EPIC Teacher's Guide - Book - Page 5
Rationale
1. Overview and Target Population
English Adventure’s Epic is a comprehensive, story-based, emergent reader program
designed for teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in the third grade at the PreFoundation Level in accordance with the CEFR Pre-A1 (Pre-Basic) level.
Epic is organized around topics which are of interest and relevance to young learners. The
program develops oral communication skills by providing a strong lexical base, and
emergent literacy, reading and writing skills. This is followed by systematic teaching and
practice of decoding skills, based on familiar contextualized vocabulary. Finally, the program
continues to develop beginning reading comprehension through short sentences, texts, and
short stories.
The program begins with an aural/oral foundation, comprising of Getting Ready and Unit 1.
Following this stage are four core units, each featuring two stories. Each of these units is
further divided into nine parts.
The program teaches English through the integration of the can-do statements and the PreFoundation word list, as set out in the English Curriculum 2020 and the Guidelines for the
Teaching of English at the Pre-Foundation Level Stage 1. These can-do objectives are
specified in a table at the beginning of each unit.
2. Program Goals
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Give learners a positive first experience in learning English as a foreign language.
Cater to learners’ individual learning styles and interests by providing a variety of
activities and techniques, such as: singing, storytelling, games, acting, arts and crafts,
and movement.
Provide a supportive and nurturing learning environment based on continuous
positive feedback and encouragement to enhance self-confidence and foster selfesteem.
Provide learners with extensive listening and speaking practice to encourage the
active use of spoken language in the classroom.
Teach language by utilizing natural processes of communication for authentic
purposes.
Provide content that is relevant to the child’s knowledge of the world and their
personal experiences.
Provide tasks to develop important cognitive, linguistic, and early literacy skills.
Incorporate phonological representation and phonological awareness activities as
well as, grapheme phoneme correspondence, decoding, encoding and writing tasks,
that will gradually guide learners to become fluent readers.
Provide a guiding framework for all pupils to achieve the objectives and can-dos, as
set out in the English Curriculum 2020, the Guidelines for the Teaching of English at
the Pre-Foundation Level Stage 1, and the Pre-Foundation word list.
5