English in Senior High

Last week, I described the competencies or skills in Vocabulary Development that students from Kindergarten to Grade 8 are expected to have. Here are the competencies for the rest of the grades in the K to 12 curriculum (taken verbatim from the curriculum guides on the website of the Department of Education).

In Grade 9, the student “provides words or expressions appropriate for a given situation, explains how words are derived from names of persons and places, arrives at the meanings of words through word formation (clipping, blending, acronymy, compounding, folk etymology, etc.), notes types of context clues (restatement, definition, synonyms, antonyms) used for a given word or expression, gives the appropriate communicative styles for various situations (intimate, casual, conversational, consultative, frozen), determines the vocabulary or jargon expected of a communicative style, and gets familiar with the technical vocabulary for drama and theatre (like stage directions).” Note the introduction on this grade level of theater.

In Grade 10, the student “differentiates formal from informal definitions of words, gives technical and operational definitions, gives expanded definitions of words, and gets familiar with technical terms used in research.” Note the introduction of research.

In Grade 11, the student takes a required Core Subject called “Reading and Writing.” Because all the basic vocabulary skills have been attained by the student from Kindergarten to Grade 10, the student is now ready to tackle whole texts (technically called “discourse”). Therefore, in this 80-hour subject, the student “describes a written text as connected discourse, distinguishes between and among techniques in selecting and organizing information, distinguishes between and among patterns of development in writing across disciplines, identifies properties of a well-written text, explains critical reading as looking for ways of thinking, identifies claims explicitly or implicitly made in a written text, identifies the context in which a text is developed, explains critical reading as reasoning, formulates evaluative statements about a text read, determines textual evidence to validate assertions and counterclaims made about a text read, explains how one’s purpose is a crucial consideration in academic and professional writing, identifies the unique features of and requirements in composing texts that are useful across disciplines, and identifies the unique features of and requirements in composing professional correspondence.” Note that these competencies used to be attained only after two college General Education (GE) subjects in English.

One item in the last competency listed above may surprise those still not conversant with one of the key objectives of adding two years to basic education. By the end of Grade 11, the student will already be able to write an “Application for Employment,” as well as “Various forms of Office Correspondence.”

Before K to 12, it was unusual to think of a high school graduate as being immediately employed in an office where s/he would compose office correspondence. With K to 12, it will be the rule that a high school graduate can be hired immediately in an office.

This is one of the advantages of K to 12. Instead of poor parents spending for higher or technical education in a school or center that charges tuition fees, skills training will now be free for all public high school students. Those who are saying that parents will spend more for K to 12 are arguing from ignorance. The curriculum is there for all to see. Just go to the DepEd website, click on “K to 12,” and everything in this column is there.

Now, for the other English subjects in Senior High School.

There is another required Core Curriculum subject named “Oral Communication.” This is pretty much the same as the current GE subject in English. I will not go through the entire description of this subject, but one particular learning competency will illustrate how it derives from the earlier spiraled subjects in English. “Observes the appropriate language forms in using a particular speech style” follows from this Grade 9 competency: “determines the vocabulary or jargon expected of a communicative style.”

There is also an Applied Track Subject (“applied track” means that the content may be different but the competencies are the same) in Grade 12 called “English for Academic and Professional Purposes.”

Let us say that a student wants to work immediately in a hotel after graduation from high school. That student will take “texts specific to their courses (Home Economics) like instructional manuals, brochures, digital materials, etc.” The student will learn how to “determine the structure, differentiate the language used, explain the specific ideas contained in the texts,” and so on.

If the school uses the Dual Training mode of delivery for its Tech-Voc subjects, this English subject may involve actual immersion in a place where people use English for professional communication (such as a hotel catering to foreigners). DepEd has explained that the “number of hours per subject” “may be a combination of lecture and laboratory, field work, project work, etc.” In fact, Section 6 of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 explicitly states that “DepEd may allow private educational institutions flexibility in adopting the program provided that they comply with the DepEd-prescribed minimum standards consistent with the Act.”  (To be continued)