Components Of an English Language Course

 These are vocabulary, grammar, functions, reading, listening, speaking, and writing.

Teaching language components

        Teaching a language involves teaching its system, the rules of use and the rules of usage, as well as the ability to use that system to understand and produce messages.

        By the rules of use and usage, we mean the grammatical, lexical, and pragmatic aspects of the system (that is, the grammar, vocabulary, and functions of that language.)

        In addition to that, to be able to use the language system, learners must develop the skills involved in understanding spoken and written discourse. This means developing the ability to understand the input (i.e. the receptive skills – listening and reading) as well as the skills involved in producing coherent and cohesive output (i.e. the productive skills – speaking and writing).

Figure 1 shows the different components o language teaching.

Teaching the language system

        To be able to use a language necessitates first the knowledge of how that language works. This means that the learners have to learn its linguistic aspects, including its vocabulary, grammar, and functions.

Vocabulary or lexis

        Lexical knowledge refers to the knowledge of the vocabulary of the language. Traditionally, lexical items or vocabulary referred to single words. However, with the advent of Corpus linguistics, the study of a language as that language is expressed in its text corpus, more evidence shows that lexis englobes not only single words but also, multi-words. In the lexical approach, Michael Lewis suggests that the word combinations that we store in our mental lexicons are part and parcel of lexis.

• words (e.g., table, cup)
• polywords (e.g., by the way, upside down)
• collocations, or word partnerships (e.g., community service, absolutely convinced)
• institutionalized utterances (e.g., I’ll get it; We’ll see; That’ll do; If I were you . . .; Would you like a cup of coffee?)
• sentence frames and heads (e.g., That is not as . . . as you think; The fact/suggestion/problem/danger was . . .)
• text frames (e.g., In this paper we explore . . .; Firstly . . .; Secondly . . .; Finally . . .)

The vocabulary teaching component in modern English language courses is usually placed at the beginning of each unit. It is also integrated indirectly within other components such as reading listening and writing.

Teaching vocabulary involves taking into consideration what the students need to know about a word.

Knowing a lexical item means knowing:

• Its pronunciation
• Its denotation or meaning.
• Its connotations, its associated or secondary meaning. This may be something suggested or implied by a word. For example, the words resolute nad stubborn have similar denotations, but resolute has a more positive connotation.
• How it collocates with other words.
• How it associates with other words:
  • Its synonyms and antonyms.
  • Its hyponyms (terms used to designate a particular member of a broader class – e.g., a cat is a hyponym of the broader category: animals) and hypernyms or superordinate terms (the term animal is a hypernym to which belongs all examples of animals: cats, dogs, lion, tiger, etc)

Grammar

        In addition to teaching lexis, or the vocabulary of a language, learners have to be taught its grammar, the rules of usage that combine the words of a language to produce correct utterances. Most textbooks sequence grammar points according to the learners’ needs, on the one hand, and according to the ease of instruction on the other hand. Thus, teaching simple construction precedes complex ones. For instance, teaching the past perfect is not presented until the students have already met the past simple and past participle forms.

        Likewise, it is useless to teach complex grammatical structures and use a lot of metalanguage to very young learners. Grammar lessons must be appropriate to the learners’ needs and interests and to their attitudes and expectations.

        The grammatical component in an English language course must include activities that are easy to implement and time-efficient. These activities have also to be consistent with good learning principles (e.g. Attention-getting, understanding, and restructuring)  

    Grammar teaching often follows a certain order according to the approach adopted.

• Either it starts with a fluency activity – a task – and ends with a focus on accuracy, fixing the gap between the learners’ production and the desired outcome. 
• Or it starts with accuracy-oriented activities where the teacher presents the target structures and invites the learners to practice their use and ends with fluency-oriented activities where the focus is on free production using the target language.

Functions

        Functions refer to the purpose of utterances. Apart from their literal meaning, language items may have different purposes – or functions – depending on the context in which they are used.

Here are some examples of functions:

• Asking for opinion
• Agreeing and disagreeing
• Suggesting
• Asking for clarification
• Making a request
• Making a complaint
• Asking for and giving advice
• Talking about the past

        The language we use to express functions is called an exponent. A language function may be expressed using different exponents.
For example, to make a request, you may use one of the following exponents:

• I wonder if I could possibly….
• Do you mind if I …?
• Please, can I …?

Notice that the above exponents have different levels of formality. The exponent “I wonder if I could possibly….” is very formal, while “can I…” is used in less formal contexts.

Teaching the skills

        Knowing the system is not enough, learners have to use the system to understand and produce language appropriately. They have to develop reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills. It is worth noting that a person may know perfectly well the system but may not have developed necessarily all the language skills. For instance, illiterate native speakers may be able to speak and understand spoken discourse but when it comes to reading and writing they are deficient.

Language skills are traditionally categorized into 2 types:

Receptive skills:

• Listening
• Reading

Productive skills:

• Speaking
• Writing

Receptive skills

        The receptive skills refer to reading and listening. To help the learners decode and understand spoken or written output, English language courses often focus on teaching reading and listening strategies. These are the planned and explicit actions that help readers understand texts. 

Reading and listening strategies include:

• Skimming
• Scanning
• listening/reading for gist
• Previewing,
• Setting a purpose,
• Predicting,
• Asking questions,
• Connecting to background knowledge,
• Paying attention to text structure
• Guessing words from context,
• Reflecting on the text and reacting to it.
• …

        In addition to the above strategies, courses have to provide appropriate reading and listening activities that address the learners’ needs and interests.

Productive skills

    Teaching productive skills, speaking and writing involves providing a model output, either a text or a conversation. This output is normally a sample of a genre. The students have to understand and study this genre and attempt to produce a similar one.

In a writing lesson

    After the students study the model text, they are given a writing topic and are invited to go through the writing process:

• Outlining
• Drafting
• Revising
• Editing
• Publishing

In a speaking lesson

        After working on the model discourse, students work in groups or in pairs to prepare a response to a similar situation. Language courses have to take into consideration several requirements when integrating productive skills:

• First, productive skills lessons should aim at helping learners to communicate. Some preparation is needed before setting the task because it is unhelpful to provide a topic and ask the learners to speak or write.
• Second, the choice of the topic is important. The learners should be familiar with it.
• Third, communication breakdowns may occur and when difficulties arise, the course should include activities that train the learners to be able to use specific communication strategies such as paraphrasing, using gestures, etc.

Conclusion

        Language teaching components in an English language curriculum include both the aspects of the language system and the skills that learners have to develop to be able to use the target language. The linguistic aspect of the course includes knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and the functions of language. In addition to that, the course has to engage the learners in developing receptive (i.e., listening and reading) and productive (i.e., speaking and writing) skills.