Tanzania Standard 7/Form 1 Curriculum - English Language

This information is based on the 2019 edition of the Tanzania Institute of Education's English Language Syllabus for Primary Education (Kiswahili Medium Schools).

Overview:

The English Language curriculum for Standard 7 aims to equip students with the necessary skills and competencies to effectively communicate in English. The curriculum emphasizes the development of the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It follows a communicative approach, focusing on practical language use in various contexts. The curriculum builds upon the foundation laid in previous standards, with a gradual shift towards more complex language structures and a greater emphasis on independent learning.

Curriculum Objectives:

The curriculum seeks to enable students to:

• Express themselves appropriately in different situations.
• Develop basic language skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
• Acquire and use a wide range of vocabulary.
• Apply correct English grammar.
• Establish a solid foundation for secondary education and personal development.

Competencies:

By the end of Standard 7, students are expected to demonstrate the following competencies:

• Comprehend oral and written information:
• Listen and understand information presented orally, including identifying and using single and multi-word coordinators and expressions for seeking confirmation.
• Read and comprehend various texts, including stories, dialogues, and class library readers, with the required proficiency for independent reading. Students should be able to identify and use expressions for seeking confirmation, scan for general ideas, and write guided summaries.
• Communicate orally and through writing:
• Communicate effectively through speaking, participating actively in conversations, role-playing dialogues with prepositions of movement and cardinal points, and using appropriate pronunciation.
• Communicate clearly through writing, composing controlled and guided compositions, free compositions (short stories, news, views, emails, phone messages), and using correlative conjunctions to express results.
• Acquire and use vocabulary:
• Develop and use appropriate vocabulary through listening and speaking, including words related to daily interactions, personal events, and objects found in everyday environments.
• Expand vocabulary through reading, including identifying and using synonyms, antonyms, homographs, words expressing quantity and quality, and using dictionaries effectively. Students should also be able to use words with suffixes and prefixes and group words into different classes/categories.

Assessment:

Assessment focuses on evaluating the student's ability to demonstrate the specified competencies through various activities, such as listening exercises, oral presentations, reading comprehension tasks, and written assignments. Assessment criteria include accuracy, fluency, clarity, relevance, and the appropriate use of vocabulary and grammar. Benchmarking is used to measure student progress against expected levels of achievement.