Defence of syllabus

ORAL DEFENCE OF THE SYLLABUS

I’m going to structure the defence of this syllabus in nine distinct sections: introduction; contextualization; objectives; contents; methodology; evaluation, students with special needs; and educative innovations and units

1. INTRODUCTION
First of all, since this is a syllabus designed for teaching English, we should answer two questions.

The firstis: Why is English an important subject?
A quite obvious real fact is that English is everywhere and we should make our students aware of this. Simply by surfing the net, playing video games, and even within Spanish language in ads, sports, songs… they will encounter a great deal of English language. Apart from this, the development of international relations and the European Union has madeof English the language used in multilingual contexts and students should be aware of this fact that makes learning English so necessary.

With the learning of English students’ should become communicatively competent and develop the four skills. But English also contributes to a more general goal that is the development of basic competences. English clearly contributes to linguisticcompetence, but it also contributes to the other seven. E.g. Since it transmits culture, it enhances artistic and cultural competence. And since it’s a tool to have access to information, it contributes to the other competences: information and digital, mathematic and knowledge and interaction with the physical world. And consequently, since it helps to learn, it also develops autonomy and personalinitiative and the ability of learning to learn. All the mentioned competences are developed in the 15 unit I have designed

The second question is, what does programming mean?
This syllabus is designed according to the Decree 23/2007 (B.O.C.M). But programming is much more than writing a document which follows a specific legal frame. Programming is building part of the future of our studentsand for this I have tried to design a syllabus which follows two key principles: it must be “realist” and easy to put into practice; and it must be “flexible” that is, it may allow changes and adaptations to fit the students’ needs.

2. CONTEXT
In order to elaborate our syllabus we should bear in mind the context in which we will carry out the teaching-learning process. This syllabus isdesigned for:
▪ A state high school of four lines which offers four years of CSE and two years of Baccalaureate
▪ It is placed in an urban area which has educational facilities such as a library with internet connection and a State-run Language School
▪ This centre has many facilities, the most useful for our subject are the language laboratory, the computers’ room, the library, and theauditorium
▪ Apart from all this, directive bodies and teachers work in collaboration with parents and with the pedagogic department to support the learning process

In this context we find students who cover a range of ages from 11 to 20. Most of them belong to middle class or working class families. Finally, we should take into account that this syllabus is designed for the 1st year of the 2ndcycle of CSE. This brings about two consequences. The first is the variety of the students, being a compulsory stage students will have different needs, interests, level of competence and future expectations. The other is that our students are at growing stage known as adolescence and we should take into account personality changes and revelry so common at this stage.

3. OBJECTIVES
Inorder to continue with our explanation we should answer the following question: Which are the objectives that I want my students to develop? This syllabus establishes three types of objectives, which go from a general to a specific frame.
General objectives for CSE affect all subjects. Two of them make a clear reference to the teaching of English as a foreign language. These are:
▪ To...