View Learning Outcomes | Learning Outcomes and Indicators

Curriculum Focus

Communication

Students are provided with a wide variety of opportunities and contexts in which to listen to and talk to others. Teachers scaffold the talk, helping students to articulate and share experiences, ideas and opinions in English as they talk about their own personal experiences and listen to those of others. Teachers support students in speaking about experiences they have had in other times and places. Students’ interpersonal English language skills develop as they work in pairs or small group contexts, negotiating tasks and sharing activities. They learn English incidentally through small group work with English-speaking peers, as well as in more focused English language teaching groups with teachers. They follow instructions and classroom procedures, carry out tasks, play games, and talk about class topics.

Aspects of language

Contextual understanding

As students become involved in social and learning interactions for a variety of purposes and audiences, they add to the range of situations they are able to negotiate in English. Their speaking and listening repertoires enable them to interact appropriately in known situations, as well as to handle many new situations. Teachers provide a variety of models of spoken interaction, both formal and informal. Role-play, drama and participation in other interactive situations, such as group work, develop communicative strategies, for example, turn taking or the use of intonation or gesture to enhance meaning. Teachers discuss with students the way in which spoken texts are structured for different purposes, and how word choice can affect meaning.

Linguistic structures and features

Students combine a variety of learned formulas and creative utterances as they work out the patterns of English. Teachers support students’ developing oral skills by providing correct language models while still accepting students’ utterances and responding to the meaning. Students are introduced to new vocabulary for new situations and topics, which is recycled in many different contexts. By involving students in many opportunities to use their developing oral skills in a wide variety of contexts and activities, such as question games, oral cloze, songs, stories and rhymes, teachers ensure that students are able to use their English creatively in new situations. Oral activities also help students to develop appropriate pronunciation.

Strategies

As students work and play in the classroom, they develop new strategies in oral communication, to communicate more effectively and to maintain interaction with others. Students interact in many different contexts in work and play, including individual, pair and group activities. In order to assist students to communicate in these differing contexts, functional language is modelled and students are explicitly introduced to the kinds of functions that will help them to sustain interaction, for example, some of the language of negotiation or clarification. They reflect on and evaluate these strategies through class or group discussion. This kind of language can be recorded and practised in role-play situations. Students use visual materials and real objects to support their talk, for example, when taking part in a discussion. Students are also encouraged to use their first language where appropriate to clarify or discuss.