ABSTRACT

I am working with a group of teachers and materials writers on a course for pre-or minimal-literate young refugees to Australia, ones who have some profi - ciency in spoken English, but disrupted or limited experiences of formal schooling. The government has provided additional hours of English instruction to help them prepare for the regular adult program. We have already had several meetings and, based on research our center conducted, have decided to develop several modules on topics of interest to this clientele, but also ones vital to their successful settlement in Australia: Your Future (work and study); Your Time Out (recreation); Your Money; Your Communication (including technology); Your Health and Well-being; and You and Me (interpersonal relations, cross cultural communication). The overall approach is content-based, with language determined by the content. At this particular meeting, we are working on the module on money. We begin by determining the outcomes we expect learners to be able to achieve at the end of the module, such as “Demonstrate an awareness of different forms of money (cash/virtual) and their use in various transactions (e.g., EFTPOS,1 online banking, phone, post offi ce, hire purchase)” and “Demonstrate an awareness of implications of signing any contracts.” We agree that the content needs to motivate and inform learners. So, we decide to include topics around paying rent, banking, food shopping, budgeting, and cell phones. This leads to four units for the module. To achieve the language and subject matter outcomes, we discuss the language learners will need-structures, lexis, functions, and text types. We discuss the skills they will need-numeracy, critical literacy, and writing a note. A lot of discussion is focused on Australia being a highly literate country and that this group of learners needs to navigate literacy. The question is how to achieve this with pre-and minimal-literate learners. We discuss how to assist learners in seeing the connections between spoken and written language, how to use visuals, how to work with peers, and learning to learn. Content, outcomes, and language were mapped across each module to ensure sequencing of units within the module and across modules. Once the draft materials were developed, they were trialed with teachers in youth refugee classrooms and revised based on teacher feedback. [Murray, research notes]

Task: Refl ect

1. What do you think was the advantage of starting the curriculum design process with content, rather than language?