Zambia Grade 12 School Syllabus - English Language

This syllabus builds upon the Junior Secondary syllabus and aims to equip learners with the English language skills needed for tertiary education and the working world. It integrates communicative and text-based approaches and allocates six periods per week to the subject.

Grade 10

Listening and Speaking

• Giving and Receiving Factual Information: Learners practice giving and receiving directions and instructions, using appropriate vocabulary.
• Expressing Emotional Attitudes: Learners practice expressing and identifying sympathy in various situations (e.g., funerals, exam failures).
• Expressing Intellectual Attitudes: Learners practice expressing agreement and disagreement in discussions.
• Getting Things Done: Learners practice requesting clarification, giving advice and warnings, and issuing instructions.
• Using Socially Acceptable Language: Learners practice greetings, invitations, offers, and initiating conversations in various social contexts.

Reading and Comprehension

• Intensive Reading: Learners develop efficient reading skills, including skimming, scanning, answering factual and inferential questions, retelling stories, deducing word meanings from context, drawing inferences, and analyzing characters. The target reading speed is 250 words per minute.
• Extensive Reading: Learners practice reading unabridged materials (newspapers, magazines, journals) to develop critical thinking, theme analysis, character analysis, language analysis, and understanding authorial intent and reader perspective.

Composition

• Descriptive Writing: Learners write advanced descriptions of people, objects, places, animals, plants, insects, and rivers, using descriptive words, adjectives, and figures of speech.
• Narrative Writing: Learners write advanced narratives, retelling events in chronological order using first or third-person narration, adjectives, and adverbs.
• Essay Writing: Learners write advanced essays on topics from other subjects (e.g., global warming, teenage pregnancy, waste management), including titles, subtitles, factual information, objective analysis, and conclusions/recommendations.
• Profile Writing (Autobiographies and Biographies): Learners write profiles, distinguishing between autobiographies and biographies, and including details such as date of birth, family, education, achievements, and credentials.
• Article Writing: Learners write newspaper and magazine articles, including eye-catching headlines, writer's name, clear subject statements, factual and objective information, chronological narration, and information based on current affairs or controversial issues.
• Report Writing: Learners write simple reports on given topics, using titles, subtitles, third-person narration, passive voice, chronological narration, good paragraphing, and recommendations.
• Book Reviews: Learners write book reviews, including synopses, themes, character analysis, author's point of view, and personal perspective.
• Minute Writing: Learners write minutes of meetings, including date, title, venue, attendees, agenda, third-person narration, good paragraphing, titles/subtitles, numbered captions, and signatures.
• Speech Writing: Learners write speeches of introduction, observing protocol, providing speaker background, summarizing institutional history, and inviting the main speaker.

Summary

• Titles: Learners choose and compose concise and adequate titles, justifying their choices.
• Sentence Summaries: Learners identify sentences that provide concise information.
• Paragraph Summaries: Learners choose and justify best paragraph summaries.
• Tabulation Skills: Learners tabulate information from texts into graphic presentations (tables, charts, graphs).
• Abbreviations: Learners use abbreviations when taking notes.

Structure

• Tenses (Future): Learners recognize the emphatic form of "shall."
• Parts of Speech, Verbs, and Expressions Followed by -ing: Learners use the -ing form after expressions like "can't help," "can't stand," "it's no use," and "be worth." They also recognize the difference in meaning between similar constructions using verbs followed by either the infinitive or -ing.
• Determiners (Adjectives of Quantity): Learners use "some" meaning "one or another."
• Noun Phrases and Clauses: Learners use infinitive phrases as objects, recognize the meaning of "that" clauses and infinitive phrases used as subjects, recognize the meaning of possessive adjectives used with -ing phrases, and use noun phrases in apposition.
• Relative Clauses: Learners use relative pronouns ("who," "whom," "which," "that," "whose") in defining and non-defining relative clauses, including prepositions with relative pronouns.
• Comparison: Learners use "the + comparative...the + comparative" to express parallel increase.
• Reason: Learners use "now that," "seeing that," and participial phrases to express reason.
• Time: Learners use conjunctions with participial phrases and "no sooner...than" to express time. They also use phrases containing perfect participles to indicate one action preceding another.
• Contrast: Learners use various structures to express contrast, including "apart from," "besides," "although," "while," "despite," "in spite of," "instead of," "(the) one...the other," "if," "adjective + as/though," and "no matter."
• Conditional Sentences: Learners construct conditional sentences with "but for," "provided/providing that," "suppose/supposing (that)," and "if only." They also recognize inverted forms of conditional sentences.
• Question Tags: Learners use question tags appropriately.
• Active and Passive Voice: Learners use active and passive voice correctly.

Grade 11 and 12

The Grade 11 and 12 syllabi continue to build upon these skills, increasing the complexity and sophistication of the language used and the tasks undertaken. They cover similar areas, with increasing emphasis on critical thinking, analysis, and producing more advanced forms of writing for academic and professional purposes. Specific details for these grades can be found in the provided syllabus link.