LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:1 January 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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A Topic-Based Syllabus Design for a Conversation Course

Afshin Soori and Marzie Ghaderi
Islamic Azad University, Larestan, Iran

Abstract

Communication is an important skill, but how do we, as teachers, teach this to our students? This question will present many challenges to the course designer. We all know that language is the means of communication among human beings and it is necessary for second language learners to take control of communication. So, designing the courses for communication will be placed in a special place. Among the communication ways, conversation with oral language is an easy way. Making a conversation is an ability that appeared from breaking the speaking ability into its sub-skills.

Communicative competence of learners includes this ability. Course designer and textbook writers have to focus on different dimensions of this skill and pay attention to the conditions of their learners in different societies. Formats of the syllabus have many types in relation to the given guidelines, tasks types, or other features. One of them is Topic-based syllabus. We focus on it and its relation to the communication skills and their common issues. Topic-based instruction model means that using four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) in an integrated manner and use these in an inter-related manner to improve all the skills. So, in this paper, we will be talk about the approaches and the views of investigators about the topic-based instruction model.

Key Words: Topic-Based syllabus, Conversation course, Course designer, Syllabus design, Communication skill

1. Introduction

Finding the effective ways to develop the students’ oral and non-oral communication skills is one of the biggest challenges in teaching language methodologies. As an answer to this challenge, a new type of language lesson, the conversation class, is suggested. This focuses on improving the conversation skill of students. Knowing a language involves many different things, but when people say, “I know French,” primarily they mean they can speak French. The primary goal of "second language ability" is speaking because, when a second language learner is able to speak a language he/she may be able to read and may be even able to write, but it will not happen vice versa. In fact, we cannot imagine the average learner saying, “I want to learn to read Russian” or “I really want to learn to write Turkish.” Almost all of our ESL/ EFL students dream of the day when they can finally say, “I speak English well.”

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Afshin Soori
Department of Language and Literature , Larestan Branch
Islamic Azad University, Larestan
Iran
afshin_soori@yahoo.com

Marzie Ghaderi
Department of Language and Literature , Larestan Branch
Islamic Azad University, Larestan
Iran

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