Brief description of Cycle 2

Purpose of English Language Teaching 

for Cycle 2

The purpose of English language teaching for Cycle 2 in basic education (3rd and 4th grades elementary school) is for students to acquire the necessary knowledge to understand and use the English language to recognize, understand, and use common expressions. Students achieve this goal through participating in social practices of the language via specific activities with the language engaged with the production and interpretation of oral and written texts, pertaining to the familiar, academic, literary formation environments. At the end of this cycle, the students will be able to:

• Express simple opinions and requests in familiar contexts.
• Recognize basic instructions, information, and signs.
• Identify basic aspects of pronunciation and vocabulary used in everyday life contexts.
• Use expressions to refer to personal aspects and needs.
• Respond to spoken and written language in different linguistic and non-linguistic ways.
• Use different strategies to solve everyday problems, as well as to look for information about concrete topics.
• Understand unfamiliar or unknown vocabulary by means of specific strategies.
• Identify the most relevant similarities and differences between their mother tongue and the target language.
• Establish basic social contact with their linguistic repertoire.

Brief description of Cycle 1

Purpose of English Language Teaching 

for Cycle 1

The purpose of English language teaching for Cycle 1 in basic education (3rd grade preschool, 1st and 2nd grades elementary school) is to raise students’ awareness about the existence of a language different from their own. In addition, it aims to get them acquainted with the foreign language by participating in routine and familiar social practices of the language via specific activities with the language, which promote interaction among students and spoken and written texts from different social environments. Therefore, in this cycle, students will be able to:

• Recognize the existence of other cultures and languages.
• Feel motivated and keep a positive attitude towards the English language.
• Develop basic communication skills, especially the receptive ones.
• Reflect on how the writing system works.
• Get acquainted with different types of texts.
• Start exploring children’s literature.
• Develop learning and metacognitive strategies, which can be transferred to other areas of knowledge. 
• Use some linguistic and non-linguistic resources to give information about themselves and their surroundings.

What is the general purpose of english language teaching in basic education?

General Purpose of English Language

Teaching in Basic Education

The purpose of foreign language teaching in basic education is for students to get the necessary knowledge to engage in social practices with spoken and oral language to interact with native and non-native English speakers by means of specific activities with the language. That is, by using activities that involve production and interpretation of oral and written texts –of a familiar, academic and literary nature– the students will be able to satisfy basic communication needs in different every day, familiar, and known situations. Thus, children need to learn to use the language to organize their thoughts and speech, to analyze and solve problems, and to gain access to different cultural expressions from their own and other country. Moreover, it is essential that they acknowledge the role language plays in building up knowledge and cultural values; children should also develop an analytical and responsible attitude to face the problems that affect our world. Competence in a foreign language does not stem from mere repetition or exposure to it, or from studying it for a very long time. Quite the opposite, it is necessary to have acumen of individual and collective experiences that include different ways of participating in oral exchanges and text reading and writing.

The school’s responsibility is greater in the case of students that come from low literacy communities with a scarce or non-existent contact with an additional language. Therefore, it should provide students with the necessary conditions to participate in such experiences, to reach gradual autonomy in their intellectual work, and to be competent in transferring what they have learned in the classroom context to out-of-the-classroom communicative situations.