PURLANDTRAINING.COM – COMPLETE ENGLISH SYLLABUS
FREE RESOURCES FOR TEACHING
ABOUT
Syllabi – About – Public Domain – Why Free?
A-Z List of All 288 Topics (PDF) – Web Page – About (PDF)
Elementary English Syllabus – Summary (PDF)
Intermediate English Syllabus – Summary (PDF)
This is a complete integrated syllabus for teaching and learning English. Teachers can use this syllabus to create an entire 9-month-long course at the level of their choice, using the free material provided.
There are two self-contained syllabi:
Elementary: CEFR A1 (beginner) to B1 (pre-intermediate)
Intermediate: CEFR B2 (intermediate) to C2 (proficiency)
Each syllabus is divided into 9 units, with 16 topics under five categories:
- Grammar
- Vocabulary
- Speaking and Listening – Functional English
- Pronunciation
- Writing
Each topic contains links to relevant free teaching material from this website.
We suggest using a syllabus over the course of one school year, covering one unit in each of nine months, with approx. four topics covered per week. Of course, you can set different parameters or simply teach standalone topics, rather than building an entire course.
The Elementary syllabus is organised chronologically, beginning with easier topics, e.g. The English Alphabet, and getting progressively more difficult. For notes on the Intermediate syllabus, please see below.
All the material is free to use and almost all of it is Public Domain. Click here for more details. Most of the material is PDF (opens with Acrobat Reader), with some MP3 files (open with the website player), some PPTX files, a few image files, and some links to videos on YouTube and Facebook.
Some of the material has been added to the website for the first time.
Some of the material is taken from our free books, and is listed with a book code and the relevant page number, e.g. BGB p.24. BGB = Big Grammar Book (see codes below). You will need to download the book and find the right page(s). The books have the following codes and can be downloaded below, or here, or as one ZIP file download here, along with our other free books:
BAB – Big Activity Book
BGB – Big Grammar Book
BGB2 – Big Grammar Book 2
BGB Int 1 – Big Grammar Book Intermediate Book 1
BRB – Big Resource Book
CAD – Clear Alphabet Dictionary
DQs – Discussion Questions for English Classes
Pbrill 1 – PhotocopiaBRILL! 1
Pbrill 2 – PhotocopiaBRILL! 2
TALE 1 – Talk a Lot Elementary Book 1
TALE 2 – Talk a Lot Elementary Book 2
TALE 3 – Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3
TALE-H – Talk a Lot Elementary Handbook
TALFC – Talk a Lot Foundation Course
TALI 1 – Talk a Lot Intermediate Book 1
YATCB LP – You Are The Course Book – Lesson Plans
YATCB Syllabus – You Are The Course Book – Syllabus
This website offers more free books available for download, in addition to the ones listed above. Click here to find out more and download them.
Here are a few further general resources that could be useful:
Glossary of Pronunciation Terms
The Elementary syllabus suggests one major writing assignment per month, while the Intermediate syllabus proposes two. Of course you can set more writing tasks – or fewer. It is up to teachers and course managers to organise marked homework and assignments, further study, study skills sessions, and regular tests, e.g. end of unit and end of semester/year tests, either from the material available in the syllabus, or using your own testing procedures and material.
The aim of the Speaking and Listening activities is to practice language functions using techniques and activities from the Speaking and Listening Activities List.
For the writing assignment, there is further help with writing here: Writing Guidance.
When it comes to practicing students’ reading skills, we believe that teachers will be able to find many relevant and up-to-date reading resources online or offline, so there are no dedicated reading sections in the syllabi, although there are some reading activities. This also applies to listening texts, although there are a number of audio and video resources included in the syllabus.
You can use the website search function (top-right) to find more material on a given topic, or feel free to supplement a topic with your own material.
Finally, if you like what we do, please share it with your colleagues and friends. Thank you!
You can send us your feedback and questions here, or contact us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Notes on the Intermediate Syllabus
Idioms and Phrasal Verbs
At Intermediate level and above, one of the major challenges for students is learning numerous English idioms and phrasal verbs. There is a topic on idioms in each of the nine Intermediate syllabus units and a topic on phrasal verbs in five units: 1, 3, 5, 7, and 8.
Revision
There are six topics which ask you to go back to the material in the Elementary syllabus and do revision. These are important grammar topics that should be covered at all levels. Teachers should adjust the level of this material to the level of their students:
Unit 2: Problems: Punctuation (Revision)
Unit 3: Media: Articles (Revision)
Unit 6: Moving Home: Prepositions (Revision)
Unit 8: Relationships: 5 Tenses and 5 Forms of the Verb (Revision)
Unit 9: Future Challenges: Future Forms (Revision)
Unit 9: Future Challenges: Regular and Irregular Verbs (Revision)
Pronunciation
Teachers should use the pronunciation topics from the Elementary syllabus to teach pronunciation at a level that is appropriate to their students. The unit topics will be different, while the main topics remain the same:
- Word Stress
- Sentence Stress
- Connected Speech – Stress, Reduce, Merge
There are also many other important pronunciation topics from the Elementary syllabus that teachers could focus on and develop at Intermediate level and above, including
New to the Intermediate syllabus is the opportunity to study the Hard Words pronunciation programme over the course of the syllabus – in eight lessons and one review lesson. This could be easily adapted for Elementary-level students too.
Syllabi – About – Public Domain – Why Free?