The different stages to design a programme.

The different stages to design a programme.

1. ‘Syllabus’ refers to the content or subject matter of an individual subject

2. ‘Curriculum’ refers to the totality of content to be taught and aims to be realized within one school or educational

3. We shall be focussing on the different ways of organizing courses and specification and ordering of the content ie the syllabus.

   • CURRICULUM can be defined, as an educational program which states:
     • “The educational purpose of the program (the ends)
     • The content teaching procedures and learning experience which will be necessary to achieve this purpose (the means)
     • Some means for assessing whether or not the educational ends have been achieved.”
   • COURSE
     • Is “an integrated series of teaching-learning experiences, whose ultimate aim is to lead the learners to a particular state of knowledge”.
       • The distinction between a curriculum and a course is:
         • Societal needs analysis
         • Testing for placement purposes or programwide evaluation
   • SyLLABUSES
     • Is essentially a statement of what should be taught, year by year – through language
     • Are more localized and are based on accounts and records of what actually happens at the classroom level.

4. What are the possible approaches to course design?

   • APPROACHES
     • Classical approach
       • Humanism: students need to read the classics
     • WAYS OF DEFINING WHAT THE STUDENTS NEED TO LEARN
     • Grammar-translation approach
       • Students need to learn with economy of time and effort (1800-1900)
     • Direct approach
       • Students need operant conditioning and behavioural modification to learn language (1890-1930)
     • Audio-lingual
       • Emphasized perfect pronunciation and repetition, lexical meaning was not considered important (1950-1970)

5. Articulating your beliefs

   • Teachers’ beliefs “Your view of what language is or what being proficient in a language means affects what you teach and how you teach it” (Graves, 2000: 28).
     • a) Your view of language
     • b) Your view of the social context of language
     • c) Your view of learning and learners
     • d) Your view of teaching

6. Defining the Context

   • Some of the possible factors to consider in defining the context might be:
     • People: Students’ number, age, gender, purpose, education.
     • Physical setting: Location of school, classroom size and furniture.
     • Nature of course and institutions: Type, purpose of course, mandatory, relation to current/previous courses, required tests or not
     • Time: How many hours, day of week, time of day.

7. AIMS

   • Richards (2001) suggests that aims have 4 main purposes:
     • 1) to provide a reason for the program
     • 2) to provide guidelines for teachers and learners
     • 3) to provide a focus for learning
     • 4) to describe important and realizable changes in learning (or in students)

8. What stages are followed in designing a course?

   • Planification, organize and the decisions to take about what should be taught first, second, third.
     • STRUCTURAL
     • SITUATIONAL
     • TOPICAL
     • FUNCTIONAL
     • NOTIONAL
     • SKILLS
     • 6.1 Selecting the Shape of the Syllabus
       • When selecting the shape of the syllabus, “the basic dilemma which course planners must reconcile is that language is infinite, but a syllabus must be finite.”
         • The Linear Format
         • The Modular Format
         • The Cyclical Format
         • The Matrix Format