INTERLINK Curriculum Guide
Course Details CS2
The main goal of this class is for students to make the transition from stilted, formulaic, and fragmented language use and dependency on translating back and forth between their native language and English, to a smoother, more idiomatic use of English. Students become more adept at using good sentence structure to express themselves more competently and accurately, and develop greater sophistication and variety in their language use. Through interaction with other speakers and extensive exposure to spoken English, students become capable of understanding the gist of conversations even when details and specific points are not clear. Students begin formal listening and note-taking activities and devote considerable time to achieving proficiency in gathering and discussing information in classroom situations as well as everyday situations and encounters outside of class.
Benchmarks for Completion of CS 2:
Demonstrate ability
to:
a. decipher simple dialogs
and interactions)
b. tell stories
and relay information to others
Core Projects for
CS 2
CS
2 Team Project: Travelogue
Project Summary: This project provides a good opportunity for students to practice informal communication, share information about their own countries, expand their knowledge about the US and other countries, learn basic research techniques, and improve their presentation skills. The basic goal is for students to gather and then present information about the countries or locales selected. Each team creates a travel itinerary of foreign and/or American venues (possibly one place for each team member), conducts research and collect materials about the chosen locations, and finally makes a class presentation about them. It might be better for students to select places that no team members have been to in order to maximize the need for research. There is no need for the itinerary to be geographically coherent - that is, it could include Macao, Guatemala, the Grand Canyon, London and Iceland. Presentations may include information about such features as geography, climate, culture, language or dialect, historical highlights and sightseeing venues and should include such visual aids as maps, pictures, slides, and overhead transparencies.
Activity Ideas: Group and individual research (library and Internet research and interviews with people who are from or have visited the areas chosen) about the places selected; guest speakers -- possibly someone connected to the travel industry such as a travel agent, airlines employee or hotel worker, but also someone with travel experience would be an appropriate guest speaker (culture shock would be an excellent lecture topic); field trips to a travel agency, airport or hotel would provide students with opportunities for improving listening skills and learning travel-related vocabulary; surveys and interviews; viewing travelogues and travel documentaries; creation of itineraries.
Language Use: All four skill areas can easily be used in activities for this project. Students can read travel brochures and prospectuses, itineraries and timetables as well as information on the Internet and in encyclopedias and write descriptions of places in brochures they produce. Virtually all of the activity ideas described above have listening and speaking components.
Cultural Elements: Travel is an ideal theme for working with cross-cultural awareness. Students can act out skits involving behaviors that are fine in one culture and unacceptable in another. Comparisons of cultural values, norms and institutions would be a natural outgrowth of the travel theme and students can also tell anecdotes about or act out personal experiences involving cultural misunderstanding.
Academic Elements: This project affords great latitude for independent research and use of reference materials from atlases to almanacs. In preparing travel materials about selected destinations, students should be encouraged to learn and use computer applications such as PowerPoint, MS Publisher as well as functions such as tables and graphs. Of course, preparing and delivering a presentation is itself great academic preparation.
CS 2 Presentation Project: Peer Reports
Project Summary: This
project strengthens students' abilities to elicit information from others, organize
that information coherently and present it effectively to the class. The peers
referred to are other students, who could be classmates, INTERLINK students from
other classes, or university students. Since each student should make 4-8 peer
reports in the course of the term, a progression using all three categories is
possible. In order to gather interesting information, students need to become
good interviewers and therefore listening to tapes and viewing videos demonstrating
interview techniques as well as presentation examples (and discussing them) would
be expected activities for this project. This is a project which allows students
to get to know each other, exchange cultural and personal information, and build
community understanding and spirit.
CS 2 Independent Listening Project
The specific activities and materials for this project are determined by teacher and students, but the description of the parameters and goals of the project should be carefully reviewed.