What if you could challenge your second graders to design an outdoor STEM classroom with a butterfly garden, birdbath, and sundial? With this volume in the "STEM Road Map Curriculum Series," you can! "Investigating Environmental Changes" outlines a journey that will steer your students toward authentic problem solving while…

This article looks at question forms in everyday language usage from a functional point of view. Question forms are used more often in classrooms than in other situations. The advantages and disadvantages of exploiting question forms in the language classroom are examined. (CLK)

Decries the lifeless and mechanical language used in the national syllabus for oral communication instruction, arguing that it contradicts the interaction it seeks to describe, and that efforts to assess interpersonal communication are equally inappropriate. (HTH)

A notional syllabus places the greatest emphasis on the use of the language, unlike most foreign language syllabuses, which emphasize its structural form. Each entry defines a type of purposeful communication. When the student has mastered the syllabus, he has thus acquired a communicative competence. (CFM)

Explains the whole language teaching strategy. Shows what to expect in classrooms of whole language advocates. Describes curriculum guides based on the approach. (EL)

To clarify the role of dialect in the ever-changing English language and to demonstrate its relationship to efficient communication, this curriculum guide has been organized around an outline which includes the examination of such topics as exploration of regional dialects, geography of pronunciation differences, geographic and regional assessment…

Describes the functional/notional approach to language instruction, discussing key features, misconceptions, and practical applications of the model. (AM)

Designed as a synthesis of concepts familiar to students having studied the earlier Minnesota Project English units or as an introduction for other students, this unit for grade 12 treats the role of language in the social and psychological development of man. Alternative introductions to the unit are provided: one concentrating on definitions of…

This eighth-grade language unit stresses developing the student's sensitivity to variations in language, primarily the similarities and differences between spoken and written language. Through sample lectures and discussion questions, the students are helped to form generalizations about language: that speech is the primary form of language; that…

Literature, language, and composition are integrated in this collection of 30 model teaching units for grades 9-12. The units are concerned with (1) the explication and comparison of novels by Hemingway, Wilder, Kipling, and Knowles, (2) short story techniques used by writers from Poe to Joyce, (3) poetic structure and themes as demonstrated in…

In this seventh-grade language unit, the study of semantics is introduced by an examination of the relationships between words and their referents, particularly in terms of changes of meaning and degrees of abstraction. Classroom activities are suggested to help students become aware of "language liveliness" and the processes of…

This ninth-grade unit on language differences is intended to increase "the student's awareness or sensitivity to the ways in which language varies with the differing backgrounds and interests of those who use language," to develop his "abilities to adapt his language behavior to more effectively meet the demands of a variety of…

This Manitoba (Canada) integrated language arts curriculum guide for grades 9 through 11 emphasizes the elements of the language process. At grade 9, the instructional emphasis is on the communication context--content, vehicle, and situation. At grade 10, the instructional emphasis is on audience and purpose, while the emphasis at grade 11 shifts…

This article discusses the incompatibility between the goal of communicative competence (defined more narrowly as minimal approximative communicative competence) and current practices of syllabus design, and suggests more relevant alternatives. Foreign language instruction is still dominated by the teaching of language structure for its own sake,…

An experimental program of teaching modules or packets--Orientation, Reading, and Language--was designed to improve the communicative skills of 10th graders in vocational-technical schools. The modules consisted of "Student Exercises" requiring student involvement and thinking and a "Teacher's Manual" with ideas for presenting the materials in a…