Textbook Adaptation for Grammar and Beyond, Level 1

This syllabus follows the format curriculum for a hypothetical high-school level EFL course which assumes a four-year foreign language program in a college preparatory school. Classes meet five times a week, approximately 50-minute lessons. Assuming a population of students preparing for university studies, the course work is rigorous. The four book series Grammar and Beyond, Levels 1-4 (Reppen, 2012) will be the primary teaching tool. One level (one book) per academic year will be covered, each book content will dictate the main curriculum content. The series was chosen for its attention to both authentic spoken English and its application to academic writing. The presentation style and topics and activities are wellsuited to high-school aged students. As Graves states, advantages for using a textbook include, security for the students because they have a kind of road map of the course: they know what to expect, they know what is expected of them (Graves, 2000). Consistency for students as well as within the program will be maintained with this series. With my limited experience I thought it was a terrific book and feel a bit unqualified to suggest changes to this thoroughly researched and developed series. This well-conceived series provides ample opportunities for grammar exercises and pair-work, alternating input and output activities. The series presents grammar structures with a focus on application to academic writing, that focus will be implemented in this course. The students in this hypothetical class are beginning-intermediate, Level 1 of Grammar and Beyond, first year in a four-year high school curriculum, the supplementation and adaptation are made with this population in mind.

In a Monday-Friday school week, Monday Thursday will present and develop knowledge of structures. Thursday homework assignments will be online writing practice via the Grammar and Beyond Writing Skills Interactive, Fridays will be in-class writing workshops with homework assigned as needed to complete writing. Supplementation would be done primarily at the activity level given the proposed population: while college-bound, they are still adolescents, activities will be fast paced and upbeat. As in Simones lessons (Graves, 2000, pg. 191), student participation will motivate learning, activities should be relevant to students, and allow the students to feel at ease. Technology and fun game-type tasks have been incorporated, homework assigned daily. Monday Thursday homework will primarily consist of completion of the units Student Workbook (Appendix A), additional written practice of the units structures. Similar to Palmers unit organization (Graves, 2000, pg. 141), the units will be cyclical in nature, beginning with a new topic to introduce the unit structure, grammar presentation, application and practice and will end with a writing task. I feel that this predictable sequence is most appropriate for a rigorous, high-school course; maximizing instruction and reducing time spent explaining new routines. Each school week covers one of the 33 units in Level 1. This syllabus will develop lesson plans for Unit 26: Infinitives and Gerunds. Do What You Enjoy Doing. With four quarters in the school year, this unit will begin the fourth quarter. One week will be spent on each unit. A conscious effort will be made by the instructor to recycle previously learner material with continued explicit instruction to reinforce concepts. An example of this is in the PowerPoint presentation and Guess Who? activity where students are required to form questions and answers using the current unit structures of verb + infinitive/gerund and encouraged to use past and present tenses of verbs, identity difference between present progressive (introduced Unit 23) and gerund, continue building skills to discuss lifestyles (Unit

8), question forming (Unit 25), etc. With a strong focus on the acquisition of the most commonly used grammar structures in English and an application to academic writing, the syllabus designs provides the students with ample support and reinforcement to apply these in productive and receptive language use. A typical week will begin with begin with a brief overview of the previous weeks grammar structure and weekend homework and proves an opportunity for student questions. The current weeks structure and topic will be introduced in real world context. Each new unit in Grammar and Beyond does a fine job of presenting realistic scenarios with realistic language that provides ample new vocabulary. I believe in teaching students strong strategies to independently determine meanings of new vocabulary words; the new units unfamiliar words will present opportunities to review and practice these skills individually and in class discussion. Students will read text independently and complete comprehension exercises and exercises aimed at activating awareness of new forms presented in the input. Class discussion will follow to provide all students output opportunities and to raise awareness of new structures. Following my personal belief that a strong grammar foundation is critical as the base of language skills, each new grammar structure introduced will include teacher-led, explicit instruction, repetition and multiple, ongoing opportunities for practice. In addition, ongoing noticing and awareness raising will be incorporated. This form of teaching embodies the beliefs of the Skill Acquisition Theory, Take students from explicitly taught declarative knowledge, through careful proceduralization by engaging in the relevant task while the declarative knowledge is maximally activated to (very early stages of) automatization (VanPatten and Williams, 2007). Given the age of the students and the EFL context, limited pair-work will be used cautiously and monitored carefully by teacher to minimize L1 usage. Any pair-work will follow

with class discussions that offer consistent, upbeat input and output learning possibilities and required English output. In addition, technology needs to be incorporated in an engaging, ageappropriate manner. The Grammar and Beyond Unit #26 PowerPoint presentation, while providing ample explicit instruction, lacked appeal for an adolescent audience and was replaced by one (email attachment) that includes imaginative imagery, clear opportunities for practice and two class activities. When students have gained some mastery of the units structures, more focus will be given to fluency activities. Specific fluency activities were lacking in the text, the supplemented fluency activity for day #4 (Appendix B) is a modified version of the 4/3/2 activity presented by Nation in The Four Strands (2007) (pg 7) combined with a Wilson Language System (2011) Fluency Drill (Appendix C). Students write phrases using newly acquired forms. For example, for unit #26, verb + infinitive/gerund phrases: want to know, need to find, would like to go, etc. Working in pairs, each student reads their phrases, at increasing speed, while their partner times their performance. Winning pairs have read phrases the most quickly with no mistakes. This is built in as an ongoing, weekly activity. Students will collect fluency phrases in specified notebooks for continued practice. Sentences, built from these phrases, will be written as homework assignments and practiced in the upcoming class. Weekly routine is completion of units Student Workbook pages. Students will begin each unit on Monday, turn in completed pages in Friday. Daily lessons will include opportunities to discuss progress and address questions. The additional practice will reinforce concepts, providing multiple exposures to new structures and vocabulary, with the ultimate goal of mastery/automaticity of forms.

The sequence will wrap-up with the application of the new concepts to writing. With an assumption that the target students are university-bound and will be in an environment that requires academic writing skills, a strong focus will be on the development of these productive language skills. Students will work weekly with the online Grammar and Beyond interactive writing skills activities and will be required to complete the units exercises in preparation for the units in-class writing task. The final day of the unit will be devoted to an in-class writing workshop and wrap-up to discuss and read essays aloud.