Approaches to teaching and learning English

Structure of the course

The Learner’s Book contains nine units, each based on exciting themes like ‘Adventure’ and ‘Dangers of the sea’. Most units contain a range of international fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama text extracts, reflecting the interests and diverse cultural backgrounds of your learners. There are two units that are different (Unit 2: ‘Hey, You Down There’ and Unit 7: ‘The Travel Agency’). Each of these two units focuses on one full short story, promoting reading for pleasure and allowing students to delve deeper into language and meaning. Every unit contains six sessions, each designed to take around 2.5 hours of teaching time including the Workbook activities and Worksheets. If your timing is different, we hope the materials are flexible enough for you to be able to fit them to your requirements. The Workbook accompanies the Learner’s Book, providing supplementary and extension material. The content mirrors the content of the Learner’s Book to support: • reinforcement of concepts introduced in the Learner’s Book • the Language focus parts of some sessions • differentiated activities • independent work or homework.

Skills development

Cambridge Lower Secondary English offers an integrated approach to the four language skills (Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing), allowing you to cover learning objectives from each strand of the curriculum framework in your English lessons.

Speaking and listening

Speaking and Listening underpin this course. Each session offers opportunities to consolidate and develop the Speaking and Listening sub-strands (making yourself understood, showing understanding, group work and discussion, performance, and reflection and evaluation). Listening activities are included in the Learner’s Book with accompanying recordings available in this Teacher’s Resource. (If you are unable to play the recordings, audio scripts in this Teacher’s Resource allow you to read the text out to your class instead.) Audio tracks actively promote good pronunciation of English and you will find recordings of all the texts from the Learner’s Book in this Teacher’s Resource.

Reading and writing

We ensure rich coverage of each Reading and Writing sub-strand as follows: Word structure (spelling): students are encouraged to explore the etymology of words and improve their spelling through checking their own and others’ work. Vocabulary and language: we provide multiple opportunities for securing vocabulary, exploring context, grammatical features and word families. We also explore texts with learners to reflect on writers’ choices of vocabulary and language. You will find further vocabulary practice in the Workbook and Language Worksheets (available to download from this Teacher’s Resource). Grammar and punctuation: while mindful of reading for pleasure and text coherence, we focus on the grammar and punctuation arising from a text so that learners experience new structures and grammar rules in context. Wherever you find a Language focus box in the Learner’s Book, there is further practice in the corresponding Workbook session. We have respected both teachers’ and learners’ capacity for understanding and using correct metalanguage in the classroom, especially in writing activities. Structure of texts: an exciting range of authentic texts is provided for discussion, performance, reflection and as models for learners’ own writing. This is especially true in the final sessions of each unit when learners aim to write within the support of frameworks or scaffolds. Interpretation of and creation of texts: while the units provide a rich and broad selection of texts, it is also expected that learners enjoy texts outside of the course, especially aligned in some way to the topic or theme. Differentiation within each activity ensures that all learners can explore authentic texts and experiment with creative ideas and writing. Appreciation and reflection of reading: we support the ethos of reading for pleasure, and encourage learners to reflect and evaluate their wider reading. In particular, the two short-story units allow students the satisfaction of reading a story from beginning to end. Presentation and reflection of writing: we encourage learners to adopt a write, reflect/evaluate and improve’ cycle of working. We encourage them to present their own work and listen for feedback as well as to talk about and reflect on their own and others’ ideas.