Programme de la deuxième année des Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Ecoles (CPGE)

Discipline : Anglais (LVE)

Filières : Scientifiques et Commerciales

Options : (MP / PSI / TSI / BCPST / ECT/ECS)

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Second Year’s ELT Program and General Guidelines

The content of this document is an extension of first year general guidelines. Its instructional

achievement depends categorically on the learner’s competencies developed during the first

year course at the Preparatory Classes.

Besides strengthening the learner’s acquired critical thinking strategies in the four skills (R. L.

S. & W.), the purpose at this level of instruction is to focus on the learner’s ability to

manipulate authentic and challenging material both at the common examinations and later for

their career requirements. Practically, selected purposeful tasks should put the stress on the

reinforcement of self-active and self-directed learning strategies. The achievement of such an

aim relies primarily on the inclusive understanding and the proactive participation of the

concerned actors in the classroom (cf. First Year General Guidelines, 2013).

The teaching/learning approach embedded in these guidelines, i.e. the competency-based

approach (CBA) intends to maintain the self-governed and self-regulated learning initiated

during the first year instruction. This approach is adopted to sharpen the learners’

autonomous, independent, and responsible apprenticeship. English language teachers at these

Classes need to act as lesson designers, classroom coaches, and task facilitators. English

language learners, on the other side, need to demonstrate active participation and conscious

cooperation throughout the whole process of their learning.

In addition to the roles of teachers stated in the First Year Guidelines (2013), the following

additional recommendations will certainly help teachers implement this approach successfully

in their classroom. English Language teachers are therefore required to:

(1) build their instruction in line with the competency based-approach advocated by the

MEN,

(2) administer their lessons in the most purposeful and the best motivating way possible,

(3) assess their lessons and their learners’ achievements vis-à-vis their stated objectives,

(4) plan remedial work to cope with the inefficacies of some activities and learners’ need,

(5) support learners assessing their progress as well as raising their awareness of the

common examinations

(6) encourage students to enhance their psychological and intellectual growth as well as

their motivation for learning,

(7) coach reluctant learners to catch up with the requirement of the assessment standards.

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1- Terms Program Partition

The main purpose of this partition is twofold (1) to provide teachers with an outlined structure

of the second year ELT program and (2) to delimit and homogenize the content of English

language teaching and learning in the Moroccan Preparatory Classes. The subsequent table

revolves around the following main the objectives:

A- Instructional objectives:

Teachers should enable their learners to:

1. develop their knowledge about contemporary issues,

2. reinforce their learning skills and competencies in English,

3. enhance their practice of the four skills (R-L-S-W) and of translation (theme & version),

4. train them for various examinations.

B- Performance objectives:

Based on different types of instructional documents, learners are expected to:

1., learners express their personal stances both orally and in writing on a variety of local and

global current issues,

2. sharpen their critical thinking skills and strategies,

3. raise their awareness about language differences,

4. improve the appropriateness of their response strategies.

C- Content objectives:

During each school term, the design instructional material ought to:

1. stimulate the learners’ knowledge about different thematic issues which target the

improvement of the skills of critical thinking, analysis, and problem solving,

2. provide learners with the possibility to process, evaluate, and communicate information

both orally and in writing,

3. help learners cope with syntactic, semantic, and cultural differences while translating,

4. Train students on the rubrics of different common national examinations.

These second year main objectives can be implemented in class according to the following the

school year term partitioned program:

Second year Partitioned program

Instructional Objectives Performance Objectives Content Objectives Trimester 1: 1. Expose learners to authentic and

challenging material to get familiar

with worldwide current issues,

2. Strengthen students’ practice of

essential critical thinking strategies

in the four skills and in translation,

3. Offer guided practice on how

learners should respond to different

exam tasks.

- Familiarize learners with global

current issues,

- Deepen learners’ acquisition of

low and high order thinking skills

and thinking strategies,

- Practice fluency and accuracy in

composing different types of texts,

- Improve students’ practice of:

a) low order thinking skills in (R.,

L., S., & W.),

b) High order thinking skills in the

four skills,

c) “Thème & version”,

d) Production of paragraph

summary and commentary, and

argumentative essay.

Trimester 2: 1. Reinforce students’ preparation

for written exams.

2. Review of key lexis related to

the themes coved in the first year,

3. Practice culture-loaded

translation (e.g. idioms, metaphor…).

- Train learners on the rubrics of

various common examinations.

- highlight the rhetorical structures

of the paragraph and the essay,

- Practice self and peer-editing.

- Develop students’ mastery of:

a) basic communicative functions

(focus on oral skills),

b) questioning, summarizing,

commenting, and translating both

orally and in writing.

Trimester 3: 1. Intensify students’ training on

different oral examinations,

2. Practice oral presentation skills

- Via audio (visual) material build

on learners’ oral skill and get them

prepared for oral examinations.

- Strengthen learners’ presentation

skills by targeting:

a) quick reading

b) focused listening

c) note-taking

d) oral delivery.

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Second year syllabus gradation: All mainstreams concerned

In conformity with first year program, the second year syllabus is partitioned into three terms.

The content of the first term intends to consolidate the critical thinking skills and strategies

acquired during the first year program with focal practice on the tasks assessed in the

common national examinations.

The content of the second term program is set to reinforce the students’ diverse reading and

writing sub-skills and strategies assessed in different common examinations. Particular

Emphasis is put on answering critical reading questions in addition to summarizing,

commenting, essay writing, and translating from English to French and from French to

English.

The program of the third term targets the listening and communication skills idiosyncratic to

oral examinations. Students need to be trained on listening to authentic audio material and on

developing oral presentation and communication skills.

The primary role of the English Language teacher is to integrate a collection of purposeful

sequences and activities in each lesson to foster most of the learners’ skills and sub-skills

listed under the heading of each school term of the following syllabus gradation. Learners

also need to be motivated to learn then acquire the skills and the sub-skills stated below.

Syllabus Gradation

Skills TERM 1 Term 2 Term 3

Grammatical

structures

- Practice mixed modals

- Practice mixed conditionals.

- Practice wh-questions

- Practice simple, compound,

and complex sentences,

- Practice linking words.

- Recycle various grammatical

structures related to editing a

sentence, a paragraph and an

essay.

- Practice grammatical structures

related to oral presentation

skills,

- reinforce students’ mastery of

the rhetorical structures related

persuasion and argumentation.

Lexical

items

- practice lexical mapping

- Practice collocations (N. /V.),

- Practice the use of compound

adjectives,

- Practice the use of adverbial

clauses,

- Review miscellaneous

expressions of introducing

oneself, agreeing, disagreeing,

giving opinions, hypothesizing,

exemplifying comparing,

contrasting, arguing, reasoning,

deducing, and concluding.

- Practice expressions linked to:

starting and ending a

conversation, a presentation, a

discussion or a debate.

Reading

Skill

Practice the use of:

- skimming and scanning,

- anticipating and predicting,

- Speculating and deducing,

- inferring and interpreting

- Identifying discourse markers,

- summarizing and commenting,

- Paraphrasing and translating.

- Highlight adequate responses

to HOT tasks,

- Remedy the misuse of the

strategies related to

summarizing, commenting,

translating, and editing

paragraphs and essays.

- sustain notetaking techniques,

- Practice the delivery of oral

summary and commentary,

- Practice responses to critical

thinking questions,

- carry out a debate or a

discussion on critical current

issues.

Listening &

Speaking

Skills

Practice the use of :

- listening to authentic material,

- listening and notetaking,

- formal speaking discourse.

- Listen to a tape and react to the

attitudes of speakers,

- Listen, summarize, and

comment orally on the content of

the audio material.

- Practice viewing, and listening

- Practice oral summaries and

commentaries on the material

presented,

- Practice debate.

Writing

Skill

Practice the use of:

- drafting and editing

paragraphs and essays,

- paraphrasing compound and

complex sentences,

- describing and interpreting a

graph, a photo, or a poster.

- Practice writing to support or

oppose a statement,

- Practice writing on a fixed

number of words or lines,

- Writing an outline for an oral

summary or a commentary.

- Practice outlining, notetaking,

and organizing notes for the

delivery of a speech, a debate, or

a communication.

Translation

skills (thème

& Version)

Practice the translation of:

- the main idea of a text,

- a list of given sentences,

- a paragraph or an extract from

an article.

- translate a summary of a text,

- translate a comment on a text,

- translate a synthesis of a text.

- Read/listen, summarize and

translate the content of a text,

- listen and translate the main

idea of a given text.

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2- Assessment Procedures

Assessment is an integral part of the learning process in the Preparatory Classes. It is

performed both as a formative practice and a summative one. Formative assessment intends to

help students learn (assessment for learning) and summative practice measures students’

learning outcomes (assessment of learning).

First Year General Guidelines (2013) sorted out the different written and oral assessment

procedures performed in the Preparatory Classes. For second year level, standardized

common examination rubrics are shaped to incorporate both The Moroccan common

examinations rubrics and the French ones.

Whether we prepare our students for the written or the oral examinations, students’ exam

preparation to common examinations should focus on enhancing students’ receptive skills

(reading and listening) to help them display their proficiency in productive skills (writing and

speaking).

Each of the written Moroccan National examinations requests students to respond to some or

all of the following exam tasks:

(1) read carefully the text; generally, the reading passage is an authentic article adopted from

an international newspaper or magazine,

(2) answer the comprehension questions; the comprehension questions assess students’ ability

to (a) clarify key terms or expressions, (b) analyze or evaluate arguments, and/or (c) suggest a

possible solution to the raised issue,

(3) summarize the whole reading passage or an extract of it,

(4) translate the whole reading passage, a part of it, its main idea, or a set of given sentences,

(5) comment on the main idea of the reading passage, or on a citation underlined in it,

(6) write an argumentative or a persuasive essay on a contemporary issue.

Therefore, for the sake of various Common National Examinations that students from the

Preparatory Classes set for, teachers are warmly advised to train their students on the

following reiterated main exam tasks:

Reading and responding to critical questions,

Reading and writing a summary or a commentary,

Reading and translating,

Writing an argumentative paragraph or a persuasive essay,

Listening/watching and summarizing or commenting on the content of the presented

material,

Listening and discussing or debating an issue.

Students’ responses to these tasks may be initiated by instructions asking students to produce

a limited number of words, lines, or to respect the space given.

These recommendations are plainly stated to guide teachers at the Preparatory Classes to

normalize the content of their lessons and homogenize the training of their students for

various common national examinations (CNC/CNAEM) and any other international

examination CPGE students may take.

At the preparatory Classes the role of the ELT teachers is not only limited to teaching English

as a second foreign language but to train their learners for higher education and then for

lifelong skills and strategies (i.e. interpersonal communication, critical inquiry, qualitative

reasoning, use of ICT for education, and problem solving). Teachers should be aware that the

necessities of the modern world entail that teachers help their learners be equipped with

global values and be ready to compete successfully both at the national and at the

international levels.