Listen and Discuss 2.3.

Listen to this VOA special education report “Longer School Day = More Learning? Not Necessarily” and fill the gaps.

1. What do all the missing words and word combinations from Part 1 have in common? What are the possible teaching objectives of the task?

2. Now consider the teaching objectives in Part 2 of this listening task. When and how can these ideas be integrated into the teaching process?

Part 1

_____________________we talked about how some American schools have made changes in the traditional school year. Their goal is to improve student learning.

Some have extended the school year, or reorganized it to avoid a long summer break. Another choice is to extend the school day. A new report from the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University examines research into how effective this is.

The traditional school day has not changed much______________________. Activities or special programs might mean a longer day. But younger children usually go to school _________________in the morning ___________________in the afternoon. Older ones are traditionally in school ______________________________________

Some high schools have changed to later ________________because of findings that teenagers learn better that way. But the new report says results have been mixed. Teachers say students are more awake. But students say the changes interfere with __________________________or jobs.

By ______________________________, almost one-third of all secondary schools had some form of block scheduling. The idea is to provide________________________ _____________________________ in the school day to teach basic subjects.

Part 2

____________________ class time should mean _______________ results. This is the thinking,_________Yet a two thousand one study found that secondary schools with traditional schedules had ______________________by comparison. Schools with block scheduling did have higher scores in science, though.

In any case, the study agreed with ______________________that students feel _____________about their schools in systems with nontraditional scheduling.

So how useful is_________________________? Not surprisingly, the policy experts at Indiana say it is what educators do with the extra time that has________________ ________________________on student learning. They note a criticism that education leaders often make scheduling changes without changing the learning environment of a school.

The experts say teachers must be trained to use the added time effectively. Professional development is needed. The report notes that simply adding time to a program that is __________________or very interesting will not increase student learning.

Community support is also valuable for any changes. And there is another consideration. Schools may need _________________to pay for an_______________________.

Exercises 2.3.

Now use the text of Listen and Discuss 2.3. activity to design an exercises that will help students to improve their use of articles with countable nouns.

Discuss and Write 2.3.

Think about syllabus for studying the English Language for foreign students in Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Consider the General Concepts of education and take them into account when working out your syllabus.

Follow the Instructions provided in Lead 2.3.

Find and present information 2.3.

Find websites of the universities which provide information about their educational programs. Speak about those dealing with teaching FL.

Unit 2.4.Types of syllabi

Terminology to Study 2.4.

Choose 2- 3 terms and work out Word Map in Visual Thesaurus Style. For reference you might resort to A Handbook of English-Russian Terminology for Language Teaching

Type of syllabus

A priory syllabus/ a posteriory syllabus

Negotiated syllabus

Skills centered syllabus

Content-based syllabus

Functional based

Notional/functional syllabus (NFS)

Lexical syllabus

Structural/Grammatical/

Language-centered syllabus

Task-based syllabus

Procedural syllabus