First draft of curriculum for English curriculum prepared

BHAG : BHAG of having the best spoken English course in the region and enabling 80% of my graduates to significantly increase their earning potential.

This week, my main goal was to establish a plan and a one month curriculum for the spoken English course that I am planning to offer as part of GDL’s vocational training and job placement program. The intention of the course is to teach students to speak English proficiently enough to hold a conversation with a native speaker in two months. Students will then be able to obtain jobs in industries such as retail, hospitality, and BPOs. Unlike other courses all over India who concentrate mainly on grammar rather then speaking, our course will stress conversations because personal experience and research has shown this method is the most effective. My target audience is individuals who are looking to enter the job market or are currently working but wish to use English as a skill to increase their value. Since I am currently in the planning stages of this course, I believe that coming up with a solid project plan and curriculum for the course is the best place to start.

 Overall, I do not believe I achieved my goal of having both the plan and one month curriculum established by this week. Currently, the project plan is in the draft stage and will require numerous revisions before it the project can be put into action. I originally expected that I would be able to flesh out a very straightforward implementation plan but had not really considered what my core purpose for this project is. Without a core purpose, I find myself constantly scrapping plans and starting over. However, after reading numerous papers about setting up such an institution, I am beginning to feel like I am on the right track. I now know that my core purpose will be to provide an affordable, excellent course that will train individuals to speak through daily English interactions and conversations and will empower them to join the workforce. Based off of this, I feel like I have a good framework to build. On the topic of the curriculum, I also found myself dissatisfied with my work and was constantly restarting. What I produced seemed unsatisfactory because of my lack of knowledge on the topic of teaching English. It got to the point where I just decided to wait for my contacts to provide a curriculum for me to modify. However, thanks to other GDL members, I realized that this was a mistake. Although I may receive help from other curriculum and sources, I need to come up with a base model of my own that can be modified in the future. Through research and sites such as http://1-language.org I feel like I now have a good grasp of what should be taught and how it should be taught. I have managed to develop a week’s worth of lesson plans that I do think are excellent and focused on developing a the basic skills of conversation through interactions.

 My goals for next week are to continue with the process and have a solid revision of the project plan written and also the first 3 weeks of the English curriculum ready. I know that both of these will change over time, but I want to have something to base future revisions on. While I am happy to have established a core value that encompasses my project, I am still struggling with methods of ensuring that this value is retained over time.