Introduction: Authentic texts vs traditional textbooks
Although the developers of the Skola2030 "English II" course program have emphasized that it is not meant to be a "literature" class, one of the things that makes it different from the previous approach to teaching English in 12th grade is that there is more of a focus on reading full, authentic texts as opposed to relying on a traditional textbook. This is because, in the view of the course developers, traditional textbooks are a less effective means for students to learn and acquire the CEFR "C1" level of English than working with authentic texts such as level-appropriate books, films, and media articles.
Authentic texts are, quite simply, works which are created for an audience of people who use the language on an everyday basis, rather than texts adapted or specifically created for language learners. While traditional textbooks often include fragments of authentic texts, especially at higher levels, they are quite often modified to be more understandable for readers at a specific level of language. Students being able to engage with authentic texts is the general goal of the language teaching process, and the idea behind this course is that the best way for students to learn to do so is to simply do so — with the guidance of the teacher, of course.
Unlike the optimal-level "English I" course program which is designed to be so elastic that the learning outcomes can be addressed with a wide variety of textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education, the "English II" course program is so specific that it cannot be taught by simply following a traditional textbook. There is currently no plan by the ministry to create an official textbook specific to the "English II" course, with teachers instead being advised to use materials available on the Skolo.lv platform that were originally developed as part of a series of courses between the years 2021-2023 to prepare teachers to teach the new "highest level" class.
In the same way that many, if not most, teachers who relied a textbook for 12th grade English also included various authentic texts, including full books, in the learning process long before Skola2030 was implemented, many schools throughout Latvia have chosen to use, to varying extents, a more traditional C1-level ministry-approved textbook such as Close-up, Focus, Insight, Life Vision, Outcomes, or Solutions in addition to following the units of the Skola2030 or LATE course program. There is nothing wrong with this, and it can be a great option to help give the class additional structure and work on skills that are useful both during the exam and in real life that might not be specifically addressed by the sample course program.
For each of the following units, I have explained how they are envisioned by the developers of the Skola2030 sample program, what other teachers throughout Latvia have done (based on my conversations with colleagues and students), my own personal experience at Jelgavas Spīdolas Valsts ģimnāzija, additional topics that might be covered with students, and considerations when it comes to summative assessment.
Unit I: Choosing a book (Book advertisements)
According to the program: In the first unit of the course, it is envisioned that students first discuss the importance of reading for their own personal development and language acquisition, create an advertisement for a book that they believe the class should read together, and then decide as a class on which book they will read. The book needs to be appropriate for C1-level students (challenging, but not too challenging), have been adapted for screen (as a film, TV show, recorded theater performance, etc), and have an official translation into English. Later on, this is the book that students would theoretically use for the three exam prerequisite works in the second part of the course.
Variations on the program: Based on experience exchange with colleagues at a wide range of schools throughout Latvia and also talking with first-year university students, in reality, it is fairly rare for teachers to have the students actually vote on the book that they will read as a class. Many teachers simply tell the students which book they will be reading as a class — this might be necessary in order for enough physical copies of the book to be ordered and to be used multiple years in a row, and this approach allows teachers to work with a text that they are comfortable with (and hopefully interested in). On the other end of the spectrum, some schools or teachers do not have the students read a single book together as a group, and instead work together in the classroom on short stories while students individually complete the next unit (a reading journal) based on a book they have freely chosen.
My experience at JSVĢ: Personally, I have my students work together in pairs already during the very first lessons of the year to choose a book that they would like to propose as the one that will be read together as a class. Each pair creates a one-minute audio advertisement that they present to the class and then make additional arguments as to why their choice of a book would be best. After all of the advertisements have been listened to and the arguments have been made, I have my students vote in a "Mentimenter" quiz where they individually rank all of the books in order from the one they would most like to read to the one they would least like to. In every case aside from one, I have accepted the choice of the students after checking with my school's administration and with the understanding that students are responsible for acquiring their own print or digital copy of the text one way or another.
Since I work with two different parallel classes, the result is that over the past three years (as of writing this) that I have taught the course, I have had to work with six different books, preparing material that can be used for analysis and discussion. Although it can be a lot of work, I have found that students rarely to never complain about having to read the book since they were the ones who voted on it — they cannot claim that they were "forced to read it by the teacher," and it seems to lead to higher motivation during the reading process. Since in most cases the students have picked books that I hadn't read before, I have enjoyed the chance (and excuse) to read more books. However, although this approach has worked well for myself and my students, it does not mean that it is necessarily the best for everyone.
What might be covered with students: One thing that I am passionate about during this part of the course is teaching common advertising techniques to my students that they are required to use in the advertisement that they make. This is also an opportunity to explore Aristotle's rhetorical techniques of pathos, ethos, and logos that can be useful for the students later on in their writing. I have developed an interactive Kahoot presentation that uses a number of different authentic advertisements as examples of these different advertising techniques that could be used to teach these to students, and have also made a list of advertising techniques categorized by Aristotle's rhetorical techniques that includes specific examples — I require that my students include at least three of these in their own work and explain in their presentation how and why each of the techniques was used.
Summative assessment: I try to finish this entire unit within the first week of school so that we can immediately start reading the book, so I have the students research the book and create the advertisement during class. However, I have already worked with my students on advertising techniques and the basic of marketing in a media course I have with them during 10th and 11th grade, so more time could be devoted to this unit since advertising is an extremely important topic. Although I personally have students make an audio advertisement, creating posters or videos could work just as well. I have not yet created a SOLO-balanced rubric for this unit, but I plan to for the coming year.
Unit II: Book reading and note taking
According to the program: During this unit, the developers of the course program envision that students read a book together as a class while taking notes in a reader's journal and discussing it in small and large groups. As previously mentioned, although this sounds fairly straightforward, there are almost as many different approaches to this process as there are teachers in Latvia that implement the course. There are three major issues that need to be addressed by every teacher: 1. the format and content of the reader's journal; 2. how/if the reader's journal is graded; 3. how/when/where/for how long the book(s) will be read by students.
Variations on the program: In real life, a reader's journal is usually kept by someone, often a university student, as they read various books over a certain period of time — they use it to collect their notes and thoughts about the books that they have read in order to go back later and remember key points. In this case, the reader's journal is most likely intended for just one book. While the Skola2030 course developers included a sample reader's journal template with various aspects of the book to record notes about, they have also highlighted the many different creative formats that reader's journals can take. Many schools have students complete the journals in written form, but I have had my students digitally fill out this template which is modified from the original Skola2030 template as they read, adding more and more over time.
Summative assessment: Grading the reading journals is possibly the thorniest issue of the entire course. While the Skola2030 course program offers a summative rubric for teachers to use in the appendixes (which does not at all follow the SOLO balancing principles we are now required to use), during the courses organized by Skola2030, some of the lecturers insisted that teachers should absolutely not summatively grade the reader's journal. These conflicting messages have lead to widespread confusion among teachers in terms of how, or whether at all, to grade the journals. I personally have graded this unit with a test on reading (using tasks similar to those on the exam) that focuses on the sub-text of a short story, and I have included the quality of the final submitted reading journal as well as the frequency in which the journal was submitted to me (once a week as required) as two of the criteria for the summative assignment. However, since this does not fit well with the new grading criteria required by the Cabinet of Ministers regulations, I am not entirely sure what I will do going forward.
My experience at JSVĢ: In terms of reading the book, I have six lessons per week with my students. Usually, three of the lessons occur on one day all in a row and the other three occur on another. Over the past few years, I have used one of those days for just reading — students use all three lessons to read individually up until a certain pre-agreed part of the book (usually a specific chapter or page) and then by the end of the day send me an updated reading journal document with the new information they have added on that day bolded or in a different color so I can see what is new. On the other day of the week, the students meet in class with me to analyze and discuss the book together. I divide the chapters of the book week by week so that we have completed the entire book by the end of October break, and the students must submit the finished journal by the end of the week that we return. However, there are some teachers I have talked with that continue the reading process until January or even beyond. If the students are completing journals about books they personally choose and read on their own, the time frame can be far more flexible.
What might be covered with students: During this part of the course, I like to explore literary devices and figurative language with my students, since this is something that they have already covered long ago in Latvian language and literature class but have most likely never covered in English class before. While there will not likely be an exam task asking students to find an example of a metaphor, being to understand both the literal and figurative meaning of texts will be very helpful on the exam, as the C1 level focuses much more on subtext and implicit meaning. I highly recommend this guide from Writers.com which includes excellent and easy-to-understand examples. Another excellent concept to cover at this point in the course is how to determine the possible meaning of unfamiliar words, as there will certainly be situations where students will not have a dictionary or translation application handy both on the exam and in real life. Grammarly has a useful guide for what students can do in these situations.
Unit III: Translation
According to the program: For this unit, the designers of the course intended that students would discuss aspects and considerations of translation and then write and analyze their own translations.
My experience at JSVĢ: To be very honest, this is the unit that I feel the least confident about, as the developers of the course envisioned this section to focus on translation from English into Latvian, which I am personally far weaker at than translating Latvian into English. I have previously been lucky to collaborate with a colleague who has extensive experience studying translation. Some teachers that I have talked with at different schools have decided to skip this unit altogether for a number of reasons.
What might be covered with students: Although I do not spend as much time on this unit as others, I still think it is important to cover some basic aspects of translation with students, such as whether to prioritize literal word-for-word meaning or the general idea and "spirit" of the original text. Literary devices such as metaphors and idioms, which I would have already covered before this point in the course, are examples of situations where creative and practical choices must be made. While nuances of translation might not matter much in everyday life, precisely translating the meaning of laws or religious texts in an understandable and accurate way is essential to avoid misunderstandings that could lead to accidental non-compliance with laws or even brutal conflicts in the case of religious texts.
In addition to the materials available on the Skolo.lv platform, the Palex Group has an easy-to-understand and comprehensive guide about the different approaches to translation which could be worth using with students. I strongly suggest comparing professional human translations of paragraphs from the book with services like Google Translate, ChatGPT, and Hugo.lv. Students also enjoy comparing the quality of translations done by those applications and evaluating which has the best results for different types of texts.
Summative assessment: For summative assessment of this unit, in addition to tasks about punctuation which we have studied during this unit, I give students a short fragment (2-3 sentences) from a work of English fiction they have not read, such as Catcher in the Rye. They have to translate the text themselves using only a print dictionary to help. Then, I give them the official translation into Latvian, and they have to analyze two differences between the translations and write a justification of which version they prefer and why. I do not grade the translation itself but only the analysis that they have written.
Unit IV: Adaptation (Film, TV, Play) Analysis
According to the program: Although this is most likely my favorite unit of the entire course, the way it is described in the original Skola2030 program is quite confusing. There is a huge amount of overlap between the main aims described in this unit and the aims of the sixth unit (the academic essay) — for example, there is a focus in the program on selecting reliable sources of information (which is far more relevant during the research process in Part II of the course). On the other hand, the sixth unit of the program asks students to compare the screen adaptation with the original book, which is something that makes far more sense to do in the film review. I highly suggest reducing the overlap and focusing on finding trustworthy sources in the sixth and seventh units and to keep the comparison of the film and book to this unit. Aside from that one consideration, the developers of the original program envision that students first read actual reviews of films, compare their structure and language, and then write their own review after having watched the screen adaptation of the book.
Variations on the program: Teachers that do not read one single book as a class might use a film adaptation of a short story instead — one interesting example might be the James Thurber's well-known, roughly 2000-word The Secret Life of Walter Mitty which was published in New Yorker magazine in 1939 and then adapted into a nearly 2-hour 2013 film. The film is so different from the original story that there is a lot to discuss in terms of how much a story can be "adapted" until it is no longer the same story. A story that might be used as a good formative task is Andy Weir's 997-word The Egg which has been adapted into a number of short film versions — students could read the story and watch an adaptation within one 40-minute class period.
My experience at JSVĢ: To start out the unit, I have created a series of exam-style listening tasks about movie reviews and adaptations in particular. I strongly suggest Duke University's online guide to movie review writing which offers a very easy-to-understand format for how movie reviews can be structured. I have created two sets of exam-style reading tasks based on authentic reviews of movies that students have most likely watched; the first is a set of reviews of Home Alone that focuses on reading comprehension and getting students familliar with the content of film reviews in general. The second is a set of reviews of the first Harry Potter film that focuses more specifically on the format and structure of reviews (based on the previously mentioned guide by Duke University). That second set also focuses on how successful of an adaptation the film is of the book, which is something students will need to write about in their own reviews.
Summative assessment: In terms of writing the actual review, I highly suggest Vytautas Magnus University's guide to vocabulary used in film reviews that students can use certain words and phrases from. I have created a note taking worksheet that I have students fill out as they are watching the film and then are allowed to bring to class to help them write the review. I have also created a SOLO-balanced rubric (to the best of my quite limited understanding) that combines elements from the original Skola2030 course program as well as criteria from the original Skola2030 sample exam program and the actual exam program published by VISC.
In conclusion:
My goal is always to be done with these first four units of the course by the end of the first semester at the latest. In my first year of teaching the course, the students did not write the film reviews until after winter break, and it caused a lot more stress in terms of finishing the far more demanding second part of the course — it was also difficult for them to remember what we had discussed before the break. I find it best if these units can be done and dusted by the middle of December and that students already have some time before the break to start thinking about research topics that they could do in the second part of the course.
While it can be a bit overwhelming to start teaching this course as it is quite differently structured from a traditional EFL program, I think that in general, students are enthusiastic about doing something "different" than using a traditional textbook, and I have been pleasantly surprised that students have, at least in my limited experience, been overall less resistant to reading than I would expect, especially if they are given at least some degree of choice in terms of what they read.