Overall objectives:

1 - To increase fluency in oral and written English (for academic, EL teaching and everyday purposes) bearing in mind pre-school and elementary curricula in Portugal.
2 - To develop reading, writing, listening and speaking skills towards effective communication in English.
3 - To work on difficulty areas caused by L1 interference as well as recursive errors (e.g., English syntax and lexical choice) so as to improve students? language performance.
4 - To consolidate grammar items in accordance with students? needs within a variety of discursive practices and domains (EL teaching / learning, classroom language, scientific discourse for research purposes and lifelong learning).
5 - To promote independent reading in EL across the curriculum and foster research and library skills (from print material, i.e., dictionaries, grammars, magazines to multimedia tools).
6 - To promote autonomous organisational work.

Syllabus:

1 - Children and Education
1.1 - Job and communication requirements
1.2 - Literature to back up negotiation, motivation and communication skills
1.3 - Children's emergent literacy practices
1.4 - Socio-cultural competence in EFL teaching /learning
1.5 - Children's daily routine and classroom interaction
2. - EFL Teaching / Learning (Pre- and Elementary Schooling)
2.1 - Methodology
2.2 - Whole language approach
2.3 - Integrative skills, task-based activity-oriented instruction
2.4 - Language immersion (Stephen Krashen)
2.5 - Mother tongue and EFL teaching / learning
2.6 - Innovation/Media and creativity
2.7 - Openings to texts (verbal and non-verbal language)
2.8 - Games (jigsaws, puzzles, multimedia games)
2.9 - Songs (e.g. lullabies) and nursery rhymes
2.10 - Limericks, tongue twisters, jokes
2.11 - Planning
2.12 - Long and short-term planning
2.13 - Lesson planning
2.14 - General and specific aims
2.15 - Assumptions / presuppositions (i.e., teachers' and learners' idiosyncrasies: age range, language competence, attention span)
2.16 - Strategies
2.17 - Language functions
2.18 - Activities and stages (presentation, practice, production)
2.19 - Materials (authenticity, comprehensibility, readability / accessibility)
3. - English Language
3.1 - Varieties of English (Br. English / Am. English / Englishes)
3.2 - Usage and Use - revision, consolidation and acquisition of grammar items with reference to students' needs and interests
3.3 - Mechanical accuracy
3.4 - Discourse and text awareness
3.5 - Layers of meaning (phonology, graphology, cohesion, coherence, lexis, semantics and culture): ways-in to texts
4. - English Grammar (intensive reshuffling: morphology and syntax)

Literature/Sources:

A. Chamot, et al , 1999 , The Learning Strategies Handbook , Longman
K. Charner , 1996 , The Giant Encyclopedia of Circle Time and Group Activities for Children 3 to 6: Over 600 Favourite Circle Time Activities, , Griphon House
K. Hayes, R. Creange , 2001 , Classroom Routines that Really Work for Prek and Kindergarten, Teaching Strategies Books , Scholastic.
M. Prensky , 2012 , From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning , Corwin, California
T. Woodward, P. Ur , 2001 , Planning Lessons and Courses: Designing Sequences of Work for the Language Classroom, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. , Cambrigde: CUP
M. Rinvolucri , 1985 , Grammar Games : Cognitive, Affective and Drama Activities for EFL Students , Cambridge: CUP
S. Philips , 1993 , Young Learners , Oxford: OUP

Assesssment methods and criteria:

Classification Type:

Evaluation Methodology:
A student-centred curriculum will be emphasised. Language skills will be developed through oral and written texts on topic areas of students' interest and future job-related areas with young learners. Several activities will be suggested so as to develop students' language, culture and literary awareness (emergent literacy practices in EFL for Young Learners). Intensive recycling of main areas of difficulty, i.e., grammar, lexis, writing and reading according to students' learning pace and difficulties. "Learning doing", interactive and collaborative approach.