ITTT Specialised Course

Teaching English to Young Learners

YL 003

Unit 3
Course development

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Unit 3
Course development

Synopsis
In this unit we will explore various ways you could
develop a course for young learners.

From our first meetings with students, we will

examine level testing and the needs analysis for the
students.

We will also consider some of the limiting factors

which will affect the content of a syllabus, and look at
how we might make adjustments as a result.

A review of the different types of syllabus and how we

might design one will follow, and then we’ll move on to
some of the examinations we may have to prepare
our students for.

Finally we consider three stages of evaluation for our

courses.

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Unit 3
Course development

Level testing
and needs analysis
Level testing

First we need to ask the question, “What is a level test

and what does it show?”

What they should show, if they have been designed

correctly, is the ability of the participant to use the
language.

Usually these level tests are graded, which means

they start easy and get progressively harder. The first
ten questions would be answered correctly to be
placed at level two, the next five of eight questions
correct to be placed at level three and so on.

Often this is presented in the form of ‘Can do’

statements. Examples of these statements on page 3
of this unit.

There are many different level descriptors, used by different examination and testing bodies. We will adopt a five-level
scale:

1. Starter
2. Elementary
3. Pre-Intermediate
4. Intermediate
5. Upper-Intermediate

This banding relates to the Common European Framework (CEF) scales as follows:

Approximate EFL banding CEF level

Starter A1 Breakthrough
Elementary A2 Waystage
Pre-intermediate
B1 Threshold
Intermediate
Upper-intermediate B2 Vantage
Levels C1 (Effective operational efficiency)
C2 (Mastery)

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Unit 3
Course development

Level descriptions Level descriptions

We can present the level descriptions as follows:

Starter Has a basic command of the language required for a range of familiar situations.

Elementary Has an effective, but limited command of the language in a range of familiar situations.

Pre-intermediate Has a generally effective command of the language, in a range of situations, can take part in
discussions.

Intermediate Has a good operational command of the language, in a wide range of real world situations
and can participate effectively in discussions and meetings.

Upper-intermediate Has a full operational command of the language at a high level and in most situations can
present an argument and use suasion.

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Unit 3
Course development

Example of part of a level test for 9 to 13 year-olds

Complete the sentences with the word/s you think fits best into the space, from the words given:

1. Too __________ ice-cream makes you full.

many much some a lot amount.

2. Turn __________ the fan please, I'm hot.

in on off down out

3. I'm __________ my new teacher next week.

meet met meted meeting meat

4. Mrs Smith’s room is the __________ classroom in the school.

cleanest clean cleaner most clean cleaniest

5. I didn't learn much English __________ I was at my last school.

since for when during after

6. You __________ eat food in the library, as it's against the rules.
should can must mustn’t could

7. __________ Mr Jones looks old, he’s only forty-three.

despite even so although when

8. My bicycle has been broken __________ Friday.

on last since for in

9. If I could be anyone I __________ be Tiger Woods.

may might should would can

10. The bread had __________ so Mum took it out of the oven.
rose risen rosed rised rise

Note this level test part example is for reading, comprehension and writing, and that it doesn’t test other skills such as
listening and speaking.

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Unit 3
Course development

Needs analysis

Having gained some knowledge of the student's level from the level test the next step you can take is to carry out a needs
analysis. This is to give you an idea of the students’ previous learning experiences, what they will use English for and what
they feel would be the most beneficial areas for them to study.

The needs analysis itself can take the form of a simple questionnaire (See the example on the next page).

Using both the results of the level tests and the needs analysis, you are now in a position to arrange your groupings.

Your first lesson with each group should have some time devoted to a needs negotiation. The form that this will take will
very much be dependent on the age and level.

For the younger age group this negotiation can be based around the class rules, rather than the syllabus content. It is
also useful to let the students know what they can expect from you as their teacher (but don't make promises you can't
keep).

For the older students, the negotiation would take the form of a class discussion and should focus on the areas of
learning that the students feel would be most useful to them as a group.

By this stage, you should have already worked out a preliminary syllabus and you can direct the discussion to show how
their needs are being addressed.

There will always be some areas that one or two students need and others do not, so you can explain that any individual
such needs will be addressed through homework and/or assignments, should the language point be outside of anything
useful to the whole group.

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Unit 3
Course development

Example of part of a needs analysis for 9 to 13 y.o.

1. Which of these do you do most in English?

(a) Speak (b) Read (c) Listen (d) Write

Answer ____________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Which of these do you do least in English?

(a) Speak (b) Read (c) Listen (d) Write

Answer ____________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Which of these do you think is the most difficult?

(a) Speaking (b) Reading (c) Listening (d) Writing

Answer ____________________________________________________________________________________________

4. What was the last book you read in English?

Answer ____________________________________________________________________________________________

5a. Do you read English language magazines or comics?

Answer ___________________________________

5b. Which one/s? ____________________________________________________________________________________

6a. Do you watch English language T.V. programs?

Answer ___________________________________

6b. Which one/s? ____________________________________________________________________________________

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Unit 3
Course development

Limiting factors
There will always be some form of mismatch between
what we would ideally like to do and what we have to
do.

Some of the factors that create these limitations here

could include:

Your employer

The school or company you work for may have

decided what is and isn't to be taught, there is very
little you can do about this. You will have to explain to
your older students that there is certain material that
will be tested, through examinations and this is why it
is included in the syllabus, even though they may not
feel it is particularly relevant to what they feel they
need.

Time constraints

Your contact time will have been decided before you

arrive and this will have a major impact on what you
can put into your syllabus. Some schools will tell you
what time to spend on particular areas, others may
not. It is well worth consulting other teachers in your
department to see what they do.

Resources

In order to teach various topics effectively, you will need to have access to certain resources, for example, books, a
photocopier and so on. What resources you have access to, may, to some extent affect what you can teach.

One particularly useful bit of advice here is to get to know the administration staff of the school, the secretaries and so
on. It is surprising what they will be able to produce for you that others find impossible to get.

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Unit 3
Course development

Cultural issues

You need to be sensitive to certain issues in your teaching which relate to cultural norms and taboos. If you don't know
enough about the culture to make these decisions then consult the management or administration staff.

In particular be aware that resources within the school may well have been checked, but those of your own or those you
take from the internet probably have not been.

Students

You have to take account of your students in the design of the syllabus. As an example, a group of teenage boys in
Marseilles, France will have very different motivational factors than a group of missionary school students in China, for
example.

If your teaching style is radically different to the normal practices of other teachers at the school, you may find yourself
having to explain to parents and senior staff why your methods are suitable.

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Unit 3
Course development

Syllabus design
If you are working for a state school or private
language academy in most cases you will be given a
syllabus when you arrive. In some cases the syllabus
will be broken down into units and even individual
lessons, telling you the order of what to teach. In a
school situation your classes may already have been
arranged either by age or by level.

But what happens if you arrive and a syllabus is not

available?

If you have a little spare time, you may wish to read

through some of the literature available for designing
a language syllabus.

The first thing you will find is that there are many
different theories as to what a syllabus should be
designed around.

You will see such terms as:

n The structural syllabus (based on sequencing by grammar complexity)

n The functional-notional syllabus (based around communicative purpose)
n The learner-led syllabus (students have input to the design)
n The situational syllabus (based on the situational needs rather than grammar)

These may be broken down further still:

n The student syllabus (what the students will see)

n The material syllabus (the materials required at each stage of the syllabus)
n The Organizational syllabus (how groups, resources will be organized)

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Unit 3
Course development

You will find a lot of material which relates the syllabus design to particular learning theories online. See for example:

www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/syllabus-writing

There is a very good outline by Adam John Simpson entitled ‘Designing a Scenario-Based Syllabus for Young Learners’
that you can download at https://old.hltmag.co.uk/jun13/mart03.htm. As this is an old site you may see an ‘insecure’
warning, so you may want to visit this URL instead, which is a direct download of the PDF document:

http://research.sabanciuniv.edu/21624/1/Designing_a_Scenario-
Based_Syllabus_for_Young_Learners_ADAM_SIMPSON.pdf

Having worked your way through this material you may ask yourself if there is an easier way of going about this process.
There probably is.

Firstly you need some information.

(i) How long is your course and how is it broken down? (for example, 20 x one hour slots)

(ii) How many progress tests (during the course) will you have? (for example, one progress test after 10 lessons and an
achievement test at the end = 2 hours)

(iii) Leave some flexible time to cover things that come up or you didn't think of at the start (for example, one hour)

(iv) What language points do you have to cover on your course (for example, the alphabet, greetings, colours, animal
vocabulary, shape and size, dates, 'wh' questions, there is/there are, etc.)

(v) What ability and age range is your group (for example, starters, ages 4 and 5 years)

It is useful to designate the first lesson to Introductions, both you to them and them to you. Also in this session you can
outline the syllabus and why the various components are there and what you expect them to achieve.

It's also useful to let them know at the start when the assessments will take place.

This leaves you with 16 teaching hours to cover your material.

Do you have answers to all the above questions? If so we can now map out a matrix for your 20 hours (see example on the
next page).

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Unit 3
Course development
Sample syllabus

Syllabus for group K3

Monday to Friday, 9.30 - 10.30 am Room 9b

Lesson Content Resources

1 Introducing/getting to know you; Classroom rules Ice breaker games

2 Hello, goodbye, nice to meet you Coursebook pages 2, 3, 4

3 My name is… Coursebook pages 5 to 8

4 Numbers Coursebook pages 9 to 11

5 Color vocabulary Coursebook pages 12, 13

6 It is + color; It’s + color Coursebook pages 14

7 Animal vocabulary Coursebook pages 15, 17

8 Animal adjectives Coursebook pages 18, 19

9 Revision Revision worksheets

10 Progress test K3, PT 001

11 Shapes Coursebook pages 20, 21

12 Sizes Coursebook pages 22, 23

13 Days of the week Coursebook pages 24

14 Months and dates Coursebook pages 25

15 ‘Wh’ questions 1 Coursebook pages 26, 28

16 ‘Wh’ questions 2 Coursebook pages 29, 30

17 Singular/plural Coursebook pages 31, 32

18 There is/there are Coursebook pages 33

19 Revision Revision worksheets

20 Achievement test K3, AT 001

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Unit 3
Course development

Assessment of students
It is most important for yourself and your students, that
some regular form of testing or assessment of learning
takes place. This will allow you to measure the efficacy
of your program and allow your students to monitor
their progress.

It will also provide you with information to guide any

modifications or improvements to your course.

What type of tests should you give and how often?

Let's start by looking at the type of tests available and
what these tests are designed to do.

Types of test include: as:

n diagnostic
n placement
n aptitude
n achievement
n proficiency
n progress

Diagnostic tests are designed to assess the students’ knowledge and skills in specific areas that have accrued due to
past learning experiences. These tests would take place before your course begins.

Placement tests are designed to enable you to group students by their current ability in a range of areas rather than
anything specific. These tests often take the form of multiple choice style questions to make the marking quicker.

Aptitude tests are designed to predict students’ probable future performance on a course. They try to assess if the
student will be able to use the language.

Achievement tests are designed to assess students’ learning of a known body of work (for example a syllabus). They are
usually designed to give maximum discrimination between students, so that individual progress can be monitored.

Proficiency tests are designed to assess the students’ current knowledge and reference this forward to some future task.
For example, will this student be able to study Medicine in the medium of the English language at a U.K University?

Progress tests are designed to assess students’ progress in learning specific areas taught in the class. They tend to be
less formal than external achievement tests and are often 'created' by the teacher themselves. They can inform the
teacher of the efficacy of their program and motivate students by their 'knowing what they don't know'.

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Unit 3
Course development

In terms of our course (which is for 20 hours) and syllabus, an end-of-course progress test would be suitable.

For a much longer course, we may have a mid-course progress test and end with an achievement test.

Most published book series available for young learners used in your teaching programs offer progress tests in their texts
(see the Friends, English Parade, and Let’s Go series, for example). Alternatively, you can adapt tests set for external
examinations by cutting and pasting relevant questions.

You will also find many tests available on various websites on the internet. These are examples:

https://english.best/
www.easyenglish.com
www.usingenglish.com
http://a4esl.org

Whatever method you use to generate these progress/achievement tests you should always try to ensure the following:

n That the tests are marked very shortly after they are given.
n That they are annotated and returned to the students as soon as is practicable.
n That some form of remedial teaching takes place to cover common areas of weakness indicated in the test results.

How often should you carry out progress tests?

Certainly a minimum of once in any course, probably at the end, if it is a short duration course (10 hours) or as soon as a
reasonable 'chunk' of the syllabus has been covered in longer courses.

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Unit 3
Course development

Examinations
It is not unusual to have to prepare students for
specific Examinations in English. Possibly, the best
known suite of examinations at this level, are the
Cambridge examinations.

For our age range we will mainly be concerned with the

CYLE (Cambridge Young Learners of English) tests.

The CYLE tests are at three levels

Starters - designed originally for 7 year olds with about

100 hours of study in the English language.

Movers - designed for 8 year olds to 11 year olds with

about 175 hours of study in the English language.

Flyers - designed for 9 year olds to 12 year olds with

about 250 hours of study in the English language.

The age ranges quoted are only the designed ranges.

In reality a much wider range of ages take the various
tests.

There are three separate tests for each level, in

speaking, reading/writing and listening. These
examinations are designed to lead into the higher,
adult examinations of KET and PET.

KET is the Key English test and is designed for

students over 13 years of age at the elementary level.

PET is the Preliminary English test – it's designed for

lower intermediate students.

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Unit 3
Course development

Course evaluation
On completion of your course, particularly for the older
age groups, it is advisable to do some form of
evaluation. This is useful for a number of reasons:

(i) It will help you to evaluate your material and

suggest improvements that you can make to it.

(ii) It gives your students an opportunity to feedback

on your course and evaluate its efficacy, against
your initial stated aims. It can be quite difficult for
teachers to ask their students to give feedback on
their teaching, but you will find that the
information they give you, both good and bad, will
be the most valuable feedback that you can get.
Students are rarely critical in a malicious sense,
when given the opportunity to feed back in this
way and their comments are usually insightful and
helpful.

(iii) Finally it provides you with useful information that

can form the basis of a report that you can give to
your employer, which they are quite entitled to
expect from you. Rather than giving your own
personal general impressions, you can show the
actual feedback comments from the students.

An efficient way to gather this information is through the use of an end of course questionnaire. On it you should remind
students of the initial aims of the course and ask them to rate various aspects of the course on a 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent)
scale. It is also useful to know why they have given the particular grades, so after each question leave five or so blank lines
for them to add additional comments.

Try to ask questions on the whole range of the course, including the syllabus, materials and teaching style. Ask the
students to offer suggestions for improvement both in terms of what you do now and what you could add in the future to
make the course more rounded, balanced and useful to them.

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Unit 3
Course development

Task sheet
Check your knowledge before attempting the unit test.

Please note that this task sheet is solely for checking

that you have understood the course unit content. You
do not need to submit this task sheet – just use it to
check you have understood the major points.

Note: not all the information needed for the answers can be found in the unit, so you may need to do further research from
other sources.

Task 1 – Refer to the level test on page 4 and write five similar questions for a group of 9 year-olds.

(i) ……………………..................................................................................................................................………………………………………………………….………………………………….…………………

………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................……

(ii) ……………………..................................................................................................................................………………………………………………………….………………………………….…………………

………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................……

(iii) ……………………..................................................................................................................................………………………………………………………….………………………………….…………………

………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................……

(iv) ……………………..................................................................................................................................………………………………………………………….………………………………….…………………

………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................……

(v) ……………………..................................................................................................................................………………………………………………………….………………………………….…………………

………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................…… ………….….….................……

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Unit 3
Course development

Task 2 – What are the main differences between a functional-notional syllabus and a structural syllabus?
Give as much detail as possible.

Task 3 – What do the terms KET and PET mean?

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Unit 3
Course development

Task 4 – State five factors which may affect or limit syllabus design.

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

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Unit 3
Course development

Task 5 – Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages.

Look through the ‘Common reference levels’ table, and compare this to the table at the bottom of page 2 of this
unit. How is the Wikipedia table different?

Task 6 – Look up ‘norm-referenced tests’ and ‘criteria-referenced tests’ and answer the following questions:

a. What is a norm-referenced test and what is its purpose?

b. What is a criteria-referenced test and what is its purpose?

c. What are the major differences between the two?

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