Wednesday, September 2, 2020

The Dilemma of IELTS Test Takers at Preparatory Programs in the UAE: A Call for Lexical-Structural Syllabus Design

â€â€â€â€â€â€â€â€â€â€â€â€â€â€â€â€- Doctorate of Education Theoretical Perspectives on Materials and Syllabus Design in TESOL (DED609) Title: The Dilemma of IELTS Test Takers at Preparatory Programs in the UAE: A Call for Lexical-Structural Syllabus Design. By: Mohammed A. Molhim Module coach: Dr. Yasmin yildiz No. of words 000 words Essay Outline * Introduction * Conceptual Framework * IELTS Marking Rubrics: Lexical Resources and Grammatical Range * Lexical Syllabus * Structural Syllabus Selection of Lexical and Grammatical Items in Lexical-auxiliary Syllabus: * Structural Syllabus: Drawbacks * The Structural Syllabus and Grammar Teaching * Suggested Steps to structure a Lexical-Structural Syllabus * Conclusion Introduction Standardized test readiness courses, for example, the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) in preliminary projects at government and private colleges in the United Arab Emirates (The UAE) get ready understudies to meet their leave score requirement.Curriculum arranging has been driven towards these tests. Some examination considers (Read and Hayes, 2003) cautioned against that sort of educational plan in that it is limited to those zones that are to be tried with no equalization or coordinated abilities course structure. Educational program architects along these lines rely intensely upon materials designed to rehearse for the necessary test. Besides, Alderson and Hamp-Lyons (1996) contend that these kind of educational plan are portrayed by ‘teaching to the test’ and even reading material slaves.On the other hand, this exposition will contend that structuring and actualizing educational program that is bolstered by materials that reflect and meet the test question types and targets can be advantageous to understudies planning for state administered tests in the UAE. This paper will be plot as follows: After presenting the calculated system of the exposition, it w ill feature the IELTS’ stamping standards of ‘Lexical Resource’ and ‘Grammatical Range’ in the plan to build up the contention that half of the IELTs checking models depends on lexical and syntactic items.Then, the sort of lexical and basic schedule that can be proposed to address students’ issues in upgrading the part of English Language precision will be depicted. Some commonsense rules will at that point be accommodated planning a lexical-basic prospectus. Calculated Framework This paper falls inside the applied structure of basic hypothesis and basic pedagogy.From a social reconstructionism point of view, basic hypothesis and basic teaching method call for basically re-tending to business as usual issues in instruction. Paolo Freire (1972), a basic scholar, accepts that in most training frameworks there exists a concealed educational program that underlines the norm bolstered by the prevailing society and consequently subduing minority sub cultures. Educational program arranging ought to experience a steady dynamic change because of the dynamic idea of the nation and instructive frameworks in the UAE.Curriculum change at the degree of preliminary projects is an indivisible piece of this change since it is seen that examination has given enough proof see distributed every year (IELTS, 2011) that in the UAE and other Arab nations where most of understudies and IELTS test takers battle to arrive at a degree of capability coordinating score band 5. 0 that empowers them to continue to their major.This judgment is bolstered by expert and formal information gave in Table 1 underneath which is adjusted from the IELTS Annual Review of 2011. These records incorporate a correlation of IELTS results by native language applicants and by nation of cause for the numerous nations utilizing the IELTS tests. Table 1. Mean band score for the most incessant nations or districts of inception Country: The UAE| Listening| Reading| Writing| Speaking| Overall | Academic Module| 4. 9| 4. 8| 4. 7| 5. 4| 5. 0| General Module| 4. 3| 3. 5| 4. 3| 4. 9| 4. 3|It is stunning to discover that the UAE with the entirety of its dynamic patterns in economy and training, combined with billions of dollars supporting the instructive framework where services of Higher training and Education get around 22 % of the all out financial plan in the UAE (Ministry of Finance, 2011), is positioned at the base of the positioning rundown in IELTS scores (See Appendix A). This illogical certainty desperately calls for basic instructional method in training and in educational program plan so as to problematise the issue and show up at legitimate and maintainable solutions.This is the reason this paper embraces a basic academic methodology. Inside basic teaching method worldview, â€Å"curriculum point of view underlines the jobs schools and students can and should play in tending to social shameful acts and imbalance. Educational program advancement isn't viewed as a nonpartisan procedure. † (Richards, 2001: 118). Additionally, Freire (1972) and Apple (1986) fight that schools don't present equivalent chances so students and instructors must be locked in to address significant social and individual issues and look for learners’ empowerment.Morris (1995:10), moreover, contends â€Å"Social shameful acts and imbalance would be focal issues in the educational program. † Accordingly, educational program creators in the UAE should learn at the setting wherein students are instructed and start to continually problematise current issues so as to improve their plans. In Applied etymology, Pennycook (2001: 5) affirms that applied semantics from a basic instructional method viewpoint â€Å"is consistently concerned how the study hall, text, or discussion is identified with more extensive social and political relations,†.This paper is expected to problematise the issue of educational plan structure in the UAE c hallenge in that it tries to build up that strong components of lexical-auxiliary prospectus can prompt a superior achievement rate in IELTS. IELTS Marking Rubrics: Lexical Resources and Grammatical Range While abundant IELTS research concentrates in college situations is accessible (see research reports in IELTS. organization), there has all the earmarks of being less exploration on the effect of Speaking and Writing evaluation rules or IELTS band descriptors on prospectus design.IELTS measures both test candidates’ capacities to deliver distinctive sentence structures, and the range and suitability of jargon. Subsequently, lexical assets and syntactic range are viewed as critical constituents of the talking and composing evaluation, since they decide the degree of jargon and punctuation in talking and composing the test up-and-comers use. Test applicants are evaluated utilizing nitty gritty descriptors in IELTS. In the Speaking test, these depict spoken execution as per fou r distinct standards: Fluency and Coherence, Lexical assets, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation.In the Writing test, the descriptors survey up-and-comers as far as: Task accomplishment or reaction, Coherence and union, Lexical Resources, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy (IELTS handbook, 2004: 18-23). It is obvious from the talking and composing appraisal standards that lexical assets and syntactic range establish half of the evaluation. They portray test takers’ level in language structure and jargon in the talking and composing modules in detail. They ought to in this way involve a major piece of any educational plan for IELTs arrangement syllabus.Accordingly, this article contends that a fair lexical-basic schedule can help in meeting the course targets and students’ needs of any IELTS readiness course. Lexical Syllabus: Empowering students’ Lexical Resources in IELTS Historically, schedules were not lexical but rather basic. With the appearan ce of the Communicative Approach, new thoughts in schedule configuration have been presented with an emphasis on capacities. In 1990, when Willis composed The Lexical Syllabus, a lot of thoughtfulness regarding the Lexical schedule surfaced. Willis (1990, P. vi)) recognized three significant angles for lexis in lexical syllabus.First, the language to be educated ought to be some way or another evaluated to make it simpler for the students to comprehend. Second, the language ought to be chosen cautiously without irregular presentation. Thirdly, the language prospectus ought to be separated Over the previous thirty years the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), be that as it may, has not accentuated direct guidance of jargon or punctuation (Laufer 2006). CLT ought to in this way be viewed as unseemly for IELTS readiness test courses and increasingly unequivocal guidance of lexis and language structure could assist understudies with accomplishing their ideal score in IELTS.In certain ty, as indicated by Zahar, Cobb and Spada (2001), three times of direct English guidance consistently would prompt the accidental learning of just 70 new words a year. In this way, securing of jargon through perusing must be enhanced by direct guidance, which can be bolstered by joining a lexical prospectus. What's more, the lexical prospectus can make scholarly English jargon required in IELTS progressively learnable to bring down level learners.There is likewise an entrenched association between jargon information and fruitful scholastic perusing (Corson 1997; Nation 2001:144-149). Along these lines, the essentialness of fusing lexical prospectus is fundamentally clear for enormous scope high-stakes tests, for example, IELTS that survey the scope of jargon showed in a student’s composing and speaking (See Appendix A). It ought to be conceded that creating acceptable IELTS composing and talking reactions isn't accomplished by simply learning singular jargon and linguistic st ructures.However, lexical things can prompt further upgrading understudies by and large capability in IELTS. Some examination ((Laufer, 2005; Nation 2001) has demonstrated that lexical assets are the reason for appreciating language and lexical implications. It is likewise the most significant indicator of composing creation (Read, 2002) and understanding cognizance (Beck et. al. 1987:147). In the IELTS sp