PRINCIPLES

PRINCIPLES

1. * The aim of this part of the curriculum design process is to decide how learning can be encouraged. * The purpose of this chapter is to show that a sensible basis to guide teaching and to help in the design of courses rests on following principles.

2. MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT

   • 1) Ongoing needs and environment analysis: The selection, ordering, presentation, and assessment of the material in a language course should be based on a continuing careful consideration of the learners and their needs.
   • 2) Feedback: Learners should receive helpful feedback which will allow them to improve the quality of their language use.

3. CONTENT AND SEQUENCING

   • 3) Spaced retrieval: Learners should have increasingly spaced, repeated opportunity to give attention to wanted items in a variety of contexts.
   • 2) Strategies and autonomy: A language course should train learners in how to learn a language, so that they can become effective and independent language learners.
   • 1) Frequency: A language course should provide the best possible coverage of language in use through the inclusion of items that occur frequently in the language, so that learners get the best return for their learning effort.
   • 4) Language system: The language focus of a course needs to be on generalizable features of the language system. *Language features -Cohesive devices -Prediction clues -Text coping strategies.* Areas of focus -Vocabulary -Structure -Discourse
   • 5) Keep moving forward: A language course should progressively cover useful language items, skills and strategies.
   • 6) Teachability: The teaching of language items should take account of the most favorable sequencing of these items and should take account of when the learners are most ready to learn them.
   • 7) earning burden: The course should help learners make the most effective use of previous knowledge.
   • 8) Interference: The items in a language course should be sequenced so that items which are learned together have a positive effect on each other for learning and so that interference effects are avoided.

4. FORMAT AND PRESENTATION

   • 7) Time on task: As much time as possible should be spent using and focusing on the second language.
   • 6) Deliberate learning: The course should include language – focused learning on the sound system, spelling, vocabulary, grammar and discourse areas.
   • 5) Output: The learners should be pushed to produce the language in both speaking and writing over a range of discourse types.
   • 4) Fluency: The language course should provide activities aimed at increasing the fluency with which learners can use the language they already know, both receptively and productively.
   • 3) Comprehensible input: There should be substantial quantities of interesting comprehensible receptive activity in both listening and reading.
   • 2) Four strands: 1. Meaning – focused input 2. Meaning – focused output 3. Language – focused learning 4. Fluency activities
   • 1) Motivation: Learners should be interested and excited about learning the language and they should come to value their learning.
   • 8) Depth of processing: Learners should process the items to be learned as deeply and as thoughtfully as possible.
   • 9) Integrative motivation: A course should be presented so that the learners have the most favorable attitudes to the language, to users of the language, to the teacher’s skill in teaching the language, and to their chance of success in learning the language.
   • 10) Learning style: There should be opportunity for learners to work with the learning material in ways that most suit their individual learn style.