Course Syllabus

  

Nature

Date: September 1, 2022 --- December 22, 2022

 

 1. Instructors information

Instructors: Miss Yuxin Xia & Miss Ruimeng Wang

Office Hours: Wednesday 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m

Emails: xiayuxin@udel.edu & ruimeng@udel.edu 

Phones: Miss Yuxin Xia (302)-661-5090; Miss Ruimeng Wang: (302)-661-5296

 

2. Course Description（ CLT & TBLT method）

    Based on the English Textbook for Senior High School (People’s Education Press), this course is designed to improve students language skills including listening, speaking, reading, and writing during the process of cooperation. The topic of the course is nature. Students are expected to know a lot of knowledge of nature to establish the concept of respecting and protecting nature, and to live in harmony with nature.

 

3. Learning Outcomes

After the end of the class, students will be able to:

l Develop abilities of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

l Cooperate and communicate with others in groups.

l Look at the problem from different perspectives.

l Have a deeper understanding of  nature.

l Acquire cross-cultural skills.

 

4.   Learning Resources

Textbook: English Textbook for Senior High School (People’s Education Press)

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/R8nuiH6YEl8njgTi9HIBdw

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/NkJs5D8WTTlp5xhNLxARcA

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/umBQdJAC_1blcgL9ME6JrQ

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6F-DILtMiWA1-QGj7jf8Pg

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/emBdMuxH2AeQ0snViWJmQQ

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/lacJM1ai6zGDO9SXdtD1KA

 

5. Learning Assessment

Categories:

Weight

Attendance

10%

Homework

15%

In-class Performance

15%

Mid-term Examination

25%

Final Examination

35%

Total

100%

 

6. Course Calendar

Nature

Topic

Date

Objectives

Activities

Earthquake

Week 1

Ø Master some new words about earthquake. (events, million, injured, destroy....)

Ø Comprehend the passage about the Tangshan earthquake in China.

ü Find the correct words for the following meaning.

ü Read the passage again & Make a timeline.

ü Write a summary of the passage.

Week 2

Ø Master the usage of the attributive clause.

Ø Develop students' ability of spoken language.

ü Find the sentences with attributive clauses from the reading passage.

ü Get into a group and make a short sentence.

ü Discuss in groups how to rebuild a city after an earthquake.

Wildlife Protection

Week 3

Ø Know some endangered wildlife. (Milu deer, Panda, South China Tiger...)

Ø Comprehend the passage about how daisy learned to help wildlife.

ü Read the report and answer questions.

ü Write down the main idea and the supporting details of the passage.

Week 4

Ø Learn how to use the present progressive passive voice.

ü Select the sentences using the present progressive passive voice from the passage.

ü Work in pairs and ask questions using the present progressive passive voice.

Global Warming

Week 5

Ø Master some new words and phrases about global warming. (phenomenon, subscribe to, fuels...)

Ø Develop students' ability of listening.

ü Complete the passage with the words and phrases.

ü Listen to the recording of the passage and complete the notes.

Week 6

Ø Cultivate students' abilities of cooperation and critical thinking.

 

ü Work in groups and read the passage about what can we do about global warming, and discuss whether you agree or disagree.

ü Work in pairs and make a poster about how to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.

Week 7     Mid-term Examination

The power of nature

Week 8

Ø Master some new words about volcano eruption.( wave, eruption, fountain...)

Ø Know some knowledge about volcano eruption.

ü Find the words that are related to the volcano eruption in this unit and fit them into the boxes.

ü Guess and listen to what happens when the volcano erupts.

Week 9

Ø Learn some emergency knowledge.

Ø Improve students' ability of spoken language.

ü Works in groups and discusses what would you do when the volcano erupts.

ü Role play.

Under the sea

Week 10

Ø Learn some reading strategies and master the passage.

ü Skim and scan the passage.

ü Put the events in the reading passage into the timeline.

ü Work in groups and discuss what have you learned from the passage.

Week 11

Ø Exercise students' logical thinking ability.

Ø Improve students’ imagination and writing ability.

ü Retell the passage according to some pictures.

ü Write a follow-up for the article.

A Land of Diversity

Week 12

Ø Cultivate students’ cross-cultural communicative ability.

Ø Master the passage about California.

ü Work in groups, looking at the map of the USA and matching the names of each part of the country.

ü Read the passage and write important events in California history.

ü Work in groups and discuss three questions on the board.

Week 13

Ø Improve students’ ability of listening.

Ø Cultivate students’ multicultural awareness, and spoken language ability.

ü Listen to the tape and fill in the blanks.

ü Work in groups, compare the situation between California and China and report in front of the class.

Week 14     Final Examination

      

7. Course Policy Documents

Attendance policies:

l Students can ask for leave once without deducting points. Deduct two points for one absence and fail the class more than five times.

In-class Performance:

l One point will be added for active speech, up to three points for each class and up to 15 points for each semester.

Other Policies:

l No mobile phones in class.

l No chatting when others are presenting.

l Be honest in doing homework and examination.

Comments

  1. Emily PriceMarch 12, 2022 at 11:50 AM

    Hi Yuxin,
    I really appreciate the theme of your syllabus around nature. Not only are this a topic students are familiar with, but there are so many connections to real-world issues and literature for you to draw on for authentic materials. A few ideas that come to mind are newspaper articles, scientific studies, even poetry about nature. By including different genres of writing, you can challenge students language skills. I was a bit confused by your Course Policy Documents, specifically your in-class performance. After reading, I understood that students have the opportunity to earn up to 15 points for speaking per semester, with up to 3 points a class. Is that correct. Additionally, what do define as active speech? With this model a student only has to orally produce English once per a class period. If your class is focused in the communicative language teaching, I believe you should increase this to emphasize the importance of using English in the classroom. I believe it would be fair to ask students to contribute 3 times per class period, especially if you are including interactive and group activities in your lessons.

    Emily Price

    ReplyDelete
  2. Siyuan LiMarch 12, 2022 at 7:30 PM

    Hi, Yuxin. I like your idea about improving students’ language skills around a specific topic. It will help students have a deep understanding of the topic and its branches, and at the same time, improve their language skills. I appreciate that you apply CLT and TBLT, which means that you focus on students’ communicative competence. So, you may add more task-based activities such as information gap and interview. I also notice that you focus on different skills each week and you emphasis on cooperative learning.

    I have two small suggestions for you. You can explain the learning outcomes in detail to make it more specific to your class. Second, it would be better if you have both the language objective and content objective each week.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMarch 13, 2022 at 10:53 PM

    Hi, Yuxin. Your course looks really rich and not only teaches students about nature, but also provides them with various language skills activities. Moreover, you want students to acquire certain grammar knowledge and new vocabulary as well as develop listening, reading, writing, intercultural communication skills and multicultural awareness, and also require students to understand the content on the learning materials. Therefore, I am a little confused as to whether your course objectives are a little too many and whether your course is content-based, skill-based, or some other type? In addition, I think it might be better if there is a brief description of the midterm and final examinations and would be more useful for other teachers to refer to. Overall, I can see your dedication and passion for teaching, and I look forward to learning from each other in the future.

    Shiyao

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  Lesson Plan Template   Performance Range  Intermediate Level Grade 10th grade Date 2022/ 5 /1 6 Day in Unit 1 Minutes  45 Theme/Topic Nature Essential Question Why do we need to protect wildlife? Daily topic: Wildlife protection STANDARDS LESSON OBJECTIVES What are the communicative and cultural objectives for the lesson? Communication and Cultures Which modes of communication will be addressed? After this lesson, learners will be able to: l  share the knowledge about wildlife protection in groups. l  comprehend the passage about how Daisy learned to help wildlife. l  know some endangered wildlife. ( Wild yak , antelope , leopard ...) l  learn how to use the strategies of skimming and scanning. l  establish the awareness of wildlife protection.     Interpersonal Interpretive Presentational If applicable, indicate how this lesson connects to other standards.  Connections Geography: there are different species in different dist...
Read more

The Attempt of Communicative Teaching Method by a New Teacher

My Teaching Philosophy In the 1970s, a ‘sociolinguistic revolution’ happened, where the emphasis given in linguistic to grammar was replaced by an interest in ‘language in use. Hymes (1970) paper ‘ on communicative competence’ was mentioned, with its exploration of the notion of ‘the appropriate’ as a dimension important in language studies. When I came to the Undergraduate University, these classes mainly focus on the basic knowledge of the language. Until I was in my junior year, I began to learn some knowledge of teaching. At the same time, I read some books such as introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching by Keith Johnson, a course in language teaching method by Wangqiang, and so on. By a period time of learning, I find the communicative teaching method is helpful for my teaching in the future.  In China, what many English teachers do in the classes is to help students get a grade in the exam. So many students including myself find their spoken English is poor whe...
Read more
Image
The Way to Climb the Mountain of a Qualified Teacher After the National College Entrance Examination, I choose English education as my major in the University. The reason why I choose this major is that I don’t want to learn math anymore. But when I begin to learn this major, I find it was not as easy as I imagined. The first difficulty I meet was to remember the general introduction of English-speaking countries. At the beginning of learning the course, I can’t even remember the names of so many countries. Then I found a map of English-speaking countries. It’s easy for me to remember names and locations according to a map. This also builds good basics for the preparation of the Graduate Entrance Examination.     During the process of preparing for the Graduate Entrance Examination, I read a lot of books about the culture of English-speaking countries and some pedagogical theories. This knowledge is really meaningful for me, which is not only useful for my exam but also useful...
Read more