Zambia Grade 7 School Syllabus - Zambian Languages

This syllabus outlines the curriculum for Zambian Languages in Grade 7, focusing on developing listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, as well as an appreciation of literature, culture, and life skills. The curriculum aims to equip learners with the necessary competencies to effectively communicate and apply their language skills across different contexts.

Listening and Speaking

• Themes: Identifying themes of plays and stories, differentiating between main themes and sub-themes.
• Songs: Using and explaining riddles, proverbs, satire, and idioms within songs, analyzing song lyrics.
• Customs and Traditions: Identifying and discussing the customs and traditions of different groups, including artifacts and ceremonies.
• Speeches: Making speeches for various purposes, including apologies, introductions, and votes of thanks, focusing on tense usage and format.
• Complex Messages: Delivering complex messages effectively, focusing on clear instruction and accurate information transfer, such as birth announcements, funeral messages, and summons.
• Budgeting (Business Plan): Demonstrating an understanding of budgeting, including planning costs and expenditures.
• Debate: Debating issues of national importance, using appropriate formalities, proposing and opposing motions, and presenting points and opinions with factual evidence.
• Plays: Acting in plays, focusing on voice projection, articulation, and annunciation.
• Simple Research: Conducting simple research projects and reporting findings, adhering to research ethics and demonstrating tact when handling sensitive community issues.
• Description and Narration: Describing and narrating personal and others' experiences, past events, arrangements, and intentions.
• Personal Opinion: Expressing personal opinions, including preferences, approval, disapproval, indifference, enthusiasm, intentions, and future arrangements.
• Income Generation: Keeping records of income and expenditure, demonstrating accountability, and understanding profit, loss, record-keeping, and accounting.
• Relationships: Expressing concepts about relationships, including cause and effect, comparisons, and contrasts.
• Quality and Quantity: Discussing quality and quantity using appropriate terminology.
• Parts of Speech: Demonstrating understanding and correct usage of all parts of speech, including adverbs, adjectives, and interjections.
• Persuasion: Persuading others through polite requests, giving advice, and using volitional terms.
• Conversation: Identifying the main points of a conversation, including the theme, main points, conclusion, and major highlights.
• Leadership: Discussing leadership qualities, such as humility, patience, honesty, and assertiveness.
• Social Information: Narrating stories, tales, legends, and myths related to cross-cutting issues like HIV/AIDS, gender, street children, and empathy.

Reading

• Comprehension: Reading given passages and completing follow-up activities, demonstrating understanding of themes, vocabulary, and using reading strategies like scanning and skimming.
• Extensive Reading: Reading passages silently, developing good reading habits.
• Reading Aloud (Oral Reading): Reading aloud with appropriate expression, correct punctuation, and emotional intonation.
• References: Using reference materials and textbooks effectively, including indexes, tables of contents, skimming, scanning, and referencing.
• Compositions: Writing compositions or essays on given topics, following the appropriate layout, including introduction, main body, and conclusion, with correct punctuation.
• Sentence Construction: Writing sentences in active and passive voice.
• Letter Writing: Writing formal and informal letters, adhering to the correct format for each.
• Story Summary: Summarizing given stories, using note-making skills, identifying content words, and maintaining objectivity.
• Translation: Translating paragraphs from English to Zambian Languages and vice versa, applying appropriate translation techniques.
• Notices and Advertisements: Writing notices, announcements, advertisements, and obituaries, focusing on clarity and brevity.
• Information Extraction: Extracting information from various sources, including charts, tables, maps, and graphs.
• Free Writing: Using a variety of writing styles, including reflective writing, letters, notes, imaginative writing, narrative, and descriptive writing.
• Note-taking: Taking notes during meetings and briefing others on the main issues discussed.
• Conversions of Writing: Converting different forms of writing, such as tables to graphs, and identifying topics, themes, and content words.
• Dictation: Taking dictation, demonstrating correct spelling and punctuation.
• Spellings: Spelling words correctly, applying spelling rules and orthography.

Language

• Direct and Indirect Speech: Writing sentences in both direct and indirect speech, demonstrating understanding of punctuation and reporting verbs.
• Interrogatives: Writing interrogative sentences correctly.
• Nouns: Writing nouns in singular and plural forms.
• Types of Nouns: Identifying different types of nouns, including concrete, abstract, and compound nouns.
• Noun Classes: Listing nouns according to their noun class prefixes.
• Compound and Reduplicated Words: Identifying and using compound and reduplicated words, including nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and verbs.
• Parts of Speech: Identifying and using parts of speech correctly.
• Punctuation: Punctuating sentences and paragraphs correctly.
• Figures of Speech: Using proverbs, sayings, praises, idioms, satire, similes, and metaphors in writing.