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The Instructional Plan

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The INTERLINK instructional plan, developed from the ground up to provide the most effective language program for its students, departs significantly from the type of ESL curriculum most teachers are familiar with. This presentation is intended to help you understand how and why this instructional plan may differ from others you may have used in the past.

Presentation by Mark Feder, October 2007; revised August 2013

A program is generally defined and characterized by its curriculum. The word curriculum has been defined in different ways, including:


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a series of planned instruction coordinated and articulated in a manner designed to result in the achievement by students of specific knowledge and skills and the application of this knowledge

the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives

all the planned learning opportunities offered by the ‘educational community’ and the experiences learners encounter when the curriculum is implemented

a plan or program for all of the experiences which the learner encounters under the direction of a school and consists of a number of plans, in a written form and of varying scope, which delineate the desired learning experiences

These definitions are accommodatingly broad, but because the word curriculum is often associated with a prescribed agenda of materials or content to be taught, the term instructional plan is more suitable for our purposes.

Let’s say that the instructional plan is a map


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. . . or perhaps, better yet, a compass

to help teachers lead students toward greaterknowledge or proficiency.

ReviewVerb Tenses: Simple Present, Present ContinuousSimple Past, Past ContinuousSimple Future, Going toModals: Can (ability, informal permission)Should, Ought to (strong advice)Must, Have to (necessity)Could, May (permission)May, Could, Will, Would (request)Don't have to (lack of necessity)Present Real ConditionalsHopeSequencing Words


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If we look at a conventional ESL/EFL curriculum, we are likely to find lists of structural elements for each level to be taught and reviewed.

Teach for ProficiencySimple Present, Present Continuous (future meaning)Present Perfect: affirmative, negative, interrogativePresent Perfect Continuous: affirmative, negative, interrogative)Passive Voice (simple present, past)Basic Reported Speech (present to past)Modals: Past Forms (review modals)Suggestion (could, might)Strong Advice (had better)Adjective Clauses (restrictive and non-restrictive)Present Unreal ConditionalsWishGerunds and InfinitivesSo …that, Such that

ReviewAsking for RepetitionAsking for ClarificationAsking for and Giving InformationInterruptingExcusing/ApologizingSuggesting/Declining {Let's, Why don't)Basic IntroductionsBasic Invitations


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In addition to grammatical elements, there may be other instructional items such as functions, listed for teaching and review.

Teach for ProficiencyAsking for and Giving AdviceAsking for and Stating OpinionsDescribing (people, places, objects)Explaining (how to do something, reason for opinion)ComplainingMaking Requests and Recommendations

While the lists of structures and functions provide a detailed digest of instructional content that might be appreciated by students, teachers and administrators, they may be less useful than they appear to be.


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•How do structures and functions relate to each other?

•What happens if students already know the material being taught?

•How do we go about teaching the things we have been told to teach?

•Do we know that teaching these particular elements in the order prescribed results in language proficiency?

•Does teaching a structure mean that it has been learned by the students?

•What does learning a structure mean?

Among the questions that might arise upon considering these curricular elements, which come from an INTERLINK curriculum in use in the early 1990’s, are the following:


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In a curriculum of the kind shown, typical of intensive English programs, the focus is on what is taught. The basis of instruction is the transfer of information from teacher to student, although students may also be made to practice using the information presented.


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In this type of class, students are often preoccupied with learning rules and memorizing information, but there is little evidence that such activity helps language acquisition or results in anything but short-term ability to regurgitate what has been taught.


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What frequently happens is that students may test well on elements they were taught, but fail to actually use those elements in their speaking and writing. In other words, the knowledge that students gain in class does not readily transfer to usage and overall communicative competence. High test scores do not correlate with competence in language use and assessment is more concerned with testing students on what they have been taught rather than on what language capabilities they have.


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Textbooks add to the emphasis on content rather than on learning and the learner. The teacher’s focus is on covering the material in the textbooks rather than on assisting students’ learning.

Teachers may fail to address students’ real needs because they are preoccupied with going over exercises and getting through the textbook.


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Because a conventional curriculum focuses on material to be covered, sometimes the teacher is pressured to move on before students are ready, acting like a train engineer absorbed in keeping the train on schedule but oblivious to whether passengers are able to board or reach their destination.

Having too much material to cover distracts from concern about what students are actually learning.


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In short, the conventional curriculum focuses on what is to be taught rather than on how the teacher can help the student learn. A typical ESL/EFL curriculum:

•assumes that we know what structures students need to learn at a given point in their language development

•provides the same regimen of items to be learned for all students in a class although their individual needs and readiness may vary

•tells us what to teach but offers little guidance about how to teach

•emphasizes teaching over learning


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In addition we can say that a conventional ESL/EFL curriculum may be characterized as follows:

•Grammar-based, focusing on rules

•Teacher-centered, based on what is presented

•Theoretical, geared to increasing knowledge about language

•Deductive, makes student dependent on teacher

•Focus on discrete elements of language


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In contrast, the INTERLINK instructional plan is based on the following qualities, which will be discussed in the next slides.


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A Student-centered classroom

is one in which each individual is respected and the needs of students come first. The students, rather than the material to be taught is the central focus. Individual learning styles and preferences are recognized, appreciated, and accommodated. A student-centered classroom is not one in which students run wild and do whatever they wish, but one in which their welfare is the primary concern and in which they have, as Earl Stevick phrased it, “primacy in a world of meaningful action.”


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Experiential learning

means that students learn by doing and through exposure to content-rich learning opportunities. Learning takes place outside as well as inside the classroom and students learn inductively through their own language experiences. Students learn not only from their teachers but from their peers, acquaintances and any language source with which they come into contact. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “skill to do comes of doing” and experiential language learning involves students in learning language rather than learning about language.


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Holistic refers to

a) each student being treated as a whole person with intellectual, emotional, social, and cultural needs. The student is not raw material to be molded and shaped through a factory-like educational process but a complex human being whose various needs must be met for successful learning to occur.

b) language being learned as a whole system and not a collection of isolated skills. The skill areas of listening, speaking, reading and writing are integrated, and authentic language use rather than assimilation of discrete rules or pieces of information about language is the objective.


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A needs-based class

Is one in which the learning agenda is not pre-determined and planned in advance but individualized and customized according to what students know and are able to do. Understanding what students need to make linguistic progress drives the class rather than a syllabus of content and information pre-formulated by a textbook or curriculum. Linguistic, cultural and affective needs are addressed to facilitate the learning process. Students’ actual needs may differ from their perceived needs and teachers must be skillful, experienced and perceptive to determine what activities and classroom arrangements can achieve the best results.


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Interactive classes

are ones in which students are actively engaged and participate freely instead of listening passively to lectures or performing tasks devoid of authentic communicative intent (such as repetition exercises or drills). The active involvement of the learner is the sine qua non for successful learning and a necessary ingredient for experiential, heuristic learning.


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Heuristic learning

or learning through discovery is characterized by students solving problems instead of digesting information fed by a teacher, and tends to be inductive, experiential, creative, self-motivated, and dynamic. Discovery promotes learning how to learn rather than accumulating discrete facts and pieces of information, and results in mastery of a process which can be used over and over, inside and outside of the classroom. Setting up situations from which a student can learn requires more skill and patience than dispensing information, but the rewards are proportionally great. In the words of Mark van Doren, “teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”


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THE END

This presentation provides an introduction to the INTERLINK instructional plan and explanation of how it differs from a conventional curriculum. The goal of the plan is to help teachers meet students’ needs by focusing on the learner and not on an agenda of items to teach. Other presentations will explore specific aspects of the plan and the pedagogical foundations on which it is based.

Education

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