Topic- Based Work

Topic-based work

What does topic-based mean?

If someone tell you that your textbook is topic-based, they want to tell you that the information in the book is about one subject or topic. Other textbooks for children are story-based or activity-based, but the topic-based ones are more useful because students focus their attention in just one topic, and it is easier to start thinking about experiences about that topic. Students can be more motivated or more interested in a topic that they know, and in which they can talk about their life's stories. If students are just listening stories that are not related with their lives or just fill-in sentences without sense for them, they will lose the attention to the class. Working in just one topic help to improve student's memory because they start to associate the words they are learning with the topic. When they don't remember a word or the meaning of a word, they can think about the topic, and probably they will remember the meaning.

If you are worried about the time that you have to spend teaching just one subject, let me tell you that it depends on the interest the students show, the amount of vocabulary you want to teach, and the material you have. The material is very important to work with young learners because we cannot just start to talk about one topic; we have to call their attention with illustrations and real objects. We as teachers have the obligation of find the best way to work with our students, and that they feel comfortable talking about the topic we are teaching. Topic-based work is related with all the skills we develop because we need to write, to listen, to read, and to speak about each topic we study in the classroom. As in everything we teach, we need controlled and free practices obviously related with each topic.

In an introductory course, we can teach topics in which our students are interested, but if they have English as a principal subject, we can't. We need to teach topics that the institution chooses, which they consider more important for children. At the begging, we can teach topics like the colors, the greeting, the numbers, etc. These will be interesting topics for our learners if we present it to them in a creative way. If the school leave you to teach the topics that you want, you can choose it based on the other subjects. For example, in Natural Sciences they can study the animals, you can teach the same topic in English to be easier the work of memorize the names. Another example can be to teach the numbers (from 1 to 10 because they cannot acquire too much information) If they are learning the same topic in Mathematics.

We have to teach a specific number of topics through the year, but as I said before the time we need depends on the interest our children show. If they are not interested in what we are teach, we'll need more time to achieve our students memorize that topic. When they are really excited with a subject, they tend to learn easily, so we have to try to develop each topic in a dorm that result interesting to our students. As soon as you choose the topic, you should make the material to teach it; remember do it with many colors and illustrations that call the attention of your pupils. You are working with young learners, so you can't present them a simple chart without illustrations or something that results interesting. If you say "this topic is so basic, so I can teach it rapidly" you are wrong because young learners need patience to success in the labor of learning something.

Before choosing the topic and doing the material, you should think about which skill you need to work more. If our students are less enthusiastic when they are writing, you should work more with written activities. You have to create in their minds the idea that writing is funny because you can express whatever you want or maybe because while you are writing something, you create an illustration related with the topic you are working on. Topic-based work allows us to have a world of possibilities to teach any topic; we famous our attention just in one subject about which we can create paragraph, sentences, or even we can share our own experiences related with the topic.

To finish this topic, we can say that topic-based work is better than story-based and activity-based work because we are just dealing with one subject. Learning the vocabulary and other things about it will be easier. Students won't have to learn many information which sometimes is unnecessary because we have to focus our attention in a specific topic. All the activities have to be related to not lose our students' attention at any moment; they need to think about each topic as the most excited that they have studied. Remember, first you have to choose the topic, then you have to create the material and evaluate if the students are interested or not to evaluate how much time do you need to teach it, and the last point of topic-based work is to teach each class with energy and enthusiasm to our children develop an interest in each topic despite at the beginning that say that it is a boring one.