#dct syllabus 2

This was a 12-week syllabus that I negotiated with my learners in February 12th 2014 and ran until June 11th 2014.

To be honest I was absolutely exhausted after putting so much effort into the first syllabus, planning all the lessons, writing a blog every week and collecting feedback – it was a lot of work! So  syllabus 2 could have been better, primarily for this reason. But the first syllabus was a real intensive course in planning and executing lessons and an entire syllabus without using a coursebook and I think my teaching really improved. I learnt a hell of a lot and the feedback from learners was great, so I’m still glad I did it.

In syllabus 2, we also fell back on using some coursebook lessons, as it just made planning easier. I picked up some new teaching contracts at this time which I knew would take up a lot of my time so I knew I wouldn’t have as much time for planning this time round. But there’s only 8 activities taken from a coursebook (Advanced Business Result), and the learners chose these themselves.

To my surprise, with this syllabus almost all the participants left during the course and were replaced by a whole new group of learners. The joys of working at a startup! So after 10 weeks we decided to organise a totally new syllabus. It isn’t really fair to ask a new group of learners to do a syllabus decided by a completely different group of people.

You can download the syllabus here.

 

Week	Activity	Comments
0	Evaluation Syllabus 1Plan syllabus 2Reading on ‘Fairnopoly/ startups in Berlin’’	homework – prepare brief report on one startup
1	Small Talk – Socialising in English‘The Onion’ news videos+discussion
2	Twitter ‘The Economist’Introducing Yourself (1)Reported Speech
3	Teamwork – NegotiatingDealing with conflictCase study (5)
4	LeadershipDepersonalising using the Passive
5	Managing discussions (2)Performance: Using questions (8)
6	AppraisalsMotivation
7	Expressing dissatisfaction (7)Taking part in a teleconference (7)
8	Case study (3) Planning Office SpaceShowing Understanding (3)
9	Read (at home) and discuss articles from around the worldSpoken grammar – how NS really speakFamous short stories/ discussion
10	Intercultural awarenessGrammar – small bits of grammar combined w/ discussion
11	Practically speaking: Dealing with misunderstanding
12	Discussion: Interns/ The future of workTopics of the week/ discussionEvaluation