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ESL
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The selection of textbooks for ESL students must be made by ensuring that they have relevant content and are up to date. They focus on cultural and linguistic diversity of students with clear and appropriate content supported by graphics and visuals having clear voice and sound quality. It must address a wide range of learning styles with exercises, activity sheets, assessment sheets, etc. and above all it must integrate speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. It also must incorporate life skills, receptive skills, learning styles like aural, oral, visual and kinesthetic, thinking skills, problem solving skills, group activities, practice exercises, vocabulary building exercises and activities, reading exercises including pre-read, read, post-read activities, writing exercises, assessment and self-evaluation formats, final test series, etc. (Parrish, 2004). Phase II: Creating a Good Syllabus After selecting good books for the syllabus, the next important activity of the syllabus is a creation of the syllabus for the students of the same class of the Japanese university for whom the books have been selected. The creation or designing of an effective and efficient ESL syllabus for students of a Japanese university must be done by determining the desired learning outcomes of the course. Without determining the goals and objectives of the course it is difficult to design an effective course. Another important factor in designing the ESL syllabus for students of Japanese universities, is considering the constraints of both the teachers and the students and English is a second language for both of them. The syllabus must be designed by
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Grading criteria The grading criteria is very important to ensure the communication skills in ESL of the students of a Japanese university and it must ensure that there is a balanced development in all the four skills of English communication which include reading, writing, speaking and listening where listening skill refers to ability of the student in understanding what he/she listens to. The tests and assessments should be made on the basis of the performance of the students for all these skills (Nation, 1989). An un-completed grid Clas Date Topic s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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Readings
Assignments
1/8 1/15 1/22 1/29 2/5 2/12 Holiday 2/19 2/23 2/26 3/5
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Phase III: Vocabulary Building The last phase of the development of the ESL syllabus for students of a Japanese university is vocabulary building or vocabulary development. The vocabulary building for the Japanese student is very crucial as they dont possess a good vocabulary and without good vocabulary it is difficult to master any language. Another factor, which requires good vocabulary is that they are about to do a difficult exam for which they need a good vocabulary. Most of the students have expressed their concern for better vocabulary knowledge so that they can do well on the exam. This phase of the syllabus development aims to assist learners in acquiring the vocabulary knowledge necessary to pass the big English exam which will be done within the framework of the four strands e.g., meaning-focused input, meaning focused output, language focused learning, and fluency development including examples of specific activities (Brown, 2007). Principles for building vocabulary For a student of Japanese university, it is enough if he/she knows about 2,000 general academic high frequency words. They should be taught phrases, and learning both implicit and explicit words to develop their capacity. They should learn new words by seeing its form and listening its pronunciation clearly and then speaking the word aloud. They must be encouraged to elaborate word knowledge and develop word fluency. While reading a text if they come across a new word they should be encouraged the guess the meaning of the word from the context and after that
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Vocabulary Activities Vocabulary activities can be a more practical and entertaining way of enhancing vocabulary and the vocabulary activity should be designed in a manner that they are cognized, deep and elaborate for enabling clear understanding and use of the word. The vocabulary activity with an objective of acquiring new words must have following features:
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It should promote noticing It should be engaging and interesting It should build a bridge between learner's schema and the new words It should target specific words meant to be taught It should promote repetition of form and meaning.
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Vocabulary Activity 1 This activity encourages students to read a text and guess the meanings of specific words and then marks are given for correct guesses. Sometimes, they are given options to use the words in fill in the blanks type exercises. Vocabulary Activity 2 In this activity students are given a passage to read and categorize selected words in different groups and name the group and finally they are encouraged to discuss their action with another student. Vocabulary Activity 3 This activity encourages students to guess the correct use of the given word in different sentences. The given word is used in different sentences in which only one sentence is correct. They are also encouraged to discuss their solutions with other students. Vocabulary Activity 4 In this activity students are encouraged to guess the relation between underlined words and discuss the outcome with other students. Vocabulary Activity 5 In this activity, students are encouraged to find similar words in a given text. They are given few words and search for similar words in the given passage. The framework of the four strands The vocabulary building is enhanced within the framework of the four strands e.g., meaningfocused input, meaning focused output, language focused learning, and fluency development.
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The fluency development strand The fluency development strand refers to the development of all skills of communication making fluent in Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. This strand encourages students to use what they know. The learners use their skills for receiving and conveying messages through activities
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