GRADE 11A English as a world language Making predictions

About this unit

This unit is designed to guide your planning and teaching of English lessons. It provides a link between the standards for English and your lesson plans. The teaching and learning activities in this unit should help you to plan the content, pace and level of difficulty of lessons. You should adapt the ideas in the unit to meet the needs of your class. You can also supplement the ideas with appropriate activities from your schools textbooks and other resources. In this unit, students examine the spread of English worldwide and make predictions about its future use. They reflect on their own difficulties in learning English and seek and give advice about language learning. They examine minutes of a meeting and role-play a meeting to discuss setting up an English club.

UNIT 11A.1 12 hours

Resources
The main resources needed for this unit are: world map; listening text on the spread of English in the past; article on the use of English in the future; brochures for private English language courses; authentic listening material on why non-native speakers are learning English and the difficulties they encounter; a recording of a planning meeting or a staff meeting between 34 people in which familiar topics are discussed; minutes of the same meeting; the minutes should contain 34 factual errors.

Expectations
By the end of the unit, most students will: apply understanding of context clues to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words; understand and respond to a range of information given in face-to-face or audio-only situations in monologues and dialogues; follow short lectures and presentations on a range of familiar but abstract subjects; follow discussions in business-type meetings of about 15 minutes and respond by taking notes or minutes and orally reporting back by summarising points coherently and using reported speech; actively participate in informal and more formal discussions; use hypothetical questions and statements, and a variety of ways of expressing plans and predictions in future time; begin to understand the purposes, organisation and typical language features of persuasive texts. Students who progress further will: use accurately a variety of ways of expressing plans and predictions in future time; show independence by initiating new ideas in paired and group discussions, contributing opinions, examples and suggestions to the discussion. Students who make slower progress will: use a variety of ways of expressing plans and predictions in future time with prompting; respond to requests for opinions, give examples and make suggestions in paired and group discussions.

Key structures and functions

Future simple, future continuous: 1.3 billion people will use English as a first or second language by 2050. Chinese, Arabic and Spanish will become key international languages. A third of people on the planet will be learning English in the next decade. Future perfect: In the year 2000, there were about a billion English learners. By 2010, the numbers will have doubled.

Vocabulary
English as a world language: regional variety, widespread, to express yourself fluently, bilingual, trilingual, native speaker, non-native speaker, dialect, accent, lingua franca, global, etc. Regional varieties: Indian English, Caribbean English, Singaporean English, etc.

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Standards for the unit

12 hours
3 hours English as a world language 3 hours Setting up a language school 2 hours Problems of learning English 4 hours Holding a meeting 10A.3.3 Understand and respond to recounts, commentaries and non-chronological information texts on familiar and unfamiliar topics: understand gist and detail; relay main points and detail in appropriate sequence to a third party; generalise and link to knowledge from other sources; transfer information to other contexts. 11A.3.4 11A.3.3

Unit 11A.1
CORE STANDARDS Grade 11A standards
11A.1.1 Recognise, understand and use approximately 4000 words for listening, speaking, reading and writing, extending and consolidating the active vocabulary words from Grades K9. Students regularly use these words throughout the year across the four skills, using topics and lexical sets to group them in meaningful, memorable contexts. Follow lectures and presentations of about 15 minutes on a range of abstract and/or technical subjects: identify main and subsidiary points; use notes to organise points into headings, sub-headings, maps, charts, diagrams etc.; select and note relevant detail, using devices such as underlining, boxing etc. to emphasise points; make generalisations, draw conclusions; formulate questions and comments to seek clarification, contribute views or comments. Follow a discussion in a business-type meeting (e.g. a planning meeting, staff meeting) of about 15 minutes, noting: the progression of points arguments (e.g. from general to specific, tentative to assertive, individual to collective etc.); how turn-taking is transacted; how participants negotiate points with each other through agreeing, modifying, adding to, disagreeing, offering alternatives etc., hedging, changing the subject, distracting, fending off etc.; the use of formal and informal language to set the tone of the meeting, mark distance, status, respect, disrespect etc.; the role of the group leader or chair person; formalities of opening, introducing, summarising, concluding, thanking. Respond by taking minutes, and orally reporting back by summarising points coherently and using reported speech. 12A.3.3 Follow longer (about 20 minutes) lectures and presentations on a range of abstract and/or technical subjects.

SUPPORTING STANDARDS including Grade 10A standards

EXTENSION STANDARDS including Grade 12A standards

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12 hours

SUPPORTING STANDARDS including Grade 10A standards

11A.4.3

CORE STANDARDS Grade 11A standards

Interact in group, paired and more formal discussion: actively participate, contributing relevant opinions, examples and suggestions to the discussion; challenge ideas and get the interlocutor to justify their point of view where appropriate; show independence by initiating new ideas and taking responsibility for keeping the discussion going; ability to deal with unexpected questions or comments. 12A.4.2

EXTENSION STANDARDS including Grade 12A standards

Interact in group, paired and more formal discussion.

10A.4.9

Use meta-language to talk about learning English: understand and use key concepts of language.

11A.4.6

Use meta-language to talk about learning English: understand and use key concepts of modality.

10A.5.1

Consolidate the ability to make predictions, describe continuous or long term actions in the future and contrast with specific actions and future states, using the future continuous, the will future and appropriate time phrases.

11A.5.1

Consolidate the ability to talk about situations and events in the future, fixed, planned, spontaneous, predictable, probable or possible, using the full range of present and future tenses and time phrases as appropriate.

11A.5.2

Consolidate and extend ability to describe possible choices, courses of action, in the past, present or future; and weigh up options and consequences. Use hypothetical language with conditionals and appropriate modals and connectives.

11A.5.11 Give an oral report based on minutes taken from a business meeting. 11A.6.1 Independently and intensively, read texts of up to 1500 words.

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12 hours
10A.6.3

SUPPORTING STANDARDS including Grade 10A standards

Recognise a range of features of formal written English through reading. 11A.6.3

CORE STANDARDS Grade 11A standards

Recognise a wide range of features of formal written English through reading a variety of genres. Note particularly: purpose and intended audience; language features use of discourse markers for explicit logical organisation, frequent use of modal verbs to express possibility, condition, and to stress the distance of the speaker; wider use of passive voice and indirect forms. 11A.7.4 Read widely for information: prior to reading, identify key questions and possible sources; use skimming and scanning strategies to identify key information, discern relationships between ideas, distinguish relevant from irrelevant detail, check information to ensure detail is correct; synthesise information from a range of at least three sources; make detailed legible notes in a form which suits the purpose written, diagrammatic, abbreviated sufficiently to structure an essay or presentation, with main points and accurate detail, combine information from different sources coherently; compare and evaluate different texts on the same topics, information presented in different screen and hard-copy text forms. 12F.7.5 12A.6.3

EXTENSION STANDARDS including Grade 12A standards

Identify and interpret a wide range of features of formal written English through reading a variety of genres.

Read widely for information: synthesise information from a range of sources; compare and evaluate.

10A.7.7

Read and understand a variety of persuasive texts presenting and arguing for a particular point of view:

11A.7.6

Respond to, evaluate and criticise persuasive texts, referring to the texts for evidence: assess the validity of the point of view presented in relation to its internal coherence and objectivity, distinguishing fact from opinion; evaluate arguments, claims and recommendations, comparing them to other evidence, beliefs and values beyond the text; analyse the use of persuasive language intended to imply half truths or pseudo-truths.

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12 hours

SUPPORTING STANDARDS including Grade 10A standards

11A.9.1

CORE STANDARDS Grade 11A standards

Independently compose texts of at least 20 sentences in a coherent structure using: connected paragraphs, as appropriate to the text; varied sentence structure, and choice of words and phrases for precision and effect; cohesion markers, such as lexical repetition, reference, ellipsis and substitution and use of pronouns for reference and cohesion. 11A.9.8 Write for a range of functional purposes to report, organise and convey information accurately: memos (on email, handwritten or for public notice-board display) either using existing templates or designing and adapting the memos to suit the purpose, and making clear the addressee, topic or subject and date, and reminding, requesting or informing in concise but informal language, suited to the role and status of the audience 12A.9.1

EXTENSION STANDARDS including Grade 12A standards

Independently compose texts of at least 25 sentences in a coherent structure.

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Activities
Objectives
3 hours English as a world language Students are able to: use key vocabulary to discuss English as a global language; make predictions, describe continuous or long-term actions in the future and contrast with specific actions and future states, using future continuous, will future and appropriate time phrases; follow lectures and presentations of about five minutes on a range of familiar but abstract subjects, identifying main and some subsidiary points and selecting and noting some relevant detail; recognise a wide range of features of formal written English through reading a variety of genres; read widely for information; prior to reading, identify key questions and possible sources; skim and scan to identify key information and distinguish relevant from irrelevant detail.

Unit 11A.1
Possible teaching activities
Show students a world map and ask them to identify countries which use English as either a first, second or foreign language. Students discuss how English is used internationally (e.g. the UN, the Internet, air traffic control) and in Qatar at the moment. Give students notes about a listening text that explains the growth of English but with some key information missing (e.g. dates, names of countries or regions, reasons). Students study the notes and predict the missing information. They then listen to check or find the missing information. Listening texts about the spread of spoken English around the world can be found at: www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/ storysofar/series4.shtml

Notes

School resources
This column is blank for schools to note their own resources (e.g. textbooks, worksheets).

Write predictions on the board about the future use of English, for example: The number of people learning English will double in the next 10 years. By 2010, the number of people learning English will have doubled. Students discuss the use of will and the preposition in in the first example and the use of the present perfect tense and the preposition by in the second example. Use a timeline to clarify if necessary. Provide oral practice of the structures using word or sentence prompts. Divide the class into four groups: A, B, C and D. Each group conducts internet research on a language (e.g. Spanish, Chinese, French and Arabic). Elicit and record research questions, such as: Where is the language spoken? Why? How many people speak it as their first language? How many people speak it as a second language? Is the number of speakers increasing or decreasing? Why? What impact do you think this will have on the future use of English? Before students begin, discuss possible sources, search words, etc.

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Objectives

Possible teaching activities

In their groups, students compare the information they have found and discuss the last of the research questions. If necessary, present some questions to stimulate discussion, for example: Do you think that English will become more or less important? Will standard English be more or less important? In what ways might English be influenced by other languages? Highlight the use of modal verbs for expressing uncertainty, for example: If more people use English to communicate with people within their own country, standard English might become less important. Other forms of English might develop, for example Indian English or Singaporean English. Cross-group to make new groups with representatives from groups A, B, C and D. Set two or three guiding questions, for example: Which language is most widely spoken as a first language? Which language is most widely spoken as a first or second language? Do you think its possible that one of these languages might become an international language? Why/why not? Students share the information they have collected and discuss their ideas. Monitor, paying particular attention to the use of future forms and time phrases. Groups take turns to report their ideas. Students read an article of approximately 1000 words that outlines the status of English in the future. They complete a comprehension task to identify the main ideas. They check to see if their own predictions match the authors. Students evaluate the strength of the authors claims, paying attention to the use of language and the objectivity and relevance of points made. Students distinguish between fact and opinion, and refer to the texts for evidence. Highlight and practise the use of future forms and time phrases in the text, for example: Chinese, Arabic and Spanish are going to be key international languages. A third of people on the planet will be learning English in the next decade. By 2010, the numbers of people learning English will have doubled.

Notes

School resources

Articles on the use of English as an international language can be found at: www.britishcouncil.org or in ELT journals or magazines (e.g. Modern English Teacher, ET Professional).

3 hours Setting up a language school Students are able to: use ought for obligation and negative of need and have to to express absence of obligation; [continued]

Ask students if they have ever attended a private language course (for English or any other language). Ask them if they enjoyed the experience and elicit why or why not. Ask students to imagine that they are going to take up a new language and are looking for a private language course. Revise expressing obligation and lack of obligation, for example: The teachers must be qualified. The school should have a library so we can borrow books. It neednt be near my house because I have a driver.

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Objectives
[continued] recognise a wide range of features of formal written English through reading a variety of genres; write persuasive texts.

Possible teaching activities

In groups, brainstorm the criteria they will use to choose a course (e.g. small classes, native or non-native speaking teacher, qualified teachers, near home). Students organise their ideas into three columns, for example: Essential Qualified teachers Desirable Up-to-date library Not important Near home

Notes
Each group should appoint a secretary to record the ideas on a poster. The group then uses the poster to report to the whole class.

School resources

Groups report back and compare their posters. Students skim a number of brochures or online advertisements for language courses to identify the intended audience (e.g. business people, teenagers, parents). They identify which schools or courses meet the criteria they listed as essential and desirable. Students distinguish between fact and opinion, referring to the texts for evidence. Identify new vocabulary and encourage students to guess from context. In groups, students discuss the effectiveness of the brochures, highlighting any organisational techniques that have been used to structure the text, for example: use of rhetorical questions and use of superlatives; use of second person to involve the reader; use of headings, bullets, paragraphs, topic sentences, etc.; use of fact and opinion; use of colour, and use of photographs or illustrations; style friendly or formal; vocabulary emotive language, figurative language, etc. Students choose which brochure they like most, giving reasons for their choice. Record the reasons and use them as criteria for evaluation in the next activity. Put students in groups of three or four to discuss setting up their own private English-language school. They compose a brochure to promote their new school. Display students work and organise peer evaluation of brochures using the criteria recorded. 2 hours Problems of learning English Students are able to: identify and respond to the main ideas and details in a listening text; use meta-language to discuss the difficulties they have with learning English; [continued] Students work with a partner and discuss how they use English outside the classroom now and how they think they will use English in the future. Play a tape of three or four non-native speakers of English talking about why they are learning English and some of the difficulties they have. Students complete comprehension tasks to identify the problems. Students discuss the problems in small groups and offer suggestions as to how each speaker can overcome their difficulties and view their learning positively. Highlight and practise use of modals for giving advice, for example: You could try If I were you You should I dont think you should Either find commercially available recordings of non-native speakers commenting on their language-learning experience or interview friends and colleagues and record their conversations on tape. Either collect brochures from private language schools in Doha or print out online advertisements for international language schools.

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Objectives
[continued] combine information from different sources into a piece of writing; compose texts based on personal research.

Possible teaching activities

In pairs, students discuss their own difficulties with learning English, talking through each aspect of the language (e.g. grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, reading, listening, speaking, writing). They choose the biggest problems and develop 34 problem statements such as: When I listen to a tape, I cant catch all the words. When Im speaking, I just cant think of the words I need. In pairs, students use their problem statements to develop questions for a survey entitled How to learn a language successfully. They put their set of questions to 34 other students in the class, taking turns to ask the questions and to make notes about the responses. Students synthesise the responses they were given and prepare a summary. The final draft is displayed for the whole class to read. Highlight and expand on any problem statements and advice that is relevant to the class as a whole.

Notes
It is important that students develop clear, simple problem statements in order to carry out the next activity.

School resources

4 hours Holding a meeting Students are able to: follow a discussion in a business-type meeting of about 15 minutes; report what people say or believe; give an oral report based on minutes taken from a business meeting.

Students skim and scan minutes of a meeting about a familiar topic to answer comprehension questions. Discuss the purpose of the minutes and elicit the content: for example, date and time of meeting, people present at meeting, topics discussed, etc. Make a list on the board. Discuss the layout of the minutes and its relation to the purpose. Students listen to a recording of a meeting between 34 people and identify mistakes in the writing of the minutes. Students listen again and note typical features of a business discussion, including some of the following: the progression of points or arguments (e.g. from general to specific, tentative to assertive, individual to collective); how turn-taking is transacted; how participants negotiate points with each other; the use of formal and informal language; the role of the group leader or chair person; formalities of opening, introducing, summarising, concluding, thanking (see standard 11A.3.4 for details). In pairs, students prepare an oral report on the business meeting, using the minutes for reference. Students prepare to hold a meeting to discuss setting up an English club. In groups, students discuss information to include in a memo informing students and inviting them to attend the meeting. Students share ideas in whole-class work arrangement, selecting and rejecting ideas as appropriate. Draw up a final list on the board. In groups, student draft a memo using a template and the agreed list of contents as a guide.

Prepare a recording of a planning meeting or a staff meeting between 3-4 people in which familiar topics are discussed. Prepare minutes of the meeting. The minutes should contain 3-4 factual errors. Prepare simple wh-type questions to encourage students to skim and scan the minutes for information, for example: How many people were at the meeting? What time did the meeting begin? How may topics were discussed?

Students should set a real date and time for the meeting (e.g. during a future English lesson).

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Objectives

Possible teaching activities

Discuss the role of the chairperson in the meeting. Students listen again to the recording of the meeting and identify the role of the chairperson and typical language used. Students prepare to role-play a meeting. Distribute role cards. Have students discuss and prepare their roles in groups. They should think of ideas to support their proposal and be prepared to question the proposal of others.

Notes

School resources

Role-cards should suggest ideas for an English club, for example, a film club, a literature club, a debating society, pen-pals, etc. The role of chairperson should be given to strong students.

Take one representative from each group to make a new group to role-play the meeting. If possible record the discussions. Have groups play back their groups discussion and identify common errors, strengths and weaknesses. Encourage them to set individual goals for improvement and group goals.

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Assessment
Examples of assessment tasks and questions
Listening Students listen to a dialogue (e.g. two people discussing plans for going on holiday in an English-speaking country and how they are going to communicate with local people) and identify true/false or true/doesnt say statements. Students present a personal language-learning history to date, outlining the rewards and challenges that they have met along the way. Students read an article about why English has become a global language and why it will continue to dominate the business, diplomatic, trade and leisure sectors. They identify the main ideas and details. Students write a letter (300 words) to an English friend who is thinking of learning Arabic. They outline the advantages and difficulties of learning this language and give some advice about how to be a successful language learner.

Unit 11A.1
Notes
Listening carries approximately 20% of the assessment weighting for this grade.

School resources

Speaking

Speaking carries approximately 30% of the assessment weighting for this grade. Reading carries approximately 20% of the assessment weighting for this grade.

Reading

Writing

Writing carries approximately 30% of the assessment weighting for this grade.

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176 | Qatar English scheme of work | Grade 11A | Unit 11A.1 | English as a world language

Education Institute 2005