 9th grades in EFL
Proficiency Level: Intermediate
Class Meetings: Five times a week
Time: each session 45 minutes
Duration: 12 weeks

Standards

English language learners communicate for social, intercultural, and instructional purposes within the school setting.

At the 6-8 grade levels, English language learners face increased academic and social pressure to perform. In addition, at this level, there is a widening range of student performance.

Listening

Listening is an active skill. By highlighting an assortment of listening tasks across standards, the need to involve students in active listening and purposeful listening skills development becomes clear.

Speaking

English language learners engage in oral communication in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes and in a wide spectrum of settings. As part of oral communication, students are constantly using language in meaningful interaction with others.

Reading

English language learners process, interpret, and evaluate written language, symbols, and text with understanding and fluency. Learning to read in a second language may be enhanced or hindered by students’ level of literacy in their native language. Students who have a strong foundation in reading in their first language bring with them skills that can be readily transferred in the process of learning to read in English.

Writing

English language learners use written communication for a variety of purposes and audiences. Writing can be used to express meaning through drawing, symbols, or text. English language learners may come with writing styles influenced by their home cultures.

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Course Description

This course is designed for intermediate level of 9th graders, which includes reading, listening, speaking, writing, and grammar with cultural diversities. This course will assist students to build up their vocabulary through weekly vocabulary quiz and this will lead to improve their reading comprehension gradually. Also, the key expressions for speaking and grammar will be introduced on the first day of each week, so that students know what they need to remember for their upcoming exams. The speaking, pronunciation, and listening parts of this course will be provided with teaching team; a native speaking English teacher and the main instructor. Through this co-teaching, students will reinforce their speaking skills in a natural way. Since students are going to be assessed about their listening ability, the main instructor will also cover listening part as well. For this lesson, the content of listening will be related to the reading and speaking contents and this will help students understand the chapter easily. The goal for this course is to build up confidence and interest in English. By turning in their portfolios which contain their all completed worksheet, vocabulary quiz sheets, daily learning logs, and writing samples, students will witness their improvement slowly and at last they will leave the classroom with full of knowledge.

Course Outline by Topic

1. Cultural Understanding
2. What Good Is a Weed?
3. It’s Such a Pleasure for Me to Learn
4. Living in Space
5. Across Siberia to North America
6. The Little Prince
7. Are You Going to Help Me?
8. How MP3 Music Files Work
9. Ms. Wise, What Should I Do?
10. We’re All One.
11. Healthy Eating and Physical Fitness
12. More Than One Language

Course Goals

Goal 1: Students will develop their interest and confidence in English and enhance capacity for being able to communicate.
Goal 2: Students will be able to communicate related to daily lives and general topics.
Goal 3: Students will utilize the ability to understand about various information of foreign countries.
Goal 4: Students will have the proper hierarchy of values by understanding different cultures of foreign countries and recognizing Korean culture afresh.

Course Objectives

1. Students will understand the main ideas about a topic when listening.
2. Students will be cooperative with peers to improve communicative skills.
3. Students will enhance their pronunciation and intonation through a native speaking English teacher’s help.
4. Students will differenciate Korean culture from other foreign cultures.
5. Students will understand main ideas and supporting details when reading.
6. Students will enhance vocabulary skills through various contexts.
7. Students will be challenged to comprehend the main purpose of further intensive readings.
8. Students will apply their knowledge into real technological resources.
9. Students will understand main points of grammar from each chapter and apply their acquired knowledge into making sentences with their own words when writing.
10. Students will share their writings or researches and exchange feedback in class.

Course Requirements

1. Students are expected to be self-motivated, actively participants in the class.
2. Students should be fully responsible for given assignments and class activities.
3. Students must submit assignments by due dates on time.
(No late assignments will be accepted.)
4. Students are expected to respect other classmates and encourage each other to make an effective learning environment.

Required Text

Lee, B. M., Park, K. H., Han, J. K., Jung, J. H., & Stephen P. V. (2003). Middle School English 3. Seoul: Chun Jae Education.

Grading Policy

Daily learning log, Daily class participation, vocabulary quizzes, listening comprehension test, portfolio of all learning materials (e.g. worksheets, writing samples), and exams (mid-term and final) will distribute the evaluation over 12 sessions. No late assignments will be accepted.

Make up Work Policy

Students must be responsible for submitting assignments by the assigned due dates on time. If not, those students will receive a zero on the designated assignments. If a student has an excused situation such as illness, injury, medical appointment or bereavement, the student is responsible to inform the instructor. With the instructor’s approval, the student will receive 2 extra days to complete the missing assignments. If the work is still not turned in on time, the student will not receive a credit on his work.

Course Evaluation Plan
Course Calendar
(Please see the next page)

Assignment #8 Evaluation of curriculum (textbook)

Summary of curriculum evaluation

By evaluating the textbook that I am teaching with right now, I learned teaching cannot be done without well-organized textbooks. Textbooks are a great tool to teach English in an integrated way. It was not hard to analyze the textbooks by using the given rubrics.

The textbook is designed for 9th graders. The school where I work at now divided the students into their English proficiency levels: advanced, intermediate, and elementary. These different levels are using the same textbook though. The content of the courses in the textbook covers various themes, such as American holidays, stories of celebrities in the world, different cultures and customs, etc. The book, also, provides these contents in a variety of sections of English: listening, speaking, reading, and writing/grammar. Currently I am teaching intermediate level students. Some of them are not motivated and interested in English at all. Others are interested in English and want to do well on tests, but they do not know how to study English in a strategic way. The students are required to take mid-term and final exams per semester. Most of my students’ goal is to get a good score on the tests. In Korea, the tests are usually focused on reading comprehension and grammar expressions. This naturally designated the whole English class to pay careful attention on reading and writing with grammar only.

The textbook that I evaluated was excellent for grammar part for ESL learners. The book provides ample questions to practice certain grammar expressions, however the other domains of English (e.g. speaking, reading, listening, and writing) were covered less. This textbook, also, has a week point in the assessment area. It does provide various practice for grammar and several reading comprehension questions, and pair-up activities for listening and speaking only. The DVD, which was provided with the textbook, also does not supply a variety of assessing tools for the students’ level. Offering ample practice help students to achieve a certain goal of grammar expressions, reading comprehension, speaking, and listening. However, teachers had to create their own assessment worksheets in order to check their student’s level or to check if the goals were achieved.

Through the evaluation of the textbook with the two rubrics, I noticed there were some similarities and differences. Some similarities that I found are the following:

It is an excellent curriculum if…

• Materials meet objectives and goals.
• A variety of activities were provided and appropriate for a level.
• Instruction is progressed in an organized manner.
• The course used teaching technology effectively.
• The course provides enough chances for students to participate actively.
• The course provides extended homework which is integrated with the separated acquired skills.

There were some differences from the rubrics, too. Most of them were neglected when I created my own rubric. I did not think those were much important.
An excellent curriculum should…

• Provide a variety of strategies for teachers, such as direct instruction or paired/group projects.
• Provide research-based materials which are appropriate to student’s needs.
• Provide well-organized teacher’s guide.
• Provide support materials and parent support materials.
• Offer suggestions for re-teaching a concept, providing additional practice for struggling students.

I would like to recommend this textbook for intermediate and elementary levels. For advanced level, if the textbook supplies additional challenging materials, then it would be okay. Goals and objectives are also written on the first page of each lesson. Overall, the content of the textbook meets the goals and objectives appropriately and is well organized. If teachers prepare extra materials according to the students’ proficiency levels, this textbook will be practically used.

Graves Ch.5 Reflection

I am currently teaching 9th graders at a middle school in Korea. Since the second semester is almost over and the students are already done with their final exams, teachers have a hard time teaching classes these days. The students think they have no reason to study now because they were already evaluated for the finals. Since the students are unmotivated on studying, teachers wanted to create a fun activity for them instead of using the same textbooks. I, also, designed a course about 9.11 New York terror with a variety of video clips and a movie. However, the vice principal told the teachers not to use video clips as a teaching material. Without showing the students the video clips, it was not easy to make an important point on how terrible the terror was. I ended up making visual charts with pictures and telling the story orally.

Teachers always get to design a course and fix the plans frequently. In order to create a course, they need to know the backgrounds of the class before formulating goals and objectives such as students’ ages, their current English proficiency levels, a number of students in class, or time period. An English Camp program is going to be held in January at school where I work. I was asked to teach reading and listening parts from Monday through Friday for 90 minutes, 3weeks. I am supposed to design these two courses for this camp, but there is no information about the courses. I do not know how old my students would be, how many students would be in my class, and what their current English proficiency level is. The school does not know how many students will apply for this course or how old they are going to be yet, but the school wants me to submit lesson plans in two weeks. Since there is a lack of information about the course, it is hard to set goals or objectives. Through this chapter, I was guided how to formulate goals and objectives for a course. I started asking myself what I really want my students to learn from my class. And then, I also thought what kinds of learning outcomes the students should expect from when my class is over. Once I started thinking simply, I could narrow down some goals and objectives explicitly. Now I think I can work on what materials (contents) I should use and how the students will be evaluated.