Didactic Unit for Students of 1st year of Compulsory Secondary Education: developing oral comprehension and production skills

Abstract

This project consists in an innovative teaching program comprising eight lesson plans devised for a 1st year of Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) classroom. Based on an audiolingual and a communicative language teaching (CLT) approach and on the teaching of pronunciation for English as an international language, the aim of this didactic unit is to promote oral comprehension and expression skills in English and to offer a range of opportunities for intelligible pronunciation practice. To this end, I have first drawn on certain methodological approaches to teaching foreign languages (FL) so as to provide an account of the different methodologies available and to make connections with those used to carry out this teaching plan. Then, I have given an account of the Basque Decree 236/2015 in order to become familiar with the general principles and the requirements that have to be fulfilled during secondary education as regards the communicative competence. Next, I have specified the objectives of this teaching plan in relation to the latter and I have made a comparison between the contents in the school syllabus and those in my teaching program before specifying the methodology I have used. After that, I have explained the way in which the students will be assessed always bearing in mind the objectives set in the Basque Curriculum and in this didactic unit. Finally, I have developed this didactic unit in eight lesson plans; however, for space restrictions I have included a single one in the project and I have attached the rest in the various annexes at the end of it. Despite not having been implemented yet, this didactic program has been designed to be applied in the future. Hence, it is susceptible to change after its potential application depending on the teacher’s observations during and after the actual teaching takes place and on the students’ grades and their opinion towards the new approach