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Objectives
The objective of the English without Frontiers curriculum is, of
course, to teach learners with intellectual disabilities English as a
foreign language. However, the needs of our target group differ in some
respects from those of mainstream learners. As a consequence, our
curriculum has a number of additional objectives.
Self esteem &
pride
Many of our target group are reluctant learners: they have had negative
experiences with school, they have low self esteem with respect to learning,
and they are afraid of failing (and therefore: of trying). Many of our
target group have never learned a foreign language before, some
are convinced that learning a foreign
language is “for other people”.
With the
English without Frontiers curriculum we want to teach English, but we
also want to change the low expectations and low self esteem of our
participants into a feeling of pride in their own accomplishments. We want
to change the participants’ fear of failing, into the excitement of learning
new things. We want our participants to experience first-hand the pleasure
and the benefits, of learning a foreign language.
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Ready to use
Success is the best motivator. In
our case: success in learning English. In the English without Frontiers
curriculum we use a modified communicative approach to teach English as a
foreign language to our participants. We focus on realistic,
'ready to use' English for direct personal contacts: 1-1 conversations about
everyday topics.
Participants learn:
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to guess and
predict the meaning of highly redundant spoken English texts about
everyday topics;
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to understand
and respond (verbally or non-verbally) to a number of spoken everyday
questions;
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to use a
number of frequent, everyday phrases in a 1-1 conversation;
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to recognize a
number of written English words in context;
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to copy
English words;
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to find words
and their translations in a special easy bilingual dictionary.
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