Various aspects of your teaching may change in relation to what you teach, your perception of what it means to learn a language and how you view your students.
Focus on all four skills
Your teaching will now be addressing integration of speaking, writing and listening in addition to reading comprehension. To integrate these four mutually reinforcing skills into your lessons, you may be using new activities and technologies that you haven’t used before, as there had been no need to do so.
Focus on communicating effectively
The ability to communicate involves three macro-skills: Reception, Production, and Interaction. Reception specifically includes reading and listening skills, while Production and Interaction also involve speaking and writing skills. Grammar and vocabulary are viewed mainly as a means to an end – a means through which meaningful and effective communication in English can take place.
Focus on learner autonomy
One of the CEFR’s goals is to encourage learners to become more autonomous by helping them to self-assess their levels of language proficiency in different areas and become aware of their own ‘gaps’. Students can then access ECOSTAR’s self-study resources in order to close these gaps.
Teaching for tomorrow
Easy-to-access independent study resources can help students continue to improve their English proficiency beyond exit level courses.
ECOSTAR’s Resource Bank aims to ultimately provide students with freely available independent learning resources that support what they will have to do in English during their academic studies as well as in the workplace.
