Introductory seminar Part 1 Course and Syllabus Design Nur Hooton

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Introductory seminar Part 1 Course and Syllabus
Design Nur
Hooton
Course and Materials Design Module CMD MSc in
TESOL/TESP/TYL/EMT
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Contents

• Unit 1 An Introduction to course and syllabus
  design
• Unit 2 Syllabus types and SLA
• Unit 3 Process, procedural and task-based
  syllabuses
• Unit 4 Lexical approaches to syllabus design
• Unit 5 From needs analysis to syllabus as corpus
• Unit 6 From setting objectives to evaluation
  procedures
• Unit 7 Approaches to materials analysis
• Unit 8 Materials, learners and teachers
• Unit 9 Authenticity natural language in
  materials design
• Unit 10 From course to materials design
• Unit 11 Innovation implementation
• Unit 12 Supplementary unit

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The CSD element of the module

• a variety of approaches to syllabus and course
  design
• key concepts and principles and rationale behind
  language syllabus design
• opportunity to appraise, evaluate and adapt
  existing syllabuses and courses
• research and design your own courses
• research the language of the target discourse
  community and use this to draw up a core
  syllabus for any group of learners

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Learning outcomes

• Ability to recognise the type(s) of syllabus used
  for a particular course and to assess its
  strengths and weaknesses for a specific group of
  learners
• Being able to make principled adaptations to an
  existing course or syllabus and be able to
  justify these in the light of the relevant
  theoretical issues
• Ability to design your own courses based on your
  own research, and advise on materials and
  methodological approaches for these courses
• Ability to describe a course in different ways to
  suit particular audiences (e.g. teachers,
  learners, sponsors, company training managers)
• Ability to advise on the use of technology for
  syllabus and course design.

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Some key terms

• Syllabus
• the specification and ordering of content of a
  course or courses (White, 1988)
• Syllabus design is based essentially on a
  decision about the units of classroom activity,
  and the sequence in which they are to be
  performed. (Robinson, 19967)
• Any syllabus is a plan of what is to be achieved
  through teaching and learning.
• (Breen, 2001151)
• Course
• an integrated series of teaching - learning
  experiences, whose ultimate aim is to lead the
  learners to a particular state of knowledge
  (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987)
• a series of lessons
• Curriculum
• refers to the totality of content to be taught
  and aims to be realized within one school or
  educational system (White, 1988)
• a curriculum subsumes a syllabus (Markee, 1997)
• the philosophy, purposes, design, and
  implementation of a whole program (Graves, 1996)

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Defining key concepts

• syllabus
• course
• curriculum
• goals
• objectives
• needs / perceived needs / felt needs

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Sequencing decisions in a syllabus - choices

• prospective and fixed
• on-line i.e. during classroom activity (e.g.
  Breens process syllabus)
• retrospective (Candlin)

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Synthetic syllabuses

• Content is pre-selected
• Teaching is incremental
• learners task is to re-synthesize the language
  that has been broken down into a large number of
  small pieces with the aim of making this learning
  task easier (Wilkins, 1976)

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Analytic syllabuses

• Learning is organised in terms of social purposes
• Learners interact with and analyse samples of
  language relevant to their needs
• Learners analytic capacities are used

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Synthetic language teaching strategy

• A synthetic language teaching strategy is one
  in which the different parts of language are
  taught separately and step by step so that
  acquisition is a process of gradual accumulation
  of parts until the whole structure of language
  has been built up.
• (Wilkins, 19762)

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In analytical syllabuses

• The starting point could be content defined in
  terms of situations, topics, or themes (see
  Nunan, 198838) - language is not linguistically
  graded.

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Types of syllabuses

• Synthetic Syllabuses
• Structural/grammatical
• Situational
• Functional-notional (Wilkins)
• Communicative
• Lexical (D.Willis)
• Skills-based (Johnson)

• Analytic Syllabuses
• Task-based
• Process
• Procedural (Prabhu)
• Long and Crookes (1992) categorisation

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Your own experiences . . .

• type of syllabus?

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Course Design
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Task Where would you begin as a course designer?

• Assessing needs
• Articulating beliefs
• Formulating goals and objectives
• Developing materials
• Designing an assessment plan
• Defining the context
• Organising the course
• Conceptualising content

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The answer?

• No hierarchy in the processes
• No sequence in their accomplishment
• articulating beliefs and defining context
  serve as the foundation for the other processes
• course development - designing a course and
  teaching it - comprises a system, the way a
  forest or the human body is a system (Clark, 1987
  cited in Graves, 20004) - components are
  interrelated.
• Course design is a system in the sense that
  planning one component will contribute to others
  changes to one component will influence all the
  others. (Graves, 20004)
• Graves,K. 2000. Designing Language Courses.
  Heinle Heinle.

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Organising a course

• overlapping processes
• Determining the organising principle(s) (themes,
  genres, tasks)
• Identifying the course units based on the
  organising principle(s)
• Sequencing the units
• Determining unit content
• Organising unit content

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Framework for curriculum planning
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Reference 1

• Graves, K. 2009. The Curriculum of Second
  Language Teacher Education. In Burns, A. And
  Richards, J. C. (eds.)The Cambridge Guide to
  Teacher Education. Cambridge University Press.

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Reference 2

• Roberts, J. 1998. Language Teacher Education.
  Arnold
• (in particular, pages 249-252)

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Assessment of the module

• Assignment on
• Course design / syllabus design
• Materials development and evaluation

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For your assignment

• Ability to recognise the type(s) of syllabus used
  for a particular course and to assess its
  strengths and weaknesses for a specific group of
  learners
• Being able to make principled adaptations to an
  existing course or syllabus and be able to
  justify these in the light of the relevant
  theoretical issues
• Ability to design your own courses based on your
  own research, and advise on materials and
  methodological approaches for these courses
• Ability to describe a course in different ways to
  suit particular audiences (e.g. teachers,
  learners, sponsors, company training
  managers)Ability to advise on the use of
  technology for syllabus and course design.

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Finally
Enjoy the module!