2024-25 CBSE 10 English Comm. Syllabus 4
2024-25 CBSE 10 English Comm. Syllabus 4
2024-25 CBSE 10 English Comm. Syllabus 4
I. Introduction:
Acquiring a language means, above all, acquiring a means to communicate confidently and naturally. In other
words, in order to communicate effectively in real life, students need more than mere knowledge about the
language. In addition, they must be able to use the language effectively, with confidence and fluency.
Therefore, the course in Communicative English has been designed to develop the practical language
communication skills needed for academic study and subsequent adult life.
The course brings together a number of ideas about the nature of language and language learning.
Knowledge and Skill
One of the tenets of the communicative approach is the idea that Language is a skill to be acquired, not
merely a body of knowledge to be learnt. Acquiring a language has been compared to learning to drive. It is
not enough to have only a theoretical knowledge of how an engine works: you must know how to use the
gears and (crucially) how to interact with other road users. Similarly, simply knowing parts of speech or how
to convert the active into the passive voice does not mean you are proficient in a language. You must be able
to put knowledge into practice in everyday language use. Of course, we do not expect a novice driver to move
off without preparation: the driver has rules of the highway which he/she must learn by rote. But there is no
substitute for learning by doing, albeit in the artificial conditions of a deserted road at slow speeds. Equally in
language learning there are some ‘rules to be learnt’ but there is no substitute for learning by doing. In good
teaching, this experience is supported by carefully-graded, contextualized exercises.
Structure and Function
Language can be described in different ways. Obviously we can label an utterance according to its
grammatical structure. Another approach is to decide what function it performs. Consider the following:
a) “Can I open the window?”
b) “Can I carry that case?”
we could say that a) and b) have the same grammatical structure: they are both interrogative sentences. We
should also recognize that they perform different functions: a) is a ‘request’ b) is an ‘offer’.
The course aims to recognize the use to which language is put and encourages pupils to be aware of the
relationship between structure and function.
The overall aims of the course are to:
(a) enable the learner to communicate effectively and appropriately in real-life situations;
(b) use English effectively for study purposes across the curriculum;
(c) develop and integrate the use of the four language skills, i.e., listening, speaking, reading and writing;
(d) develop interest in and appreciation of literature;
(e) revise and reinforce structures already learnt.
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II. Objectives
READING
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. read silently at varying speeds depending on the purpose of reading;
2. adopt different strategies for different types of text, both literary and non-literary;
3. recognise the organization of a text;
4. identify the main points of a text;
5. understand relations between different parts of a text through lexical and grammatical cohesive
devices;
6. anticipate and predict what will come next in a text; *
7. deduce the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items in a given context;
8. consult a dictionary to obtain information on the meaning and use of lexical items; *
9. analyse, interpret, infer (and evaluate) the ideas in the text;
10. select and extract, from a text, information required for a specific purpose (and record it in note form);
11. transcode information from verbal to diagrammatic form;
12. retrieve and synthesize information from a range of reference materials using study skills such as
skimming and scanning;
13. interpret texts by relating them to other material on the same theme (and to their own
experience and knowledge);
14. read extensively on their own.
WRITING
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. express ideas in clear and grammatically correct English, using appropriate punctuation and cohesive
devices;
2. write in a style appropriate for communicative purposes;
3. plan, organise and present ideas coherently by introducing, developing and concluding a topic;
4. write a clear description (e.g., of a place, a person, an object or a system);
5. write a clear account of events (e.g., a process, a narrative, a trend or a cause-effect relationship);
6. compare and contrast ideas and arrive at conclusions;
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present/past forms
simple/continuous forms
perfect forms
future time reference
modals
active and passive voice
subject-verb concord
non-finite verb forms (infinitives and participles)
2. Sentence Structure: -
connectors
types of sentences
affirmative/interrogative sentences/ negation
exclamations
types of phrases and clauses
- finite and non-finite subordinate clauses
- noun clauses and phrases
- adjective clauses and phrases
- adverb clauses and phrases
- indirect speech
- comparison
- nominalization
3. Other Areas: -
determiners
pronouns
prepositions
LITERATURE
By the end of the course, students should be able to comprehend, interpret, analyse, infer and evaluate the
following features in a literary text:
1 Character as revealed through
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rhyme
rhythm
simile
metaphor
pun
repetition
III. Role of the Teacher
Unlike a teacher-centered classroom, where the teacher plays a dominant role, speaks most of the time, and
interacts with the class as a whole, for the success of this course teachers will need to adopt a variety of
roles. Teachers may note that the number of periods given in this document is suggestive, as overlapping
of skills may happen during classroom-transaction.
Littlewood1 sets out the roles as follows:
• As a general overseer of his/ her students’ learning, the teacher must aim to coordinate the activities so
that they form a coherent progression, leading towards greater communicative ability.
• As a classroom manager, he/ she is responsible for grouping activities into ‘lessons’ and for ensuring that
these are satisfactorily organized at a practical level.
• In many activities, he/ she may perform the familiar role of language instructor: he/ she will present new
language, exercise direct control over the learner’s performance, evaluate and correct it, and so on.
• In others, he/ she will not intervene after initiating the proceedings, but will let learning take place through
independent activity or pair and group work.
• When such an activity is in progress s/he may act as a consultant or adviser, helping where necessary.
He/ She may also move about the classroom in order to monitor the strengths and weaknesses of the
learners, as a basis for planning future learning activities.
• He /She will sometimes wish to participate in an activity as co-communicator with the learners. In this role,
he/ she can simulate and present new language without taking the main initiative for learning away from
the learners themselves.
IV. Classroom Procedures
The main types of classroom organization recommended are individual work, pair work, small group work
and whole class work. It has been the experience of teachers that students adapt themselves very quickly to
the new classroom arrangements, and the interesting nature of the activities themselves produce discipline.
The following sections give practical advice on organization of different types of classroom activities.
1
Littlewood, W. (1981). Communicative language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Pair Work
As with individual work, you first need to make sure that students understand the instructions. Once the
activity is clear, you will then have to arrange the class in pairs. Usually it is easiest if a student pairs up with
the person sitting at the same desk. (You may have to move one or two if they are on their own.)
Sometimes it will be necessary to have three working together, but this should not seriously affect their work.
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Once students have settled down to work, circulate round the classroom, observing and listening to them,
and giving help to those who need it. As with individual work, resist the temptation to interfere too much!
You may find it useful to set a time limit for pair work activity. This can help to focus the students’ attention
and provide a challenge, as well as simplify management of the class. If you wish to do this, tell them the time
limit before they begin, and be prepared to extend or reduce if you find you have misjudged the time required.
In many pair work tasks, checking can be carried out in the same way as for individual work by the teacher
eliciting answers from the students. Sometimes, though, it may be better for one or more pairs of students to
report back their conclusions to the rest of the class, possibly with a class discussion.
Group work
Usually, group work, involves four students but at times it may extend to five or six or even more. Four,
however, is a more convenient number for most classroom situations.
The general procedure for group work is the same as for pair work, that is:
- instructions for the whole class
- organization of the groups
- group activity while the teacher circulates
- feedback and checking for the whole class
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However, you may feel that some changes are required to achieve a balance in some of the groups. In this
case, move only a few students from one group to another. When the groups move over to the feedback and
checking stage, you may make it more interesting by asking a student to chair the inter-group discussion.
Whole Class Work
Whole class work, of course, is necessary for maters such as formal instruction (e.g. the format of formal and
informal letters), for “warm-up” activities, for class discussion, for “class review” sessions at the close of pair
work or group work. During the whole class work, the teacher is in her traditional role.
In selecting students to help demonstrate an activity, always select those who will demonstrate it well. Also,
choose students from different parts of the classroom (particularly from the back), so that they will have to
speak loudly in order to be heard. (Don’t choose students sitting side-by-side, or they will speak so softly to
each other that nobody else will hear!) Don’t allow this phase to take too much time – two or three minutes is
usually enough.
Organising
This has largely been covered in the Section B.3.above. A few additional points:
- There is no need to move chairs and desks, and only a very few students will need to move places. For
the most part, students simply face in a different direction in order to form pairs and small groups.
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It is difficult for the teacher to check whether all students are doing the activity, and (if so) whether they are
producing correct and suitable English.
It is not right for the teacher to withdraw from a position of “central control”
PW/SGW will be rejected by other teachers, parents and by the students themselves as a waste of time
and frivolous.
Responses to these Concerns
In traditional teacher-led classes, often individual students are not actively participating, but the teacher
remains unaware of this, if a sufficient students seem to be ‘following the lesson’.
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It is perfectly true that in PW/SGW the teacher cannot judge whether all students are producing correct
and suitable English. (Of course, this is equally true of a teacher-led classroom where one student is
speaking (to you), and all the others are silent.) But we need to accept that making mistakes in languageis
not only normal, but is actually necessary if a learner is to make progress. Advice on what to do about
students’ mistakes when speaking in PW/SGW is given in Section C.6.
P/SGW encourages all students, even the shy ones, to participate actively. Because they feel they are
not “on show” in front of the whole class, they feel free to experiment with the language, trying out newly-
acquired forms.
Much research in psycholinguistics in recent years has indicated that peer interaction of this kind in
language classes is frequently highly successful. Not all students, even those in the same class, have
precisely the same stock of knowledge and understanding of the language. Students can pool ideas and
often perform a task better together than they can alone. As they become more familiar with PW/SGW,
they learn to handle activities in a mature manner, sensitively correcting each other’s work. In fact, research
shows that appropriate error correction in well graded activities is just as likely to occur between students
as by the teacher in a teacher-led mode.
If a good student is paired with a less able one, the former is likely to assume the role of a ‘teacher’. This
experience is often fruitful for both. The less able student has a ‘personal tutor’, and the good student also
improves: having to explain something in simple terms is often an excellent learning experience in itself.
If a task is well-constructed and the students appropriately prepared, the activity often creates ‘peer
pressure’ to induce reluctant group members to participate.
PW/SGW is an attempt to encourage students to accept some of the responsibility for learning
themselves. The only truly successful students are the ones who can do this. If the technique is handled
well, it will soon become evident that the teacher is working just as hard as she/he does in a teacher-led
mode. PW/SGW is one of a number of different techniques which a teacher can employ to accommodate
students with different learning styles and for activities with different goals.
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CLASS – X 2024-25
SECTION-WISE WEIGHTAGE
Objective Type Questions (including Multiple Choice Questions), Very Short Answer Type Questions
(one word/ one phrase / one sentence) and Short Answer Type Questions (30-40 words each) will be
asked to test interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation and vocabulary in context.
SECTION B: WRITING SKILLS 22 Marks 50 Periods
This section will have a variety of short and long writing tasks.
• Email to school authorities (Application for leave/ change of subject /change of section/ bus-timings
or similar topics) in maximum 50 words 3 Marks
• Factual Description of a person/object in maximum 100 words 4 Marks
• One out of two formal letters, in maximum 120 words, thematically aligned to topics in MCB. 7 Marks
• One out of two articles based on verbal cues, in maximum 150 words, thematically aligned to MCB topics.
8 Marks
SECTION C: GRAMMAR 10 Marks 20 periods
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Noun clauses
Adverb clauses
Relative clauses
6. Determiners
The above items may be tested through test types as given below:
Gap filling 3 marks
Editing or Omission 4 marks
Sentences Reordering or Sentence Transformation in context. 3 marks
• Five Short Answer Type Questions out of six from the Literature Reader to test local and global
comprehension of theme and ideas, analysis, evaluation and appreciation (30-40 words each) 5x2 = 10
Marks
• One out of two Long Answer Type Questions to assess how the values inherent in the text have been
brought out. Creativity, evaluation and extrapolation beyond the text and across the texts will be assessed.
This can also be a passage-based question taken from a situation/plot from the texts. (150 words).
8 marks
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Total 100%
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1 2 3 4 5
Contributions Contribution Develops Interaction is Initiates &
are mainly s are often interaction adequately logically
Interaction unrelated to unrelated adequately, initiated develops simple
those of other to those of the makes and developed conversation on
speakers other speaker however Takes turn but familiar topics
minimal needs some
Shows hardly Generally effort to prompting Takes turns
any initiative in passive in the initiate appropriately
the development of conversation
development conversation
of conversation Needs
constant
Very limited prompting to
interaction take turns
Noticeably/ Usually fluent; Is willing to Speaks without Speaks fluently
Fluency & long pauses; produces speak at noticeable almost with no
Coherence rate of speech simple speech length, effort, with a repetition &
is slow fluently, but however little repetition minimal
Frequent loses repetition is Demonstrates hesitation
repetition coherence in noticeable hesitation to Develops topic
and/or self- complex Hesitates find words or fully &
correction this communication and/or self use correct coherently
is all right in Often hesitates corrects; grammatical
informal and/or resorts occasionally structures
conversation to slow speech loses and/or self-
coherence correction
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iii. Schedule:
The practice of listening and speaking skills should be done throughout the academic year.
The final assessment of the skills is to be done as per the convenience and schedule of the school.
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