Learning Circle week 2

Aziz, James, Hiroki, Mata, Peggy

   In our LC session, we analysed the following two course / textbook contents and compared them. One is the course contents for 3^rd year junior high school students in Japan;

 the other is the contents of the textbook called ‘cutting edge’.

(The latter is available from the following web link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Cutting-Edge-Intermediate-Students/dp/0582825172#reader_0582825172)

   Concerning the type of syllabus, the former course contents adopt traditional structural syllabus with grammatical structures ordered throughout the course.  In White’s term (1988) this is obviously classified into Type A syllabus. On the other hand, the latter textbook contents appear to be task based content syllabus.  One of our group members, who has used this textbook before, pointed out that this textbook contents can be process based depending on teachers’ ability; therefore, this textbook contents are considered as the mixture of Type A and Type B.

    With regard to grading and sequencing, it seems that the grammatical structures are ordered from ‘easy (simple)’ one to ‘difficult (complex)’ one in the former course contents.  However, some of our members are sceptical whether or not the order is appropriate in terms of learnability or teachability, most notably about the timing of instruction about pronouns and interrogatives.  The latter textbook contents, on the other hand, place each task according to its complexity.  This is understandable although some of the tasks are not easy to deal with for teachers.

  Regarding the elements of negotiation and each skill, it is obvious that there is nothing about negotiation in the former course contents, even in ‘communication’ chapter.  The course is intended for students to master only grammatical structure, therefore there are no practice for improving other skills like listening, speaking and reading.  On the contrary, there are many cues for negotiation in every chapter.  Thus, the textbook is intended to encourage students to interact each other.